Decking out a marquee in dorset nr poole.....

lisasheehy

Well this might be a real long shot but thought I would put this out there for the wisdom of the mse brides to be!

I am getting married Aug next yr at holton lee in Dorset nr poole

http://www.holtonlee.co.uk/

It is a lovely place but there are so many details to pay for when you do everything yourself! We are paying £1450 for the hire of the field on site and the marquee and electricity but we need to carpet the marquee and rent chairs and tables...... this is proving to cost sooo much more than I thought! The company which the holton lee people recommend for all of this is

http://www.dorsetpartymarquees.co.uk/

and I am a bit shocked at the prices, £350 for flooring, £2 for a chair and about £7 for a table!!! We are having 150 guests so at my reckoning that works out as

chairs = £300
tables (19 if 8 are seated) = £133
flooring= £350
TOTAL = £783!!!!!

Any ideas on how to do this more cheaply will be very, very much appreciated! I have looked at buying stuff myself and it is quite a lot more :(

Idiophreak

For what it's worth, you seem to have got a very good deal so far - and the prices you've quoted for furnishings are rather less than I paid for the same stuff.

I was quite stunned by the prices people wanted to charge for hiring stuff, when really it's a case of taking it off a lorry one day and sticking it back on the next, but just seems to be the way it is.

Just to mention it's worth considering what other additional costs you may have to pay out...do you want a bar? Internal/external lighting (marquees can look pretty "white" without either lighting or something on the ceiling) Do you want a stage? dancefloor? PA system? Any outdoor furniture? Do you want any extra tables, for cakes, gifts etc? Is there somewhere for caterers to set up? Do you want any kind of carpeted approach to the marquee? Anything set up to guide people where to park? Even really small details we had added up a bit...Ribbons to wrap around some of the poles in the marquee and other decorations...Nice towels and loo rolls for the toilets...Torches to guide people back to the cars at night...

The only real suggestion I'd have for doing it more cheaply would be to question whether everyone actually has to be seated? I guess it depends on your catering, but we only had a handful of chairs and tables and had most people standing, which nobody seemed to mind...

Thriftygifty

I know EXACTLY how you feel!!! We are getting married spring next year and are having a marquee wedding but ours is half the size of yours.

As for chairs and tables, depends on the chairs that you want? I fell in love with the bamboo fancy looking ones but they worked out at nearly £4 a chair :eek::eek::eek:.

We've gone with white plasic chairs, we are collecting them from various places try your local recycling centre if you dont mind elbow grease cleaning them also freecycle they sometimes pop up on there but it depends on how fancy you are going and if you want them all matching. Failing that there will be 70 appearing on ebay next spring :rotfl:we are just going to get rid of them after, along with everything else we have collected we have 70 of everything! It takes alot of work but we found it cheaper just to buy everything and I mean EVERYTHING!

Are you dead set on having a marquee wedding? Thats what it comes down to, we went round in circles and even booked somewhere but it all boiled down to I wanted it at home.

Idiophreak

Thriftygifty wrote: »

As for chairs and tables, depends on the chairs that you want? I fell in love with the bamboo fancy looking ones but they worked out at nearly £4 a chair :eek::eek::eek:.

Just looked it up and our chairs were 13+Vat, and our tables 51+VAT...:eek::eek: Good job they were so pretty!

Thriftygifty

Just looked it up and our chairs were 13+Vat, and our tables 51+VAT...:eek::eek: Good job they were so pretty!

Was that each? And to hire :eek:! Still the price is justified if you loved them . We are sticking with white plastic as hopefully it will be sunny and they can be taken outside aswell we arent going to fancy though as it's only close family coming but it will still look pretty.

Idiophreak

Thriftygifty wrote: »

Was that each? And to hire :eek:! Still the price is justified if you loved them .

Yeah, each to hire.

They were quite special, though - all transparent and contained multicoloured LEDs that changed colour as the evening went on. Really visually impressive...but not cheap, in retrospect

Thriftygifty

oooo I know the ones that you had, yeah they are pretty and really differnt, I will say that there are some impressive marquees and equipment out there to hire. What were you tables like?

I thought you meant the bamboo ones where £13 + VAT each!

Idiophreak

Thriftygifty wrote: »

oooo I know the ones that you had, yeah they are pretty and really differnt, I will say that there are some impressive marquees and equipment out there to hire. What were you tables like?

I thought you meant the bamboo ones where £13 + VAT each!

Oh no, sorry..that's my fault

The tables were like the chairs - all transparent and lighty-uppy.

We did have a few normal ones for the old folks, but they were much cheaper

Thriftygifty

Oh I havent seen those tables, I bet it looked fantastic.

We managed to get LOADS of fairy lights when B&Q had their crazy pre christmas sale last year! Thanks to the grabbit board. It was fun it was like a manic jumble sale grabbing the lights lol but I do love fairy lights, we got about £250 worth of lights for £52 bargin!

lisasheehy

Thanks everyone for the incredible response! I suppose it is one of those things that you just don't realise until you get wed.... It is definitely a business to think about thats for sure. This is a bit random but does anyone reckon you could get away with just leaving the inside of the marquee as grass and making a diy dancefloor out of wood?! I am sounding like a right miser but £350 is sooo much for something as joyless as a bloody carpet.

johannalf88

I really wouldn't recommend it as all heels would sink into the grass...