wedding reception venues southampton?

Kuromei

bubble96 wrote: »

no, i hadnt heard of that before, it looks gorgeous. we have finally decided now though. we decided on civic centre for ceremony - then found out it was being refurbed so now using art gallery. And have decided to go to holiday in fareham for our reception, we are getting the £1000 deal. We didnt really want that much distance, but the staff and wedding co-ordinator are worth travelling for - they are very accomodating/friendly/not pushy - in fact down right helpful on the budget front, and the other places we have been have not been like that at all, and the decor and grounds at fareham are lovely - so can recomend this if it helps anyone. If anyone wants to know the details of what we got let me know and will post here.

Hi there, I've enquired about the £1000 deal at the Holiday Inn Fareham too, but they havent got back to me with any information yet.

Would be great if you could share the details of what you're getting for £1000!

bubble96

hi, of course:

As standard fareham include

Ceremony room hire
evening room hire
a sit down one course meal for 30 guests
an evening sandwich buffet for 100 guests
drink on arrival
cake stand etc
table linen
dj until midnight
room for the night for bride and groom

they also included tea and coffee when the room is being turned around for theevening ~(southampton wanted £2.50ph!)

think thats everything. extra guests cost £15 for main meal and £3ish for drink. more guests in the eve she said not to bother paying for more as there would be enough. you could add extra courses for £5ph, they are happy for you to use cake as pudding (may be a small plating charge) can add extra bits to eve buffet at a couple of quid ph, but dont have to. Kids cost £12ph for over 2s, this is for 2 courses and 2 fruit shoots. They were happy to include table numbers, and tea lights, they were happy for you to use the drink with speeches instead if you would prefer. And fareham was better than other holiday inns as she was basicly flexible, and when we went there - twice as we were unsure each time we were offered drinks - by reception staff too - they couldnt have been more friendly, and this was probably the biggest deciding factor - as all the staff gave the impression they would do anything for you.

Decor in fareham is good aswell and its not been very busy when weve been.

Another thing was (and im not sure she would always offer this but it shows her flexibility) we didnt want to get married there, she said we could either have free decorations or 10 extra guests instead, which was fab.

If she hasnt got back to you shes just busy, she didnt a week ago for me so i sent the email again and she got back to me the same day, i expect she is quite busy now its july!! Definately arrange to go and meet her - and if your unsure then compare it to other hotels/holiday inns and bet she will stand out! so many other places wanted to charge for every little thing, didnt have one sole wedding co-ordinator or had one that didnt work weekends?? or wouldnt discuss options, wouldnt allow cake as pudding etc. It was other things too like fareham were able to put you in touch with the dj so you could have exactly what you want, where as southampton use an agency and said we couldnt have the number!

wow what a rant - hope it helps though, the holiday inn deal is good everywhere im sure but of the ones i looked at in hampshire fareham stood out.

madfrenchgirl

The civic centre!!!! OOOOOO, we are getting married there too. Were you supposed to get married on the balcony before you found out about the refurbishment? We are having ours in the council chambers.

bubble96

we were going to have the mayors parlour. love the balcony and have seen wedding there before, but liked the idea of having an aisle. was pretty gutted we couldnt use it but the art gallery is stunning and really light and modern, just wish they could gaurantee we wont have strangers stare at us!!!

sarahh112

bubble96 wrote: »

hi, of course:

As standard fareham include

Ceremony room hire
evening room hire
a sit down one course meal for 30 guests
an evening sandwich buffet for 100 guests
drink on arrival
cake stand etc
table linen
dj until midnight
room for the night for bride and groom

they also included tea and coffee when the room is being turned around for theevening ~(southampton wanted £2.50ph!)

think thats everything. extra guests cost £15 for main meal and £3ish for drink. more guests in the eve she said not to bother paying for more as there would be enough. you could add extra courses for £5ph, they are happy for you to use cake as pudding (may be a small plating charge) can add extra bits to eve buffet at a couple of quid ph, but dont have to. Kids cost £12ph for over 2s, this is for 2 courses and 2 fruit shoots. They were happy to include table numbers, and tea lights, they were happy for you to use the drink with speeches instead if you would prefer. And fareham was better than other holiday inns as she was basicly flexible, and when we went there - twice as we were unsure each time we were offered drinks - by reception staff too - they couldnt have been more friendly, and this was probably the biggest deciding factor - as all the staff gave the impression they would do anything for you.

Decor in fareham is good aswell and its not been very busy when weve been.

Another thing was (and im not sure she would always offer this but it shows her flexibility) we didnt want to get married there, she said we could either have free decorations or 10 extra guests instead, which was fab.

If she hasnt got back to you shes just busy, she didnt a week ago for me so i sent the email again and she got back to me the same day, i expect she is quite busy now its july!! Definately arrange to go and meet her - and if your unsure then compare it to other hotels/holiday inns and bet she will stand out! so many other places wanted to charge for every little thing, didnt have one sole wedding co-ordinator or had one that didnt work weekends?? or wouldnt discuss options, wouldnt allow cake as pudding etc. It was other things too like fareham were able to put you in touch with the dj so you could have exactly what you want, where as southampton use an agency and said we couldnt have the number!

wow what a rant - hope it helps though, the holiday inn deal is good everywhere im sure but of the ones i looked at in hampshire fareham stood out.

I have just come back from my meeting with Debbie and Lorna at Fareham. They said that they had just booked another 5 weddings and she had a list of telephone messages from people who were interested - so I am sure she will get back to you asap. If you want her direct telephone number PM me and I will PM you it straight over.

Bubble you have got the same deal as me. I couldnt believe it when I first heard about it - its perfect for what we need. We are using the openair courtyard in the centre of the hotel for the kids to play in and are taking loads of games like giant jenga, connect 4 and the like for them to play with). They are locking the outside doors to the courtyard so we can keep the terrors enclosed (there are 35 adults and 20 under twelves coming to the day part of the wedding).

One month to go and I cant wait:j

bubble96

that sounds very similar to ours - we have 15 under 8s to the day and this goes up to about 30 by the evening as i am a nanny and have worked in childcare for years so we too thought the private courtyard was perfect, we want to take games too and top of my list was giant jenga!! can i ask where you got yours? - havent really looked yet.

sarahh112

bubble96 wrote: »

that sounds very similar to ours - we have 15 under 8s to the day and this goes up to about 30 by the evening as i am a nanny and have worked in childcare for years so we too thought the private courtyard was perfect, we want to take games too and top of my list was giant jenga!! can i ask where you got yours? - havent really looked yet.

am borrowing the jenga and chequers from a friend - but i did buy a giant blow up connect 4 from debenhams the other day which should be really good as well

Kuromei

bubble and sarah - just a quick update, I've got a provisional booking for holiday inn too! going to confirm it next week after we've booked the registrar!

sarah - would be great to hear how your wedding goes.

sarahh112

Kuromei wrote: »

bubble and sarah - just a quick update, I've got a provisional booking for holiday inn too! going to confirm it next week after we've booked the registrar!

sarah - would be great to hear how your wedding goes.

We are getting married on Friday - arrrgggghhhh - its come round so quickly. Got to drop everything off to the hotel on Thursday afternoon.Really am impressed with them. They have been wonderful so far.

Will try and update this thread before we fly out on Sunday.

bubble96

we went to confirm last week. But we still havent paid our deposit as have to say, was so excited we were going there but after speaking to debbie this time i felt a little dissapointed. A lot of our conversations on prices and things had been forgotten, so where before she had agreed to 10 extra guests she said that she had now been told by big bosses she couldnt negotiate.

She did compromise on it as we agreed to order an extra course - but i felt under pressure to conform to 'normalities' - i didnt conform but it made me a little upset. Like she said for the extra course we should have a pudding, but we were going to have a starter and then cake is served once we go out to the bar. Oh and she said people do expect wine with the meal - which we never planned to offer - and when she said £10 corckage i was shocked! she also tried to put prices up - like extra guests £16 instead of £15 and extra course £5.25 instead of £5. Giving Extra guests a drink (as one is included for guests in the package) is costing £3.75ph, and then when i said but what about the people that wont have alchol, could we have apple juice - she said yes but is charging £10 a jug - which i thought was expensive - but felt i couldnt argue because she made us feel like she was already doing us a favour - but it felt like she was just trying to scrape back what she would give us in one place and add it to another. I asked about the fruit shoots and whether we could just provide jugs of squash for the kids - but she insisted that bottles were better because of spilages, but i am a nanny, and personal opinion is dont like fruit shoots - they are really strong and sugary, they are really small and last all of 5 mins and i dont feel they will spill them - went to a wedding the other week, and kids had glasses - including champagne glasses with apple juice for the toast - there were no spilages.

Also, what are people paying for kids - we are paying £12ph for all children aged 2+ - thats for 2 courses and one fruit shoot?

Still feel debbie is the best organiser we met and once costs are ironed out i will have confidence that the day will run smoothly, but would really like to know if anyone else has found similar to me. Also concerned about the part in the contract that says they will confirm prices 6mths before - worried that if we dont order lots of extras like they are trying to get us to do then we will end up having our prices of the stuff we have agreed to bumped up.

Sarah, hope you have a really lovely day on friday, please come back and tell us how it all went.