Paying someone to decorate a village hall for a wedding.

[OldPosterNewName2025]

Hi. Any experience of using a business to decorate a hall please.
Trying to keep costs down on the venue but would like it to look special.
Any advice or links welcome please.

Surely it will depend on where you live!

I wish I'd done it.

We did it ourselves. My mum bought a load of tiny vases from various charity shops and we filled them with little beads, feathers, sequins etc in the colours from the wedding theme. Then we scattered silver sequins over the tables.

As pp have said, what are your requirements and where are you? Fresh cut flowers, huge ribbons and real evergreen garlands hanging overhead in central London, or some glittery shit on tables in rural Cumbria? Matching modern designs or eclectic retro?

Paying a business won't be cheap. DP is in events and has done the occasional party set up job. You're basically looking at a minimum of £800 to 1000 in labour for two people to put the decorations out and remove them afterwards. Plus the designer's fee, probable VAT and cost of any props and decoration. Obviously anything big or elaborate will cost far more.

DIY with help from family and friends is the obvious answer to keeping the cost down.

Asking for a friend actually. One half of the couple wants to keep the costs down - the other not so much so we were thinking of a possible compromise.
They are in London but with connections in the Midlands so that’s a possibility.
I think it would be nice to pass the job to an outside company to ease any stress so just wondered if anyone had done it.

Not a village hall, but we had a local florist decorate the church and the dining room and stairs at a private family property where we had the reception.
Fairly simple poseys on the end of the pews, large vase with candle and greenery on the centre of tables.

We were not involved in the decorating at all. Just gave a brief and a budget and they did a great job on the day of the wedding. We would not have had time to do it ourselves. One of the things i most regret about our wrdding was not having a wedding coordinator on the day.
We were running around sorting out the band etc.