I got engaged on Christmas Day and have just joined UKBride :)
I would be so grateful for any advice you can give me. We are planning to get married in July or August 2015 and have a budget of around £7,000 (at an absolute push £11,000 if we save like crazy over the next 18 months).
I've already decided to buy a dress from China, do handmade invitations and ditch things like favours. The issue is, whilst we don't mind having just family and bridemaids/best man at the ceremony itself, we both have quite a large network of friends and it looks like we'll have 150 for the daytime and 200 in total for the evening reception!
Does anyone have recommendations of any nice but fairly inexpensive venues in the Birmingham/Midlands/Warwickshire area with space for this many people, or any ideas on how we can keep the cost of food down? We don't mind if we have to do things a bit differently i.e. not have a sit down meal/have a buffet/BBQ/hog roast etc.
We would also consider renting a marquee if that would work out cheaper; has anyone out there got any experience of that? I'd just worry about the weather putting a real dampener on the celebrations!
The main things that are important to us are that we really would like to be able to invite 150-200 people, keep our guests happy with enough food and drink and dance the night away ideally until 2 or 3am.
Not too much to ask I hope?!
Any advice/tips/ideas/recommendations will be VERY gratefully received :)
Thank you so much x
CommentAuthorShowgirl
I'm looking in the same area with the similar numbers. I'll be going for either Ingon Manor or Darycote Hotel. Ingon can have up to 120 people but would be more towards your upper price limit. Draycote's package is well within your budget and can accomodate your numbers. Another option is St John's Hotel in Solihull which although isn't as scenic can accomodate your numbers and offer a good package which should be within your budget, plus they also have a competition on to win a nest egg. Oh and Royal court hotel in Coventry is also an option for you but gets booked up quite quickly so its worth calling and finding out if your preferred dates are available before arranging to go see them. I did consider the Botanical Gardens in Birmingham but got distracted by other venues. I have no idea what their catering prices are (you can only use their suppliers for any function), definitely worth getting getting a quote though as the venue itself is pretty cheap to hire. Not sure how likely it will be to extend last orders until 2-3am but there's no harm in asking the venues (they'll probably try to hike up the cost for keeping the bar open past the normal closing time so make sure any requests like that are agreed and in writing before you hand over the deposit).
CommentAuthorRosalita
Thanks so much for such a speedy response and all of you ideas Showgirl!
I'll get looking x
CommentAuthorSJJ
I wouldnt recommend the ingon guys - we went to view twice and it was filthy both times! wouldnt budge at all on the price and not great reviews online! I was coming on to recommend the Draycote - our venue! :) have a look on tr1padvi50r at the wedding reviews - all amazing, they did us a great deal, really flexible and so profressional, they have a lot more experience than the ingon i feel, better value for money. If you are flexible on date the Draycote will throw in extras on a Friday or Sunday :)
Good Luck! xx
CommentAuthorSJJ
How we chose our venue was to go on the registrar pages on council, and printed off the list of approved venues. Googled all of them and crossed off ones that either a) way out of price range b) didnt like the look of (ie there are some grotty pubs on there lol) and c) could only do marquees (we didnt want a marquee, you may check other requirements ie size of party allowed)
There are a few venues that dont put prices online (frustrating!!) so we had to phone up, generally they were expensive, probably why they hide their prices!!
Next step was to visit the shortlist and we then got it down to 4 possibles - we then went back to visit without arranging a visit first to check out service etc when they arent on their 'best behaviour' and that got us down to our last one!
Sorry if you didnt want all the advice but thought id help if poss :) x
