Anyone challenged corkage fees?!

lynzpower

thanks for this, I too have been considering corkage fees and have seen 9 kicking around which to be fair is SOOOOO much more than Id be spending on the wine, Ive just thought NO WAY and carried on browsing.

wordwizard

Can you please advised how you hagged - what were main points of neogations in order to pay less. Thanks xx

morg_monster

oh my god... come to berkshire... £9 will look positively bargainous ... When looking for our reception venue, we've seen £25 a bottle charged in more than one place, no kidding. And £30 for champagne. Revolting isn't it, especially since their own prices for booze start at around £16 for a basic house wine. Actually the venue we are going with charges £10 for still and £15 for sparkling corkage, but their prices for booze are very reasonable so we wouldn't really save very much doing our own booze, or at least not enough to make it worth doing a booze cruise to calais or similar...

Along the same lines - one place we looked at had a "static" marquee (more like a giant conservatory really) and said they had no running drinking water, and due to health and safety water couldnt be brought from the main house in jugs, so all water would have to be bought at £4.25 for a LITRE bottle!!! Now that is truly obscene! Needless to say we told them where to shove it... well not in so many words... but you know what I mean. Wedding services are definitely a licence to print money I think.

NewFoundGlory_2

Well I used to (last year) work in a hotel that had alot of weddings and events and our corkage was charged at £8 a bottle. My boss told me that depending on how many bottles they were bringing with them (the more they bought, the less the corkage) and if they were only bringing some bottles with them (and planning to buy the rest of their alcohol from the bar) I could reduce the corkage to £4.50-£5.00 a bottle.

I think what works very well is to tell the venue that they are your favorite, but that your second favorite venue has corkage at X amount and that this may just swing your decision...this usually, depending on the venue, will earn you some sort of discount.

lynzpower

Does anyone know what the situ is when using a BYO venue. One venue we are considering needs us to buy our own booze and also sort out our own caterers etc.

Do we just open our own or will staff do it ( general answers please Im not expecting anyone to actually know)

morg_monster

I would say you will either need to open your own, or ask the caterers to do it for you (IE the supplied waiters/waitresses before they start serving). I'm sure it wouldn't be much extra, if anything at all. If it is - might be a job for the ushers?! and consider screwtops...!
Your caterers may also offer someone to work the bar if you are going to have a cash bar at all.
We looked at a BYO barn venue, but they had a specific caterer to use, and opening of drinks and the cash bar was all included in the price they quoted.

shelovestobuystuff

I understand a venue charging corkage,its a service charge and also to compensate for the fact that you are not buying their wines,but I had been looking at caterers to come to my location,a self catering holiday let so basically my home for the week, who all charge corkage also.I thought that was thoroughly unfair!

fitshase

We had our reception at a venue which had a bar and charged for drinks packages. It was cheaper for us to do a day trip to France (£40 return on the tunnel), buy all the wine in France, drive back, pay £6 per bottle corkage than it was to pay for the nice drinks package.

Yes, we could have took the cheapest drinks package which was something horrible like sherry on arrival and sparkling wine for the toast along with a very cheap table wine at 2 glasses per guest.

We bought loads of wine and paid the corkage up front. They kept coming up to us during the night time (yes, there was still wine left over from the daytime) and asking if they can open some more! We just told them to open it all and we made sure that all the guest knew that there was free wine still left.

I would do the sums on the corkage and shop around for the wine.

emay

If you're paying by the bottle just a warning...my uncle had an argument at his daughters wedding as they opened far more bottles than were needed and tried to charge him for the corkage. (Not sure if this was an oversight by them, but it is a big popular hall that holds regular functions, or a money making ploy that they try)

There was a bar and he only took wine in for the toasts, as everone else would be buying the rest of their drinks, so he asked them, if they knew how many people were there and how many glasses you should get from a bottle, how did they manage to miscalucate and open too many. They said it was inacse anyone finished their glass before the toasts, wanted a fuller glass etc. but he stood his ground and they didn't get their extra money!

DKLS

I used to be a champage waiter back in the day, and charged £8 per bottle, but for this you got me in my fancy uniform, and I opened the champers properly with a champage sword, must say it looked very impressive.