When you have spoken to your venue about food...

shellsuit

have you bartered on the price?

Say for eg, a 3 course wedding breakfast is £40 a head.

Say you are inviting 30 people.

30 x £40 = £1200.

Would you, or have you been cheeky and said, "would you do that for £1K?" and if you have, did they let you??

Got a meeting about numbers and food for both the day and night, on Thursday evening and although we're happy with the prices per head etc, the MSE in me wants to either knock the price down a little, or have something thrown in for free

So what is your experience? Please don't say "we got £500 knocked off", I wanna know what it was meant to be, what you said and what they said!

rene2b

we got our room for free as long as we catered for 100 at the night
the room should of been £250 then i had to pay xx an head for the buffet so i should if i catered for 100 can i have the room for free and he just said ya u cheeky monkey haha

oh and becuase i thought i was getting table coths in the room where we r having our meal the manger as said we can now chose our meals on the day so everyone doesnt have to have the same
so we are very happy with that
i just said i wasnt happy and the mager just said call back in a few hors and we will sort something out
other half said they wouldnt as we already paid

shellsuit

So even though you knew it was £250 for the room so long as you catered for 100, you were catering for 100 anyway and tried it on for the room hire free?

Trouble is, our room hire is free anyway lol!

We were thinking of getting the total as for example, £2300, then asking them to knock it down to £2K, or if they won't, having them throw in a free reception drink per person, or 2 free rooms in the hotel for the night ~ reckon something like that would work?

rene2b

ya we knew it was £250 but i just said ill pay for 100 can i have the room free and he just said go on then haha
at the end of the day they want your bisiness
have you paid for anything yet?
id go and get the bottom line price then come away and think what you want for the money

i just wise i asked for chair covers for free i bet they would of gave them to me for free but oh well

we also get our over night stay free if we book 4 rooms which we have as gifts to my mum,bestman,

ask for chair covers,welcome drinks,toast master,or like you say a free night stay
good luck

shellsuit

rene2b wrote: »

ya we knew it was £250 but i just said ill pay for 100 can i have the room free and he just said go on then haha
at the end of the day they want your bisiness
have you paid for anything yet?
id go and get the bottom line price then come away and think what you want for the money

i just wise i asked for chair covers for free i bet they would of gave them to me for free but oh well

we also get our over night stay free if we book 4 rooms which we have as gifts to my mum,bestman,

ask for chair covers,welcome drinks,toast master,or like you say a free night stay
good luck

We already get a free quite to stay in for the night, just thought if they weren't willing to knock any money off, they could have given us a couple of rooms free for the parents to stay in.

Or 1 welcome drink each would be good, they are £4 each (!!), so with us having 40 in the day, that would be £160 saved which would go towards paying off either our car or photographer, plus £160 isn't a lot towards a venue is it.

We've only paid £250 deposit upto now, the meeting on Thursday is to sort out numbers and food, then once that's sorted we have 7 days to pay 40% of the approx balance, which is fine as we have that now anyway.

It's just with hearing about everyone else haggling, we thought we'd try our luck too!

Horace

Go for it shell.. even if you get a fiver knocked off per head that will be something. If you don't ask then you don't get.

shellsuit

Horace wrote: »

Go for it shell.. even if you get a fiver knocked off per head that will be something. If you don't ask then you don't get.

Wish me luck!

We've got 40 in the day and 90 to be invited in the evening, so they are going to make a few bucks behind the bar!

Horace

Good luck Shell.

See if they will give you a free taster meal too so that you can at least taste what you have on the menu beforehand.

Smile sweetly and look as though butter wouldnt melt in your mouth and you are sure to blag your discount.:D

shellsuit

Horace wrote: »

Good luck Shell.

See if they will give you a free taster meal too so that you can at least taste what you have on the menu beforehand.

Smile sweetly and look as though butter wouldnt melt in your mouth and you are sure to blag your discount.:D

Good idea, thanks!

See, they have a wedding breakfast menu, but that is for a minimum of 60 and we're only having 40, so we'll have to see if they will change that to the lower number ~ I can't see why not!

The other alternative is a 'celebration' menu, which is a 3 course menu, with a welcome drink and balloons etc, but the options for the food on that is crap.

I'll see what they can do for us with those first, then see how we go with getting some money knocked off.

Quite looking forward to see what we can get now lol!

hayleythedaisy

Shamelessy copied from a different thread...
I worked out exactly what everything would cost, totalled it then deducted 17% rounded that to the nearest £100 and told them that was my budget, they came back at a figure that was about a 14% discount excluding wine, I rounded that up to the nearest 100 and said we'll supply the wine if you do everthing else for that price.
(Chose 17% cos they give 10% late availability within 6 months and 5% for a friday plus 2% for a bit more haggling room!)
I also pointed out that they would sell their rooms, and make far more on the bar than they would any other friday night, and that at this much notice they were unlikely to resell the date.
HTH

shellsuit

hayleythedaisy wrote: »

Shamelessy copied from a different thread...
I worked out exactly what everything would cost, totalled it then deducted 17% rounded that to the nearest £100 and told them that was my budget, they came back at a figure that was about a 14% discount excluding wine, I rounded that up to the nearest 100 and said we'll supply the wine if you do everthing else for that price.
(Chose 17% cos they give 10% late availability within 6 months and 5% for a friday plus 2% for a bit more haggling room!)
I also pointed out that they would sell their rooms, and make far more on the bar than they would any other friday night, and that at this much notice they were unlikely to resell the date.
HTH

I'm not too hot on Maths, but I'll give that a go and see what figures we end up with, thanks!