To ask guests to contribute to my wedding?

[DontForgetTheLightAlesLawrence]

Please give your honest thoughts on what you would think to receiving this in a wedding invitation.

Along with saying yes or no to coming, and whether you have any special dietary requirements, it has a bit saying that all drinks on the day/evening will be free, with a small contribution request, on the return of the invitation. Childrend drinks are free so no contribution required: non alcohol drinking adults £5, alcohol drinking adults £10.

Not a good idea. At all.

There is no way to 'police' this on the day bar giving people wrist bands / cards saying if they are drinking or not.

you either put a free bar on or you don't.

Best ways to do it based on my experience as a wedding planner:

You pay for the lot
Or
You pay until the end of the meal - after that they get their own
Or
You make tokens which go at their place for a certain number of drinks - exchange the token for a drink
Or
You pay for certain drinks at the bar - usually pints, bottled beer, glasses of house wine & soft drinks , that way if they want spirits they buy their own.

You must limit it some way - one of my weddings didn't and ended up with a £7,000 bar bill.

I've just read a lot more of this thread...

I've done plenty of weddings where the couple go away, get married and then have the 'wedding' for friends and family at another time. Doing it on your first wedding anniversary is both good and bad - if none of your guests know you got married, that's great! If they do know, then it is seen as more of a 'party' than a wedding.

Ryanairbride - I see its your wedding - you mention having a braii - are you South African? If so (in the nicest possible way) this changes a lot of the etiquette - if there is to be a lot of SAs there, to them it may be more normal to them to have to pay something. Also, in a lot of countries it isn't the done thing to have a pay bar.

In terms of licensing for the drinks, if it's a location where they hold events regularly they will have a licence. If they don't normally hold events, it will need to be applied for, but the venue should do this for you. They may need to get a one off licence which they would probably charge you for.

A 'pot' next to a drinks table is a good way of doing it for this type of 'do' if you are buying your own alcohol in - there's no need for the venue to have anything to do with it then.

Do make sure you check with the venue if they will be charging you any corkage for your alcohol (most places charge between £7 and £15 per bottle for wine, more for champagne and spirits)

Please do be careful though if you do try to charge guests or alcohol you have brought in if they venue have agreed to no corkage charge, if they find out you are charging your guests, they may backtrack and charge your corkage, which they are within their rights to do,

Also check:
Will the venue staff man the bar
Will the venue staff provide the glassware
Is there somewhere at your location for glasses to be washed / staff to do it

Where I worked there was an 'off site' barn type thing where we did events and originally there was no water there. Or loo! That's changed now though.

Just a few points there for you to consider.

If you have any more questions , just let me know. I've planned almost (or just over - I stopped counting!) 1000 weddings in my career so have seen a lot!

No. It's tacky and will be the (whispered) talk of the guests.

I'm not a veteran Mnetter, but even I could guess the likely response here ... Have a paid bar if you can't afford anything else

toots thank you so much for your detailed response. And for reading all the details before shooting me down! I'm not SA but mr RAB is and most of the guests will be. This venue is very similar to the one you mentioned, no loo or water. But the set up they have had before has had those services bought in some How, I'm not entirely sure where from or how, but when we go to do the next visit at the end of month they will be walking us round all of this stuff.
We definitely won't be doing the prepay idea my friend put in the OP. I'm not sure about tokens as it seems quite complicated. We have glasses and people to man the bar. Mr RAB has offered to build a "bar" type structure himself.
They aren't charging us a corkage fee, and they are aware of the ideas we had been throwing about about ways to do the bar ourselves. We got the venue on a "mates rates" type set up, because we used to cater for their events a lot when we had a catering business. But I will bring all these questions up when we see them just to make sure no wires are getting crossed! Thank you for the feedback

"if none of your guests know you got married, that's great!"
It's not great. It's tricking people into attending (and possibly even spending on gis etc) under false pretences.

*gifts

The best piece of advice I ever had was 'buy the best of what you can afford'. Ie if you can't afford really nice champagne, but a really nice bottle of white.

Weddings are expensive op...for the guests do. Make it lovely where neither you or they are worried about costs.

too not do

sister there's no false pretences. Covered all that ages ago, but no idea where now! Everyone will know long before the day that we married first. But as I said before, we have attended weddings where the paperwork was signed at a different date and it's not made the slightest difference to us in attending. Assume our close friends will be the same. But they will know anyway, we just haven't decided how to share that with them yet.

I haven't read 6 pages of responses. But just no. God no.

I'd rather pay £50 in drinks on the night than pay a £10 fee in advance.

If you had read the thread cornish you'd have seen the op has already ditched the idea.

I haven't either Cornish! But as purple Daisy said, we've already ditched it.

RAB - do me a favour, indulge me. please go and look up the licencing laws. I am amazed that even the wedding planners on here don't know what they are.

if the venue has a premises licence and it sells alcohol from its own bar then it will also have a personal licence too.

if the venue has a premises licence and YOU want to sell the alcohol, even for charity, even with an honesty box at the end of the bar, then YOU need a personal licence.

The whole idea behind licencing the sale of alcohol is that the premises has to be suitable AND the person selling it has to be a fit and proper person. this is common sense isn't it. you wouldn't want a drug dealer to be able to sell alcohol. the premises he/she is trying to sell it in might be wonderful but the person doing it isn't.

if you sell this alcohol at your party. if you charge money, or prepaid tokens or a dish on the bar, then YOU as an individual person need a licence. This is in addition to the premises licence that this place already has. dear god, I am getting fed up of saying this and no one listening.

The venue are providing the temporary events licence. You don't need a personal licence to get one, but luckily I am a personal licence holder if ot comes to it! The venue people do this all the time as there is no option for a bar in the barn, you have to set something up yourself. So I am trusting they know what they are doing, But will get them to confirm for me in more details on this when we go again at the end of the month.

I see you have abandoned the idea, but something to consider - I got married at a venue which was basically just a self-catering holiday house, so no bar, no staff, etc. We had to provide everything ourselves, so bought a bottle of spirits at the supermarket every other week for months beforehand, and bought wine and beer to provide a free help-yourselves bar.

So I can see the sort of scenario where you might want to do something similar to what you suggested, and for a guest I can see it would be much cheaper than an overpriced hotel bar.

One thing that I would warn you about though, is how fussy some people can be about their drink! Personally, I'd drink whatever is available, so I hadn't really considered this. But as soon as I started planning the wedding, I started getting instructions about how various people would only drink certain brands of beers, certain spirits, needed their exact favorite mixer, etc, etc.

So if you are taking responsibility for providing a bar, I'd seriously think about what you are getting into. We still have left over booze years later. That said, it did work really well on the day.

Sister.....

I had a couple once who had their wedding booked for 18 months time - their guests knew, all was great!

They were both in the army.

They then got posted somewhere else 8 ml the prior to the wedding, and the only way they could get posted together and continue to lice together was to get married, so they did. Nobody knew, except me, the registrars and their 2 witnesses (mums) .

They continued with the 'wedding' as planned , they had a blessing instead of a legal ceremony, the guests all assumed that was their actual wedding, and treated it as it was. They did tell their guests on the day, and nobody held it against them, nobody felt lied too etc.

They still to this day say that was their wedding day (except for In legal documents obviously)

The guests didn't feel deceived, why should they? The date of the legally binding ceremony isn't anyone else's businesses except the couples.

Countless people elope and then tell everyone at a 'wedding' at a later date.

If the guests on the other hand know you are getting married but not having the celebration until a year later, they will choose which they but a gift for , which they send a card for etc.

Don't do it.

A friend charged guests £50 per person to go to her wedding. A good bit more than you're proposing, OP, but the principle is the same. I couldn't afford to pay, so I wasn't allowed to go. I was incredibly hurt, and I know it created a lot of bad feeling with other guests who did go. She even charged her parents. Do you plan to do that too? And what if someone can't afford to pay? It may only be £10pp but two adults and a couple of grown up children and that's £40. And what's the cutoff point re children, at what age do they have to pay?

As a PP said, lower your expectations wedding-wise unless you want resentful guests/are happy to look grabby. Or save until you can afford the wedding you want, without your guests having to subsidise it.

I would hate it. I would have one glass of wine at an event like this, so £10 is expensive. It would encourage some to over drink to "get their monies worth"

The only ting changing it from a picket fences homely sort of do is the deception of it not actually being a wedding but an anniversary? What a devil-may-care bride you are...

paxillin what does that phrase mean?

Nm I googled it. I am going to assume you were being nice

I think charging £1 a drink is fine but inviting people to your wedding that's not actually a wedding is a bit strange. Why not make it an anniversary party instead?