wedding reception

penniesforme

hi all,

I need some ideas for my wedding reception.

How much should i expect to pay for:

1. venue hire?
2. food - if buffet?
3. food - is its a seat down meal?
4. drinks?

I dont have the slightest clue what to expect and would like to get a rough estimate as to how much it should cost.

I have made some calls to a couple of venues and was quoted 80 to 100 pounds per head.

TIA

Minxy_Bella

Blimey! That's a bit steep!

My room hire is £1500 (*faints*) but it's working out at around £60 per head for a 4 course meal plus a champagne toast. The champagne is £40 a bottle - the cheapest wine is about £26.

For my evening do, the room hire is £450 and the finger buffet will be about £13 per head (cash bar as I'm not forking out for drinks again!)

HTH

nat82

We aren't getting charged for hire, only for sit down meal (£17.95 a head for 3 courses, we could have paid more per head, up to £26, but this menu was sufficient) plus the buffet (£7 per head, again could have pd up to £12 per head) and whatever we decide to do for drinks. For roughly 100 through the day and catering for 120 at night (there will be more there but we've been advised to cater for less) plus a rough guess at what drinks will cost (for toast etc) we're looking at £3000, give or take. Our band are costing us £1025.

£80-£100 per head is way steep. We'd only be able to have about 10 people there if we were getting charged that! lol!

x x x

bride_on_a_budget

we were charged £250 for the ceremony room, £500 for the meal/reception room, £36.50 per head for wedding breakfast, £15 per head for buffet.
we paid £11 per bottle of cava, £13 per bottle of wine.
and this was in a popular country hotel

hth

jeski

When we were shopping around for venues we found tht the choice of date changed the prices quite a lot. As we didn't have a specific date in mind we went for late March (yes it IS soon!), and saved £2000 on room hire and £8 a head on catering prices. Plus we are heving an afternoon ceremony and doing speeches before the meal so will only feed our guests once at 6 ish, and invite the whole lot to the whole day. My argument is that if they were at home or on an evening out its not like they would eat a big dinner at 6-7 pm and want sandwiches at 8-9.

Noctu

We're paying £40/head for a 3 course meal and drinks. £13/head for buffet.

£250 room hire IIRC, for ceremony.

This is in the North East in a popular country hotel with spa etc.

MsChazzer

We're paying £250 + VAT for the ceremony and day venue and then £300 + VAT for the evening one. Buffet in the evening is about £10pp we only have to provide for 75% of people though.

sir_monster

Well I do think a lot of it depends in which part of the country you are in. Here in not so sunny South London a lot of places wanted anything from £3000 for the venue hire plus catering and then hotels can do it for a starting price of about £90 but then had minimum numbers whacked on. We did see one place that was about £5000 for everything but then had to share with another wedding.

We went for somewhere an hour or so out of London and isn't a hotel but lovely, will be on our own and the room hire all day is £1500, menus are £37 per head, canapes £6.50, wine £17.50 but champers is £49 so think will go for sparkling wine (who really knows the difference?) so will end up being just over £60.

My tip would be when we were looking is to look outside of hotels and country houses as they seemed so much more, we looked at race courses, golf clubs, barns etc and these tend to be just as lovely but a lot better value for money.

*Louise*

For our arrangements for 40 people:

Venue - £230 for the chapel, no extra charge for reception room
Reception meal (3 course) £22 per head
Drinks package £8.95 a head
Buffet £7.95 a head

aimee21j

Ours is:
venue hire £250
buffet- not having a buffet but they start from about £12 a head.
food - We are having a 3 course sit down meal for £30 a head
drinks- provided by us. £10 per bottle of wine and we are supplying the sparkly stuff (corkage free!)

Hope that helps.

Minxy_Bella

sir_monster wrote: »

Well I do think a lot of it depends in which part of the country you are in. Here in not so sunny South London a lot of places wanted anything from £3000 for the venue hire plus catering and then hotels can do it for a starting price of about £90 but then had minimum numbers whacked on. We did see one place that was about £5000 for everything but then had to share with another wedding.

We went for somewhere an hour or so out of London and isn't a hotel but lovely, will be on our own and the room hire all day is £1500, menus are £37 per head, canapes £6.50, wine £17.50 but champers is £49 so think will go for sparkling wine (who really knows the difference?) so will end up being just over £60.

.

I knew I was paying London prices - and I'm up North! :rolleyes: And my venues are lovely, so I guess it'll be worth it - even if we live on cornflakes for the next five years!