Areas of negotiation with venue

alexlyne

Is it acceptable to ask for a reduction on...
- Teas & coffees after meal
- evening buffet
- drinks (alcoholic) packages
- Possibly other things that I haven't thought about

...due to the fact that not everyone is going to want them? I was thinking maybe 10-15% overall on each?

The buffet is a bit easier as we will generally know who is staying from day to evening, and who will be going home before the buffet. But anywhere else to save a few quid would be good.

Also as we are getting married on a Sunday, with a wedding the day before, I reckon it is likely they will reuse chair covers if the previous day has them too (just change the sash colour). In this case is it cheeky for the hotel to charge us full whack for them? We are going with the hotel ones as they are no more than 50p more than organising them ourselves and saves us a bit of hassle.

Thanks
Alex

(no replies before monday as I am about to go away. just wanted to get my thoughts down before I forget!)

jizadine

When you put the words wedding and venue together it makes me think of it as ransom money:mad:. When we got married in 2008 they moved on nothing - basically, it was a case of you want your wedding here then pay for it - if you don't someone else will. In the current climate however thing's may be slightly different

Good luck and if you don't ask you'll never know....

J

Horace

Ask if they will include teas/coffees in the menu cost (most places that I have come across tend to include these as standard).

If you have low numbers for the evening buffet ask if they will give you the buffet for free or reduced cost as you will be there all day.

What is your budget? Don't tell the venue your budget give them a figure 10% below and say that you can't go any higher.

bigmomma051204

Re:Buffet. Might be worth asking the venue what they recommend to cater for, numbers wise for the buffet - i think alot of venues recommend not catering for the full 100% of guests.... my venue has recommended that we only cater for 60% of the guests as they say otherwise there is always LOADS left over at end.. We are also serving our wedding cake with the evening buffet and not after the meal like lots of people do as this will bump up the amount at buffet. Also i am having a chocolate fountain all evening for 3 hours so i am even thinking about asking if we could just cater for 50% - way i look at it, if they recommend catering for 60% but that is WITHOUT cake and WITHOUT chocolate fountain, then surely those two things make up about 10% worth of food.... but we shall see LOL

clairedurham

Is it over budget? If so pick a figure and just ask them to do everything for that. Our venue was working out at about £4200 but we could only manage £3500 (well maybe 3750 but wasn't going to tell them that!) so I said that's all we had either take it or we'll have to go elsewhere. It helped that we're after a Jan wedding.

If you don't just drop the total figure then I would try and go for freebies. Deffo try and get tea/coffee for free I think for the amount you spend they can manage some hot drinks.

They might re-use the chair covers but they will have to press them before you use them. They will be creased to death after a day of being sat on. Some might also have yesterdays meal over them as well. Try getting money off by all means but I don't think they will just leave yesterdays one without any work.

Sammy85_2

I would speak to the couple getting married the day before about sharing flowers/table arrangements. Could save you a fortune. Even if your colours are different you could do background pedestal arrangements in white to keep it simple.

As for discounts with the venue - i would start by asking for an overall discount, and if they say no then haggle on individual bits and pieces.

sarah_elton

What time is your wedding breakfast, and do you have any evening-only guests?

The reason I ask is that we didn't bother with the buffet. We had 80 guests who were there from the start, so no extras in the evening. After a three course roast beef dinner at 5:30pm, and cake being put out to eat about 8:30, there was no need for the buffet. At weddings I've been to, people pick at it because it's there, not because they're really hungry.

Just mentioning it as so many people seem to do the buffet without much thought and I don't think it's always necessary, which can save a few hundred quid!

hunnycat

I asked the hotel for a discount on my welcome drink, they wanted £4 per drink and i replied saying thats the standard costs normal guests pay but as i was buying 70+ i am sure they could adjust it a little which they did and i got them for £3.50 each

alexlyne

Thanks for the replies gals/guys

Our wedding breakfast is at 4pm, the buffet is at 9. There is a condition that if the venue is used all day then a buffet must be provided - otherwise a per-head surcharge of £5 is made (I think there is a similar rule when it comes to evening guests).

Buffet is £12 per head, drinks package (arrival bucks fizz, glass of wine with meal, and sparky for toasts) is £11, tea/coffee is £2.75.

My own opinion of the buffet is that it will be there primarily for evening guests (of which I am unsure of numbers yet, but planning to invite around 60ish (+1s) - but expecting few of them to turn up as most of these are from my work and live 60+ miles away from the venus so are unlikely to come for a Sunday evening. As for the day guests, they will have finished their dinner by 6pm, so I agree with sarah_e that we will only be picking at 9pm.

The hotel have said that they will be happy with rough number of how many will want drinks package, and same with buffet, so I could under-estimate these a bit, and cover the shortfall if necessary (i.e. bottles of wine on the table) - the buffet will go unnoticed - or as suggested ask them for a flat 60% or something of the total number of guests.

As for budget, we don't really have an exact figure (it's more about getting good value for what we're paying and not paying for unnecessaries) - the day numbers are higher than expected so that's contributing to the cost, but as a rough approximate we're currently looking at a tops of £60 per day adult and £19 per child (based on per-head costs such as meals, seats,drinks) - and if we could get it down to an average of £45 then that would be great!

I'll be checking their drinks menu in the bar next time we're up, so will see if their drinks package is actually good value!

And good point about having the wedding cake with the buffet - we were planning on doing that, so that should really allow them to adjust numbers. I hope they agree with the points and raise little resistance to adjusting prices - it's not that we're being cheeky, but simply asking about it (which they hope people don't do).

All good fun

sarah_elton

Maybe if they won't budge on price you could get them to throw in some extra drinks for free?

We had two drinks per head for the reception drinks, and then up to half a bottle of wine per head with dinner (we authorised 36 bottles and they used 33). Our day turned out to be really hot so certainly with the reception drinks, a lot of people had sparkling wine first then when they came round again took an OJ.

What sort of ages/mix are your guests? Most of our guests who were elderly or had young children left about 9pm. If you've got some of these groups coming I would definitely give the venue a low number for the buffet. Cheeky rule re compulsory buffet; such a money spinner for them.

The only thing is if you've already booked the venue you may not be able to negotiate as much as if you hadn't booked it yet and they were trying to get the business...

alexlyne

We do have the problem that we have already booked... so if they stick their ground then we will have to give them our best guess at the numbers of each item (minus a bit more) rather than getting a fixed discount. I reckon the wedding planner is a bit soft so could probably talk her round OK. She was honest enough when I told her that if there were people not drinking then we wouldn't want to pay anyway, and she aggreed with this, and was happy to have an approximate number. I guess when they're taking 5K+ then a few quid here or there isn't a big deal for them.

We do have a few couples with babies who have said they would like to bring the nippers with them, so they won't be staying late, but no proper old people (old people = 40+, proper old people = 70+ ).