Marquee Weddings

marshmallowbliss

Hi All !
I'm hoping to get married in March 2013. We are thinking of having a marquee wedding. We are getting married in Ireland because thats where we are from.
Has anyone had/having a marquee wedding? Are they much more expensive than a hotel wedding ?
Is there a lot of organising?
I have the perfect location for the reception
xx

emz118

We looked at a marquee and found that it was going to cost a lot more than we thought, mainly because of the "extras"
You need the marquee, then the lighting, flooring, tables, chairs, linen, crockery, glassware, cutlery, and depending on location toilets as well.
Booking our village hall (still hiring crockery/cutlery/glassware) was approximately 1/4 of the cost.
I didn't spend a long time looking around though, so you may get it cheaper, and of course Ireland could be completely different!
xXx

johannalf88

We are having a marquee, but I think it depends on what you include as to whether it's more expensive. Our marquee is under£2000 and that includes everything, including luxury toilets, lights, etc. everything. If we had gone to a village hall we could have got it cheaper, but we wanted it in FPiL garden. In terms of saving money there is no corkage fee, so we are supplying all drink. We can also have the caterers etc that we want, don't have to stick to the three course meal, or price per person like hotels. Also numbers are not as important, can easily make venue bigger or smaller.
I don't think it is the cheapest, but for us a marquee was better value than a hotel. Marquee £2000, drink (enough for 70 people inc sparkling, bottle wine, 2 beer, bucks fizz, and non-alcoholic) £700, (should be under budget on this), wedding breakfast £750, evening meal £450. Total 3,850. Which I think is pretty good value for exactly what we want.

marshmallowbliss

johannalf88 wrote: »

We are having a marquee, but I think it depends on what you include as to whether it's more expensive. Our marquee is under£2000 and that includes everything, including luxury toilets, lights, etc.

That is fantastic.
What company are you using ?? If i could get it that cheap it would be fantastic.

johannalf88

It's a company that covers south west England- sorry! We have got 25% discount for out of season hire though. So worth considering and asking!

Boo81_2

Hi, I'm also Irish and also getting married in March 2013!

Initially we were looking into getting married in Ireland (we live in London) as we thought it might be cheaper but we've changed our minds now and have decided on London. I found a really fantastic venue in cork and was looking into hiring a marquee. I got one quote of €2,500 which was for a 30ftx40ft marquee with flooring,lighting,linings, generator. Not included was luxury loos,catering marquees,carpet of choice,tables,chairs,ware, linen,cutlery,etc. PM me if you want this guy's contact details.

I also contacted LPM Bohemia who sent me through some details but not a quote.

If you want something a bit out of the ordinary check out a company called Magnakata. They have amazing Tipis which looks absolutely stunning. I got a quote from them which was ok(ish!) but it was the delivery fee which made it way too expensive. They are based in County Down so if you are close to there the delivery shouldn't be too bad.

As regards the work involved in a marquee wedding, whether its more organising or not will depend on whether someone else takes control of the the set up of tables and chairs, decoration, etc. I was a bridesmaid for a friend who had a marquee wedding in her parent's garden in Ireland during the summer. It was really fantastic but a lot of work. The marquee people set up the tent and put the tables in the marquee folded, and the chairs stacked. We had to set up all the tables and chairs, put on table clothes, do all the other decoration. So yes, quite a bit of work!

Idiophreak

I had a marquee wedding and found it to be significantly more expensive than doing a "normal" hotel do. The price johannalf88 mentions is *extremely* low and will vary depending on requirements. We wanted quite a large marquee (for 130 people all day with space for stage, dancefloor etc) in a nice style, with hard flooring etc. By the time toilets, generator, catering tent, dancefloor, lighting, furniture etc were all included it was £5k odd. We were lucky that we got the land for free from family, otherwise that would have been another 700. Then we had to add catering on top which was a significant cost as you had to pay for all the staff on a day-rate, too.

So it depends on what you want. If you just want a marquee in the garden and are going to use the toilets, kitchen etc in the house, it's probably a cheaper option - but for a marquee in the middle of nowhere, with private catering etc - it's really quite expensive.

In the end we could easily have done the reception part of our wedding for half the cost if we'd gone to a hotel for a normal sit down 3 course meal and evening finger buffet - but that just wasn't what we wanted. Our wedding didn't come cheap, but it was really perfect for us.

sugarwalsh

I used to work in catering and did a lot of marquee weddings. They generally work out more expensive than horelt weddings. We looked into it for our weddings, but it worked out cheaper and a whole lot less hassle to go to a hotel. Initially we hated the idea of a hotel, then we found a special one and I now love the idea of not having to worry about crockery hire, cutlery hire, finding caterers etc.

That said, I have worked on some amazing marquee weddings and my friend had a beautiful one in a Papakata marquee. For the catering they hired a friend who was a chef, hired staff from the local whetherspoons (Where the groom used to work!) and used a hog roast as the meat for the meal. So the chef supplied starters, salads and desserts. It was just fantastic. For the evening buffet they had a big cake made from cheese and wedding cake (Supplied by yours truly). The drinks were £1.50 each after the meal and the brides uncle supplied some Polish vodka for the tables too. The music was played from an ipod via a pa system. We partied the night away without worrying about disturbing anyone as the neighbors had been invited to join in! A note to the wise though, it did almost kill the Grooms parents (It was held in their back garden) as they strived to make their garden/house perfect. Oh, and they did find one of our friends asleep on their antique sofa...

Key points to remember are there is a LOT morework organising a marquee wedding but it can offer a lot more freedom.

Megan