OMG. £110 pp quote for a wedding.

[romanceit]

What sort of madness is this?! Yes it is a hotel package but I've been to two or three weddings in this hotel and it's certainly not a particularly high end one.

Living in sin it is!

We had a private dining room for up to 40 people in an independent, upmarket restaurant with beautiful grounds.
They only charged for the 3 course meal with wine, welcome canapés and welcome drinks.
We paid £50 extra have the room until midnight.
We had our own music, plenty of room for speeches and mingling…….

Standard

When dh and I got married we were happy enough for church, pub and food. It ended up as church and Freemasons. But, we wanted to get married and so be it.

Church/registry office and pub/restaurant.

Such a bemusing thread, how much did you think it will cost and are you really saying your marriage is all about the do and you won’t get married as you can’t afford the reception you want a?

if that’s the case you shouldn’t be considering marriage,

Pretty much all the weddings I have been to have been DIY. So hire a venue- village hall, Manor House, barn, marquee etc. Hire in caterers. This way you can buy all the alcohol in advance too and have a free bar. Works out cheaper for you and cheaper for your guests too.

I can safely say the Freemasons hall is not on the options list....

We'd probably end up with 120-150.

Thus not expensive.

Honestly OP- how much were you thinking it would be pp???

If I've read it correctly, have you been married before? Clearly, prices have changed since that time! Look at alternatives- hiring out an entire restaurant for example.

Unpopular opinion - dont have a "wedding"?
Just get married without the fuss? Celebrate separately with separate groups and pay for your dinner etc?
I.e Weekend away with family. Dinner with friends. Spa. etc
Especially if you cant afford £110 x 150 = £16,500. Unless you have a very good job, is it really worth it for one day? The marriage is surely far more important.

Do you want a celebration of your marriage with friends and family or do you want to impress and outshine others? If it's about a genuine celebration then it can be done very cheaply. We hired a hall and asked friends and family to bring food and drink to share. It was wonderful. We had no money, my parents had no money, we had 200+ people no need to limit numbers for cost. We paid for hall hire, flowers, crockery and cutlery hire, DJ.

If you want to throw a party to impress people then that's a different issue IMO.

People still talk about our wedding as one of the best they've been to.

No, I've never been married before. Of course I want to get married, but I also want to celebrate it and do it properly.

I don't want to be chasing up 3 different suppliers and a gazebo either. I've just googled a local caterer and their prices for this year are 50pp. By the time I hire a hall, decorate the hall, hire the crockery blah blah blah, I really don't think it'll be any cheaper.

I wouldn't invite someone over for lunch and expect them to bring their own sandwiches, I'm certainly not expecting them to bring their own slow cooker to my wedding.

It's not about showing off or impressing people, it's about celebrating properly.

That’s really not too bad. Ours was £60pp in 2009.

Elope?!

Don’t tell @TheOnlyKoiInAPondOfGoldfish that she didn’t celebrate her wedding ‘properly’!

Have you asked for a mid-week quote? Or an out of season quote?

They are often considerably cheaper, especially in the quiet months.

Another easy way to save is to have the meal later in the day, so you don't have to pay for evening buffet.

Are you paying for exclusive use? That can often push the price up.

That sounds pretty standard. Tbh in my experience marquee weddings end up costing even more, once you’ve factored in the fact you have to hire everything from teaspoons to toilets.

We got married recently and it was cheaper pp than you've been quoted, but not by much. I really think it was worth it for our wedding, the venue was amazing and it was really all about the celebrations, dancing, and fun. We've had loads of feedback from guests saying how much they enjoyed it, even weeks later, which is genuine I hope!

If you can't afford the wedding you want, find a different way to make it happen, or save up a bit longer. 🤷🏼‍♀️ Getting into masses of debt isn't a great plan, it'll just put a damper on the enjoyment for you.

Yeah it's expensive. I wanted a chilled streetfood type wedding and for 64 adults and 12 kids it's gonna cost us 10k (plus dress suits flowers photographer etc). Makes me feel a bit sick to be honest. DP wants the traditional wedding though. I wanted to go to Greece (second home for me) but cost of living pressures mean I'm not happy to make anyone feel obligated to spend the money.

I had a notification from one of the wedding apps that I'd looked at 80 venues because the vast majority want at the LEAST 8k for hire alone. It's fucking awful. I even approached our local cricket club thinking ah fuck it, as long as we get a good streetfood trader in and a banging DJ it'll be a good laugh, but they wanted 3k just to hire!!!! And they don't have room for 70 so we'd have to hire a gazebo (which is another 3k) so basically rent this bit of field from us for 3k. It's a ducking racket and I hate it.

I know we'll have s great day but I bloody resent paying it

Register office concert here. It’s never what I dreamed of for myself but it’s how life ended up and it FAR surpassed my expectations. What I realised is that all I needed was the ones I wanted in the room, the room was absolutely beautiful, we all looked the part and the two ladies who did the ceremony were fantastic!! The kids loved it because the ceremony was over within half an hour, that’s ENOUGH. We had a lovely celebration afterwards and stayed in the most gorgeous lodge with stunning surroundings. Made for some stunning photos. Will treasure the day forever and we paid less than 2k for our special day. Can’t go wrong.
Good luck.

Convert** even. Lovely autocorrect.

Sounds standard to me op
We're paying our caterers £100 pp without the drinks included 🤪

It’s also about cutting your coat to suit your cloth OP

I wanted £10,000’s worth of fireworks at my wedding, but we couldn’t afford it. So we didn’t.

you either have your 150 guest list and do a buffet or whatever you afford to feed them, however it is, or you have your 3 course meal and cut the list down to 60 or however many you can afford.

could some of the guests be evening attendees for example.

We got married last year and had our party at a local restaurant. I approached them with a budget and asked what they could do. £49 per person, three courses with choices for each course, a drink on arrival, two drinks during the meal and drink for the toast. Food was far superior to the mass external catering offered by specific wedding venues we looked at.

Gretna green have some really good package deals at their beautiful venues, and you will also benefit from the attrition rate of invitees who decline on the basis of travel time/cost.

Mine was £65 a head almost 20 years ago