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When it comes to choosing your wedding venue you may want a massive castle wedding with all the bells and whistles but is it realistic?
Don’t get me wrong, I would love to be in a position where money was no object and we could have whatever venue we wanted but this is not reality!
The reality is that we are going to be doing our wedding on a budget.
Now when I say budget I don’t mean any guests in a registry office on a Tuesday morning. We might be skint but we are not broke!
We want a wedding in which both are families can come together to celebrate our marriage. A wedding where we can look back in years to come and remember what a perfect day it was.
Now you may not think it’s possible to get the perfect venue on a budget but there are ways you can have your dream wedding but slash the costs.
Without looking at many venues, we already knew which one we wanted. In fact, we knew where we wanted to get married before we even viewed it properly (although we had been there many times before). So because of this, we had to be clever. Here are some hints and tips to help you work out ways to cut the cost of your wedding venue.
Tis’ the season?
The prime times to book weddings are in the summer. I mean let’s face it, what’s nicer than to have photos taken on a summer’s day with the wedding party? However, living in England, it sometimes doesn’t matter whether you’re getting married in January or July, the weather can be just as unpredictable.
As they are in higher demand, you will get charged more for a summer wedding so, with this in mind, if you could shy away from the more popular months and book something between October and February, you may automatically find your perfect venue at a cut price.
We have picked a December wedding. It’s my birthday in December and Ricky (being the romantic that he is) suggested that we get married on that day.
Which day?
So you’ve managed to initially get a saving with the time of year but you can also cut costs on the actual day you choose.
If you pick a more popular date it also comes at a premium. Do you need to get married on Halloween, New Year’s Eve or Valentine’s Day? Although it may be romantic and you could make a nice theme to go with it, you will probably find an increase in the price too.
Saturdays also cost more money. The best option is to opt for a Sunday, or even better a week day.
My birthday falls on a Sunday in the year we’re marrying. The more I think about it, romantic Skint Dad may have suggested my birthday as the wedding day so there’ll be less chance of him forgetting an anniversary date, and he won’t need to buy me a birthday present as my mind will be on other things…! Whether it was so he didn’t forget dates, or so he could be ultra thrifty, it is still a little romantic.
How many guests?
Does your brother’s, second niece’s, forth cousin’s goldfish really need to attend your wedding?
The idea of a big wedding may sound great but you’ll end up buying dinner for people you’ve not met for years just to make your grandmother happy.
Another way to cut the cost of your wedding venue is to try to settle on less than 50 guests and most venues create great packages that’ll be hard to beat.
This is exactly what we did. It’d be nice to have a big crowd but, at the same, it seems even nicer to just have family with us, then open the invite out to friends in the evening.
Can you haggle?
When you start to look at prices, venues may break down the costs for food per person, with different set menus, plus drinks and the venue hire itself, chair covers, toastmaster, cake knife – they really do thrown everything into the equation. The best thing is not to agree to anything while on a visit but take lots of notes and try and get a leaflet or brochure to take away with you.
Sit down with a coffee or tea and work through the amount of people you want to invite and what you really need. It’s scary how quickly it adds up.
Ask the venue if they do a package price where they throw popular picks into a great price. Plus, if they do a reduced package price, it doesn’t hurt to ask if they have any more wiggle room with their prices.
Remember, if you don’t ask, you don’t get.
Want to cut the cost of your wedding venue more…?
When to book
It may be cutting it fine but you could risk booking a venue as late as possible. If a wedding venue has had a cancellation or just a gap, then they may slash costs so they don’t lose out.
Marry alone, party later
Register your marriage during the week at the registry office at their fixed times, with no guests (you may be able to have up to 4 people) for very little money, then have a “party” (do not mention the marriage word otherwise a premium gets added to the cost) elsewhere.
If you want the party to be more realistic, after marrying during the week, you can have an officiant read vows in front of family at a later date. This will leave the impression that you get married in front of your guests but you will have officially married and signed the register a day/week or so before.
Don’t pay
There are lots of options if you would like to have a gathering with friends and family but really don’t want to part with your cash at all.
There are many pubs that would be happy to hire out a function room with the knowledge that your guests will be buying drinks, keeping their profits up.
You may even have a kind relative with a big house or garden that you could gate crash.
If the weather is planned to be OK, why not take your guests to a local park or beach and have a picnic celebration.
Our chosen venue: The Barn, Tunbridge Wells
Ricky and I shared some of our first dates in The Barn and we always knew it was special in our hearts.
The Barn has been in the centre of Tunbridge Wells for years, well before both Ricky and I were born and as we have grown, The Barn has turned from somewhere we used to meet for lunch, or enjoy a bit of dinner on a Sunday afternoon, to a place we take our children for a special occasion.
In more recent times, couples have been hiring The Barn for their weddings and in 2013 they were awarded the Best Boutique Wedding Venue of the Year in the Kent Wedding Awards. You can easily see why when you go in and speak with the owners Philippe and Janet.
They genuinely care about making the wedding our own and make us feel like we are the only people having a wedding there this year. Very importantly, they listen. This really helps as we know what we are saying is going to be considered and answered properly.
Choosing The Barn as our wedding venue was an easy choice – they make great fresh food, they are attentive and have an amazing staff, we have been given exclusive use of the entire venue and have also got a ‘mini-honeymoon’ at Bailbrook Lodge in Bath added in too.
Whatever you decide, remember it’s your day and ultimately it’s down to you. In our case, we wanted to have a venue which meant something to us. We could have chosen a venue for less than £200 and just had a couple of guests but that wasn’t what we wanted. We could have gone the other way and spend thousands and thousands and got even further into debt, but again that’s not what we wanted.
When we first sat down (after Ricky had proposed) and discussed the details, we knew what position we were in financially and we knew what we could and couldn’t afford. It’s because of this we didn’t make any rash decisions. We always wanted to marry at The Barn and although it wasn’t the cheapest, it was far from the most expensive. However, when we looked at the big picture and took into consideration all of the extras we would get, it was most certainly the best overall value for us.
If you are wedding planning then good luck! It would be good to know what you are doing and how you are planning to cut costs but still get the wedding of your dreams.
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Alex says
We hired the function room at a restaurant. It sat 30 people, they got to choose from a menu with 3 items in each section, got half a bottle of wine each, coffee and biscuits and it came in at under a grand. There’s little point putting yourself in hock to get married to my mind, and one of the biggest causes of divorce are financial issues.
We had a church wedding, with cake and champagne in the church halls for a couple of hours afterwards, and then took close friends and family to the restaurant.
Jirina Prochazkova says
We hired a village hall and decorated it with the help of our friends and family on the morning of the wedding. People were asked to bring alcohol and something for the buffet and we provided fish and chips for the sit down meal. It was perfect and people loved being involved. x
Paige Hawin says
A really great post with some very helpful tips. Finding the perfect venue can be extremely stress and it is a big decision. It has to be done in advance. The great thing is that the choices are limitless with chapels, hotels, beaches and gold resorts to name a few. Most people want their wedding in the summer time but I think you are completely right about the British weather. There is no telling so it is a good idea to have a look outside this time.
Naomi aka Skint Mum says
Sounds really lovely – you don’t have to spend loads to have a wonderful day.
– Naomi
Naomi aka Skint Mum says
What a good idea. Those who want to drink can bring their favourite tipple and it would work out a lot cheaper for them than the prices of buying from a bar.
– Naomi
Naomi aka Skint Mum says
Completely agree with you. It’s meant to be summer at the moment but it’s been raining pretty much non stop for the last two days.
If you pick a different season you can use it as a theme too – spring with blossom, autumn with fallen leaves or winter with snow (not that we ever get much!)
– Naomi
Thara says
Heya.
We hired a function room at a pub and hotel. I looked online in order to find somewhere and made some brief summary notes. To save even more money I went to a recommended wedding dress shop to look at dress options. And I prepared the food at home. We served up bowls of crackers, rice, sausage rolls, fruit, and made platters of sandwiches, biscuits and cakes. We had a buffet table for guests to choose their own party food.
We also had several trays of drinks on the table. My mom and dad took all of the photos using a old fashioned camera. In terms of music we decided to think outside the box. We used Spotify and borrowed headphones so we could do a silent disco type affair.
That was much cheaper. The food was delicious. When it came to table decorations, we actually made our own and placed them on the tables. We cut out the speeches and focused on the dancing. People were happy. We wrote out poems to say thank you.