I am so annoyed today, so much so i feel like telling our venue that we are going else where!! Our friends, as a wedding gift, wanted to give us 60 bottles of thier lovely home made wine for our wedding breakfast and then what bottles left to be put around the room for the evenning reception for guest to help themselves. I called the hotel to run this past them and theysaid they charge a cockage fee of £10 PER BOTTLE. That would be us paying the hotel £600 for a wedding gift!! Well after a little negotiation they lowered the price to £5 per bottle. I still not paying this for a gift. It has really upset me that my friends what to do something so special for us and some greedy hotel is spoiling it. We are spending a forture at the hotel anyway What can i do?
CommentAuthorMrsTacky2B
I just dont understand this corkage fee, i would open the blasted things myself and stand behind a bar and serve but they always say company rules !!!
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CommentAuthorlala "mod" bunni
in a short answer .. nothing ... , the thing is the hotel will be losing money as people wont be spending as much money at the bar if they are drinking the wine you bring.
could you keep the wine and have a party at home later with it ?
like Lala says..they will be losing money if people are goin to be bringing in their own alcohol or using alcohol brought it from elsewhere!!! majority of the money made at weddings is through the bar!!! and they are providing a service to you and its not down to greed, its purely to keep them making money like any business needs to be making....ive never understood why people get so annoyed with corkage fees as it is only to help the business make money and keep them going...its actually nice of them to take down the price to £5 as majority of places fee's are about £8 upwards...
why dont you just put some of the wine on i.e 30 bottles....?
if it weren't for the gift, would you be putting bottles of wine from the venue on the table..can you work out which would be cheaper?
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CommentAuthorMina
every venue we looked at before making up our mind told us that if we were to bring our own alcohol, that there would be £10 corkage fee per bottle. have you thought about lalabunni's suggestion about saving it and using it at a party at home?
Have a pre wedding party :) or bring it into work to share with other brides hint hint ;) lol x
CommentAuthorPeach
Ha clare that would make the night pass quickly lol I love that idea. I ma going to work out a few prices and have a think. Thanks for the advice ladies xx
CommentAuthormadison_uk
corkage is a nightmare only found one venue that dosent charge corkage lol
CommentAuthorJoey
thats disgusting! thats the main reason im not having my own bar and going with my venues bar. Hope you get it sorted xx
CommentAuthorKatya
madison your very lucky indeed to have found even one with no corkage.
corkage is also to cover the costs of the extra insurance that they would need to take out, especially since its home brued wine, think about it from the venues point of view....
someone takes a swig of this wine, it maybe lovely but what the person doesnt realise is that it has a hint of something that they are allergic too, the venue runs the possibility of being sued for not clearly stating all ingredients on the bottle.
at a wedding in the past that i was at it was insisted that i tried the punch, what no one told me was that it had malibu in it amoungst other things only i couldnt taste the malibu. about half hour and and entire cup of it later i collapsed, upon waking up my face swelled up and i threw up, malibu has coconut and the venue were very peeved off that the ingredients were not clearly stated and were really worried that i would sue... to be honest i was more annoyed that the food was the same 3 dishes that looked like it was bought from iceland the dj arrived late & left early! so i was more interested in getting brides to sue after the wedding than i was suing for my own stupid mistake i should have insisted that i stay on water all night and since then i have done but the brides were insistant as this punch was a wedding gift.
i stongly suggest that if you do pay the corkage on this wine then you should make sure that you create personalised labels especially for your wedding and have all the ingriedients clearly stated on the bottle as there is no clear way to know what alcohol voloume it is either it should also state that it was home brued and that volume is not exactly known that way if its really strong, no one thinks they have been spiked either.
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CommentAuthorUnknown
i think most venues charge corkage and it is so wrong! i can understand why they do because they will be losing money but they dont need to charge that much! esp for a wedding gift! x
CommentAuthoremz382
Our venues corkage is nearly £10 per bottle too... I wanted to get welcome drinks in for the the evening but would have needed about 40 bottles at least....and with the price of the wine to but that would have cost us about £700 just to give each person one drink! I did ask if I could have a discount as there is so many but they said no :-(
CommentAuthormini me
the corkage fee basically is that you are compenstaing them for not using their bar but using their glasses and staff as they still have to pay for them.
CommentAuthorlala "mod" bunni
from the venues point of view they only have your word that it is a present
we have worked out that for most of the venues in scarborough you would have to get a bottle of wine for £3-4 to make it cheaper than buying their bottles when you add the corkage on top. i understand why they have to do it but the amount they charge is still ridiculous!!
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CommentAuthorLofty
Ours charged £15 corkage fee, and the wedding coordinator that we dealt with admitted that the owner set it so high so that noone would even consider bringing their own wine as it is far too expensive!
Very happy to say I'm now Mrs Keates and loving it!
CommentAuthorHoxxyhula
We looked at a place that charged a set corkage fee per head rather than per bottle - might be worth it if people are big drinkers?!
CommentAuthorAbbi
Saving it for a party sounds like a great idea, some party that'd be with 60 bottles of wine!!! Lol
CommentAuthorluvlifejen (mrs berr
its all to do with the fact they wont make money if there drinking bottle put on the table by yourselves x
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CommentAuthorlil miss sunshine
edited
oooh going to my venue on sunday will try to negoatiate corcage fee see if i can get any discounts because i can get the wine cheaper and on sale or return from where i work would make my wine bill so much cheaper
and now the next chapter
CommentAuthorjanetx71
corcage fee is standard these days but a total rip off i hate the way hotels make you pay way over the odds for things this is why im having a village hall as my venue and using a really good caterer who understands that the wedding is about what we want so if you havent paid too much in you deposit or it wont hurt you too much to loose it then maybe you could explore your options there are some amazing venues out there that arent hotels or failing thet you could get some ribbon in your coulers tie it round the bottles and give as favours hun (keeping some for yourself of course lol ) might work as favours for the men if you have something in mind for the women already xxxx
CommentAuthorxxJennyxx
Are you paying room hire? This on top of paying for food should be enough for a venue to break even and more therefore see if they will budge on the price of room hire if you can't bring your own wine. It would only be fair that if the cost per head made on the assumption of bar sales equals out to you having a cheaper room.
The other thing you could always try your luck at is giving guests their 'favours' by sharing (in a gift bag of course) the bottle of wine and you provide some mini glasses as the gift? You would need to read the contract but many people these days give out minatures as favours - similar to wine?
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CommentAuthorbecky -mrs firth
its like takin a mealt o a restaurant hun! thats why they chasrge and u cant expect anything else
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CommentAuthorlollilou
Our venue is letting us provide all the wine for the sit down meal and Pimms for our welcome drink saving us a fortune and all they asked for was a donation the the lifeboat sevices charity.
What can i do?
