Cor! Corkage!

Trevelyan · 21 March 2017 at 4:48PM

I know weddings won't be cheap but my fiance and I are happy to pay what we have to.

However, we don't want to pay what we think is insanity. That is, what we don't consider is to be something of value. The venue is fine, it costs what it costs. The food is also fine, the catering company is a good company who has supplied events we've been to elsewhere.

We want to make sure people have enough alcohol, however they (as do the 9 other catering companies that the venue permit us to use) want to charge us corkage per head. Understandable; we use their glasses, they stand there and give the drinks out, they wash up.

But this particular company want to charge us a minimum of £13.50 per person for wine, all the way up to almost £30 per person when you throw beer and spirits in. Multiply this by ~120 guests and that is over £3000.. just to have our own drinks served. On top of food!

So the question I have is; has anybody else had experience with haggling corkage costs and what are your opinions on it? I would have said something between £5 and £10 per person is what I would have paid without grumbling too much since we are potentially going to be paying ~£75 inc vat per person for food as it is (note, these are a relatively cheap caterer).

Sidenote; this is for a reception in the city of London. Prices might be higher, but we're paying the venue hire cost already, so even if they were external caterers, their only additional "cost" is the cost of transport.. the rest seems just wedding tax..

Lavendyr · 21 March 2017 at 7:23PM

That sounds pretty expensive to me. Usually corkage is by the bottle, not by the person...if you assume each person will have half a bottle of wine, that's £27 a bottle, plus the cost of the wine! Do they have their own alcohol offering?

GlamGirlie · 25 March 2017 at 4:21PM

We were told £10/bottle corkage for wine and £14/bottle for champagne when we married in 2013. In the end we opted for their drink as it was easier than trying to get our own to the venue, accounting for preferences in white/red etc.

KateySW · 27 March 2017 at 3:41PM

Corkage can get pretty expensive (we deliberately picked a venue which didn't charge it because we'd been warned off it) but I'm amazed at charging by the glass! I thought the norm was being charged by the bottle...

Will they also have a bar there, where people can buy drinks themselves, or is it an open bar situation? If the former, you could argue with them that you'll have lots of guests using the bar and buying drinks directly from them, as normally corkage just represents the profit they would lose per bottle if you brought your own in?

Kimmie26 · 27 March 2017 at 3:52PM

We host a number of drinks receptions and tend to have our own wine, we usually get charged by the bottle for corkage, but have recently been quoted for pp corkage costs (which worked out a ridiculous amount of money) and are negotiating the costs as I type, we are lucky that we are in a position to have our own staff serve the drinks (which you obviously don't want to be doing on your wedding day!).

In some cases though, we find it cheaper to use their own wine - is this an option in your case?

thriftylass · 27 March 2017 at 4:04PM

We ended up using their own wine just for the dinner as it worked out cheaper. Afterwards there was a bar where the guests could buy their own drinks.

Trevelyan · 4 April 2017 at 3:35PM

We've found a couple of the caterers who will do it for £7.50 and £5 per head respectively.

I guess the logic is that it means we can bring loads of bottles and they won't be counting and it makes it easier for them because then they can just make one single bill before the event.

However, pretty much all of the caterers will do "by the bottle". We just need to work out now if that works out better value for us (being able to bring our own of good quality or bringing volume..)

Cheers all for input!

Cor! Corkage!

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