Celebration/wedding cost annoyance

A few ideas - I’m not in your area. I went to a wedding do at an Indian buffet restaurant. The b&g paid £20 a head and was a paid bar and they put on a disco free for them too. Loads of fab food and a bargain. I’ve been to a wedding at the local RAFA club. It was free to hire if bar took over £500. They got 2 food trucks ( really good pizza and burritos) and gave people foood tickets then paid the food trucks about £12 a meal and put £500 behind the bar. It was a great event

Following as we have the exact same issue. Looking for places in Buckinghamshire/Berkshire/Hertfordshire/ Bedfordshire if anyone knows anywhere!

We wanted to have a party a couple of weeks after our, very small, wedding. The first question asked by every single venue was whether it was a wedding.

We booked a village hall close to a train station and people came on public transport and had a ball eating nibbles and drinking and listening to music and socialising. Started at lunch time and went on until about 6pm so lots of time to get home. Some guests booked somewhere to stay near by and continued into the evening. It cost a few hundred pounds.

I went to a party in Bunny village hall (it was after the installation of a gravestone and a church service). Very pretty, traditional building and the hosts decorated it with bunting.

It’s not just that it is a wedding, though that is part of the issue. Customers expect higher standards for weddings and that costs money to provide. There can be no mistakes on such an important day from most customers perspective. That means higher staffing levels and built in redundancies.

then you need to consider your guest count. 100 people eating is a lot. Even if you manage that at 20 a head, that is 2000 right there.

preparing that much food in volume and serving it all at once is not the same as preparing 100 meals over the course of an evening. You need more staff and bigger equipment. Even something simple like bacon and eggs being served hot and delicious to a large crowd requires planning and execution and that is where it gets expensive.

I just saw a video about table linens and steaming them. That if you want to do it yourself you need to a lot at least 3 hours to steam out the wrinkles from tablecloths during wedding set up.

my grandfather was a florist and did my wedding flowers for free. He did nothing but prep flowers from waking until sleep for the 3 days prior to my wedding. The labor is insane.

Book a big room in a working men's cub sort of place - shop round at local butchers etc that offer outside catering as they tend to do the typical cold buffet picky bits buffets at reasonable costs.

Our local ex-servicemen's club has a function room that you can rent out cheaply, decorate yourself and bring your own food. They don't charge you as long as they make £600 on bar takings. Have you checked your local sports clubs/servicemen clubs/Labour or Conservative clubs? They often have function rooms.

when speaking to venues stop using the word wedding and use birthday party family reunion etc as once a venue hears the word wedding the package gets stingy and the price sky rockets but they hear family reunion birthday party etc they go all out to accommodate

I think you should start a thread!

My Aunt & Uncke had the best wedding and had a similar number of guests to what you propose.
They had a Registry Office ceremony followed by lunch in a local hotel. They had negotiated with the hotel to provide their standard set lunch menu at £22.50 per head for two courses, a few bottles of wine on each table and exclusive use of the room.
After that, we all went back to their house and had a very informal house party.

As someone who occasionally has wedding clients, I personally see the inflated cost as recompense for the absolute ballache that is dealing with the average bride-to-be.

Don't be afraid to say it's a cash bar. You might buy enough bottles of wine for a toast but let them pay for the booze. This is a common thing in lots of places, particularly if you end up having the party in a pub.

We booked a venue for an after wedding buffet style party. We didn’t tell them it was for after our wedding and it cost half the price than it would have done otherwise.

There is the Polish Club in Derby which I know used to do functions and was affordable. Just had a look and it has changed hands but still seems to do functions at reasonable prices.

Also try British Legion clubs, other social clubs etc.

why is it so impossible to get venues to whittle down their offerings to a minimum?

Because enough people are willing to pay the exorbitant prices.

Do the ceremony at the register office and hire a village hall or similar for the reception.

Good luck!

Stop looking at “wedding venues”.

Get married at a church or pretty City Hall. Have your reception at a local pub or village hall afterwards, golf clubs or chain hotel often cheaper too.

If you want a pretty venue with exclusive use, all in one location, and good food for that many people you have to pay for it. Venues cost a lot to run. Cut your numbers, cut your expectations, cut the “extras” and you can save loads.

What do you provide for £10 per head?

Im a wedding caterer. Find a church hall or community centre. Get a buffet from a caterer (im not local to you sadly but my prices start from £10 per head and includes disposal plates etc and im sure there will be caterers in your area who can provide that too).

Hire a local dj or just get a playlist on a phone and have that running through speakers.

Decorate the room yourself.

I don't charge any extra if its a wedding as I think that's a piss take tbh.

why is it so impossible to get venues to whittle down their offerings to a minimum? I would think most of their waiting staff etc are gig employees so their fixed costs must be lower?

Because if they think they can rent the space for a sit down meal for 100, then of course they will hold out to do so. A lot of the costs are fixed (mortgage/loan interest on the property, reception staff, cleaners, utilities etc) so having 20 casual waiters for a sit down rather than 5 for a standing buffet (or whatever) doesn’t make a huge difference.

Id disagree with ommiting the wedding word especially outright lying

The last thing you want to do is piss off suppliers if you're obviously turning up as a bride and groom

We actually found some wedding venues cheaper as package deals. We found trying to seperate things out actually increased prices, and village halls etc worked out fairly expensive by the time we hired in things

We live in Nottinghamshire. We found a village hall (near Matlock, it had several pubs with accommodation) with a cash bar. We made our own tablecloths and flower arrangements. We made our own bunting. We made 100 picnic lunches and then had a pizza truck and an ice cream cart. We had a DJ as well. It was the bees knees! £4k total. Don't mention the word wedding. Just say it's a celebration. For some reason, "wedding" raises the price!

As pp said as soon as you mention the w word the price doubles or triples.
We went to a funeral recently and the local golf club did a lovely buffet and on their board outside it said catered hall for hire with bar baptisms, funerals and informal weddings.
Not near Nottingham though

A relative got a brilliant deal with a hotel as they booked for the week between Christmas & New Year. Full wedding, food, evening do. It was half the price of the same package in the summer months. Would it be worth seeing if anywhere in your area offers similar?

Agree with previous poster, don’t use the word ‘wedding’ say you want to hold a 50th birthday party or similar.