To think £100 pp for a wedding is ridiculous

[Kab13]

Found a great venue for our wedding, you can stay all weekend with 34 of your guests in these beautiful houses for a reasonable price.
Got a quote for the lot yesterday and it amounts to £100 pp for breakfast dinner, canapés and a couple of drinks per guest.
Someone please tell me that it's just way too much? Because I love the venue but I can not bring myself to pay £14 for "six bites" of canapés pp and £50 PLUS VAT for ICE?!
Really annoyed that such a lovely venue has ruined itself for us by insisting you use this ridiculous caterer.
And yes, that is the "cheapest" package they offer!

We have 80 people for the wedding breakfast...we could do much more sensible things with that kind of money.

peas I totally agree. It's a lot of money for a weekend. We do have another venue in mind that works out cheaper, it's just not as "nice" but saving 7k also sounds pretty nice!

The £8,000 didn't include all the little extras like flowers and dresses, but it was money well spent on treating the guests well and making sure they had a good day too.

I can't get my mind round modern weddings. My Dcousins both hired beautiful hotels which must of cost 10,000 - 15,000, that's 3x the deposit on our house.

DH and me's wedding must have come in at under £3,000, probably nearer 2, with accommodation, dresses, suits, food, church, caterer, the hall etc.

We celebrate 25 years next summer, surely that's what matters!

£100 per head was pretty standard when we looked after wedding venues 2-3yrs ago. Would they let you drop the canapés in order to reduce the cost? We gave everyone shop bought sausage rolls at the church rather than spending extortionate amounts on canapés, but equally think you could do without them if you have a fairly short ceremony after lunch and an early dinner...

you know what, you're not even going to notice the venue on the day. I attended a friends wedding a couple of weeks ago, and she said she didn't see a thing as she walked up the aisle to her man.
7k buys a really "nice" holiday

That's pretty cheap where I'm from!

But I should add that where I live the deposit on a small flat is in the region of £60k so a £10k wedding doesn't sound so horrific.

elephants you're very right. A happy marriage is the main thing. And it is a lot of money to spend.
Unfortunately I have looked and searched for venues for 6 months and in Dorset to hire a venue & put people (35 people) up for the weekend (which is very important to me as I have family driving 7 hours to get to the wedding and people coming from US) feed my 80 guests for the day etc and hire a venue both me and my partner love and feel is right for us we aren't going to be able to do a wedding for 3k.
Unless of course we did registry office and a meal out somewhere reasonably priced and asked people to pay for their own drinks- which I wouldn't object to just don't feel it's right for us :)
But good on you for not being sucked in to the "big white wedding industry" they make a killing out of people like me and dp.

peas you're probably right there . The wedding day will fly by and probably be a bit of a blur! It's definitely the accommodation for me and my family I find so important, a 3 night stay in a lovely country house with people I love dearly a barely get to see would just be lovely.
But to get that Id have to spend silly amounts on canapés etc and that's the tough bit.
I think I'll take a look around and discuss the costs with the manager and try and get it down as much as possible, then I'll probably go and get married elsewhere because it's still too expensive :L

If you are looking for a place with accommodation included then it is always going to be much more expensive than the average cost.

Nothing remotely helpful to add, other than I hope you have a wonderful day/weekend Kab, and I think your focus on catching up with the people you love, to the extent of covering the accommodation costs for them to attend your wedding is really lovely and a real tonic after some of the bridezilla threads on here

It's lovely in Dorset. I wouldn't spend the £20k, that's before flowers, booze, clothing, photos, transport and all the little extras. You're looking at blowing all your budget and not having enough for a nice honeymoon!

Went to a fab wedding in swanage. Couple hired a cheap marquee (it was a bit naff but then they decorated it with sheets and bunting. They had a fiddle player and a fantastic catering team of their own choice. Wine provided. Hired a pay for bar. They used a parents field though. Church do in a very olde worlde church. Drinks in a real ale real cider pub straight after. Clearly 'budget' , took some effort, absolutely individual and brilliant. Great food covers a multitude of sins. Everyone had fun.

Is Hiring the venue to include a stay in with the 100 ph....

If so it's a bloody bargain

I guess it all comes down to what you can afford. I got married last year and we paid about £8,000 total for absolutely everything (inc bridesmaids dresses, hotel stay for the two of us that weekend etc). We had about 75 guests. And handing the money over made me cringe so much, I couldn't believe we'd spent such a lot on one day. I know what we spent was very little compared to some people though, and I'm sure if we'd comfortably had the money we might have spent more.

Bottom line: if you love the venue, have the money, and aren't going to regret spending that much, go for it. I wouldn't though

zen I was brought up in Swanage :) yes, if we hired a marquee and got our own caterers in we could save a lot, not sure about accommodation though. That's the pricey bit. Well I don't mind spending more on accommodation but 100pp on food is just too much.
only Unfortunately not!

I had an amazing wedding, we booked exclusive use of the venue and all the rooms. Gave selected guests and family access to stay for free. It meant we could all wake up and use the pool the next day then have breakfast.

But weddings are expensive and you should only go for a venue that you feel comfortable paying the price.

We did arrival drinks, canapés, drinks, wedding breakfast, evenjng buffet and of course for guests staying over their breakfast the next day. But some venues were more expensive than others, so you just have to pick really.

I think you can get that a lot cheaper but you'll have to do more arranging yourselves. We spent around £15k for everything on a similar sized wedding.
Maybe look for a venue that will allow you to use your own caterer and with lower corkage. The council can give you a list of all premises with a wedding licence.
Book accomodation and transport to/from venue seperately.

But mainly negotiate. Dh reduced most if our quotes by up to 50%. We did get married on a Friday though.

It cost us about £30,000 including our honeymoon and every wedding expense. Our honeymoon was a good portion of that at £13,000 so really the wedding in my view was good value. I appreciate that costs and value are variable depending on your income.

If it includes the wedding and paying for 34 people to have a weekend away in a beautiful house, that sounds pretty good to me tbh.

We live in a nice bit of Scotland but I lived in London for years so it was very important to us to get a whole weekend venue with accommodation included so we could spend time with our guests all weekend.
Try the youth hostel association. We had a hostel which we under occupied so for e.g. We could put a family of four into a six bed dorm and also only have friends or close family sharing with each other and lots of private rooms for older couples etc.
it's not the same as a fancy hotel or posh cottages but our budget was only £6k and everybody enjoyed it.

I know it's obviously not your thing but I got married in July. We got hitched in the local registry office. I bought a beautiful dress from Phase Eight for £260. Then we had a sit down meal and reception in a local bowling club. The caterer charged £15 a head for a 3 course meal (40 people), and a buffet in the evening for £5 a head (60 people were there but I only put on a buffet for 30 as I thought half of it would go in the bin and I was right!).

We purchased the table wine (12 white and 12 red) and champagne (8 bottles) from Tesco Wine for under £160,a s they were running promotions).

The cake cost £200 (could have scrimped there but wanted something nice), the DJ was £140 and my Mums friends did the flowers.

We had an absolutely amazing day and everyone I have spoke to said it was the best wedding they have ever been to.

www.yha.org.uk/groups/special-occasions

We spent about £4k on the wedding, that included EVERYTHING (flowers, cars, rings, meals, DJ, cake, sit down meal, evening buffet, club hire, outfits, invites). But then again, we spent about that again on the honeymoon too! :)

have you been on pages like bigcottage.com for a look? or google large party house, mansion for hire etc

how about arranging accomadtion like this and wedding seperate nearby, or a town hall type wedding and a reception at a 'party house' with outside caterers brought in?

i accept you have probably already considered these options!

You can get exclusive hire of here from autumn to Easter www.yha.org.uk/hostel/swanage#