to think ONE meal shouldn't cost £8,500 for 100 people? And a buffet £3,000?

[ASecretLemonadeDrinker]

DH and I are married but have been wanting to get our marriage blessed and also have some sort of reception as we had nothing when we got married. Just been looking into prices - our first choice charged £190 for most the 'package' per head based on 80 people (£15,200), another (council owned!) place charged £8,500 just for the main meal for 100, then more for a later buffet, more for drinks then even more to upgrade drinks and desserts. AIBU to think these places are exploiting people? THese meals were quite basic (so more to upgrade), the drinks were bucks fizz (more to upgrade!) I thought maybe these places were abit fancy but a local pub/hotel charges similar. Don't even get me started on paying £10-£30 per bottle to use your own drink!

That is ridiculous. I used to work here www.grandeastbourne.com/weddings.html and their top wedding package is £142 per person - including overnight accomodation for bride and groom and 2 parents rooms, 5 course wedding breakfast with champagne, wine and mineral water, table decorations, a toastmaster, champagne cocktail and canapes on arrival and the bridal hair & makeup - and that's in a 5* hotel.

£85 for meal only in a council building is outrageous.

Just read that there's such thing as 'wedding loan'???!!!! Kerrist on bike, have a small do instead, why take out loan???
[goes to beat head against hard object..... such as wall before anyone gets 'ideas']

When my sis got married about 8 yrs ago, she used a venue that had only recently been converted from a barn into a venue suitable for weddings etc. They allowed her to source her own caterers who offered a very similar meal to the ones that they suggested that was really good and came in at approx £15/head vs the £25-40 minimums being charged by the recommended caterers.

three years down the line and I looked at the same venue for my wedding. They wouldn't let you use your own caterers or even have recommended outside caterers, they did it themselves and the cheapest meal was £35/head before anything else was thrown in. And corkage had gone up from £5/bottle to about £20+ (and before if you used magnums they counted as one bottle so it was another way to keep costs down, they changed it so that it was a fee per standard bottle rather than actual bottle).

To have had the same wedding three years later would have cost significantly more than double . talk about a money making machine!

Not that I wanted it - ended up doing my own thing where I lived rather than where I grew up.

One thing that helped to keep costs down a bit was to have a chocolate wedding cake that was used as pudding with just some raspberries and cream to make it a bit more pudding-y. Double plus for me as I hate fruit cake so not looking forward to having an expensive wedding cake that I wouldn't like, and so often people force a bit down to be polite or leave it or take it away with them to turn into a crumbly mess at the bottom of their pocket or handbag.

Venue didn't mind too much. I'd been to a couple of wedding fairs and tasted some great cakes but ended up with a very nice lady who had made cakes for a couple of weddings my mum had been to. And it was fantastic, unfortunately she wouldn't part with her chocolate cake recipe but it was heaven. Even better than the ones at the wedding fairs by all the big name celebrity cake makers. and half the price .

We got some silly prices when we looked at Wedding venues in the end we found a wonderful venue www.thereidrooms.co.uk/ at the time we paid £2900 for the venue exclusively (with ceremony)no corkage charge for wine and drinks during reception/meal.... it has only gone up by £400-500 since then which isn't too bad I guess in 4yrs!

We used a company called Chicks catering, the owners sister did the flowers she was lovely, I bought vases in Ikea 90p each, mirrors for under vases for £1 Ikea again...

Loads of stuff can be done on a budget! I bought favour boxes in Tescos that were mis-priced lovely boxes were supposed to be £10 per box of 10 and i got them for 99p! they same ones in Confetti shop where £14.99 at the time!

Where are you in the country? maybe the rosourcefulness of MN can help you find some alternatives????

Only read first few messages but...

I would book out a restaurant. You will be able to get a bloody fantastic meal for up to £25 a head (depending on what you want) and probably have a choice too which most wedding venues won't accommodate.

Failing that, do what one of my husbands colleagues did. Book a venue for a conference, book everything you want and then after you have paid deposit fess up its a wedding. When she did this they blustered that she wasn't paying the 'wedding rate' and she said 'I want exactly what I ahve booked and you have quoted me for. I don't want anything extra or different than what we have discussed and agreed on. Please tell me why the fact it is a wedding makes any difference whatsoever'. Clearly they couldn't and had to suck it up!

Blimey. I can't believe the prices on here

We got married, walked round the corner to the local community centre which we'd hired for just over 100. We got private caterers and a florist, they went in on the morning and set it all up with tables and lovely flowers and balloons. We had a sit-down 3-course meal for 110 people and it cost us around 12 quid a head. No corkage, and all the booze was on sale-or-return from the local offlicence.

That was 15 years ago mind you

Did the £85 include the service, linen, plates etc? If it includes all the service staff etc then it's more reasonable (if the food is really good)

Watch out for vat as well, they never include it on initial quotes and I repeatedly forgot to add it in for everything!

Use to run a catering company and I'd have comitted some serious paper cuts to be able to charge that price per head!

ThinksShe'sInTheWrongBusinessNowTiggaxx

we rented a markee (in winter we would have rented village hall, costs 50 pounds) and organised the food ourselves. We bought a couple of big roast hams, we boiled loads of new potatoes with mint, and made two kinds of lovely salads.

We had 100 people. We did need to rent three fridges. We also rented glasses etc (I think at Sainsbo´s). We asked the dinner ladies from our local school to put the food on the plates and serve it up, and wash up. The salads were on the table, as was bread and butter.

We had ice ceam and fresh fruit for dessert.

We bought red wine, white wine and fizz (all about for 6 pounds per bottle, fairly decent stuff)and two barrels of beer, as well as juice.

We also rented a portaloo.

It was a fun wedding, and NOT a rip-off, so worth it. It was fairly informal, but to me that was a good thing.

just an idea! (we did have about 100 guests and simply not that sort of money)

SIl is getting married in the summer. It's a hotel package - the whole thing is there, no church.

The meal for daytime guests is £85 a head for 3 courses. There must be a minimum of 60 , if there's only 50 then they still get charged for 60.
The evening buffet (bacon rolls and sausage rolls) is £35 per head, minimum of 100.
If 20 rooms are booked (they are £200 a night) then the bride, groom, bridesmaide,best man and parents get a champagne breakfast thrown in. Hence Step MIL pressuring us to book a room for 2 nights.
If 10 women guest book the "wedding special" at £35 with the hotel hairdresser, the brides mother gets her hair done free.
There's a BBQ on the Friday ngiht. Wedding guests who are booked in for the Friday and Saturday nights pay only £10 per head for the BBQ, if they go to BBQ but aren't staying at the hotel then it's £25 per head. If there's (I think) 40 people booked in for BBQ then Bridal party don't pay for theirs.

This is of course, what SIL wants. however, I think it's extortion. SMIL and FIL are now putting pressure on us to cough up £400 for 2 nights in the hotel, and book the hairdresser and book teh BBQ - this all adds up, and I think offering freebies to teh bridal aprty is wrong, and I'm sure it's not just us that's getting pressured into doing all this either

To me, expensive weddings are utter madness. Get an extension on your house with the money instead!

I have never had a wedding meal which could have described as delicious, outstanding, fantastic or similar. At best, even in expensive "country house" venues, where I know the price per head is extortionate, I'd say it was "adequate" or "okay" but nothing which came anywhere near to being worth £50+. At worst, the food has been "school dinnerish". When you consider how much these places demand I think that is truly disgusting even when you consider the costs of laundering linen, table decorations and staff.

As someone else suggested, if you have a reasonably small party, I'd consider booking out a restaurant. You are likely to pay much less and get much better quality and choice. Particularly these days, and especially if you were willing to avoid Saturday, many restaurants would happily negotiate a drinks deal too.

we only had 30 people, we had a lovely meal with a small buffet for later one. Everything including the hire of the place food etc came to £1000.

oh it was in a restraunt (we had the wedding in the registry office). I forgot to add that it included drinks and little nibbly bits when we got there.

We booked out a whole independent restaurant.

Our meal was extraordinary (the restaurant was part owned by Michel Roux), but was still not extortionate. You may be restricted as to numbers though.