Wedding venue package haggling?

Gnomsie

How acceptable is it to try and bring down the price of a standard wedding venue package? I've been given £3000 for march 2015, however, with very little time to the wedding, I'm wondering if there is any chance we can lower it. This 3k includes a dJ for the evening, which I don't want.
Also, how much would be reasonable to bring it down too? I've never haggled before, or booked a wedding venue. I need serious help haha

krustylouise

You can always try, you've nothing to lose! If they say no you could try getting more for your money like asking them to provide something you may want. Obviously I wouldn't go for the "extra 20 guest rooms for free" tactic but I would probably ask for the more expensive choice of food or whatever.

They can only say no

Good luck

Gnomsie

I'm not even sure how much I want it for, we haven't any savings as yet, and will be working our butts off to start now and pay it off by the end of the year.
My little brother recently passed away from cancer, and my nanna has recently been diagnosed as terminal. I need her at my wedding, hence the sudden rush and lack of savings so far.
The venue is the main bit I think. Most expensive. Whatever I can get shaved off that I can put into other things.

krustylouise

I didn't have a budget in mind and thought I could work and pay it as I went along. Please believe me it's not as simple as that. You have to pay things at certain times whether you have the money or not. My dress, registrar and a big instalment for the venue was due at the same time. I didn't have this saved!

I would suggest if your Nan being there is most important, you cut your cloth to suit.

I'm really sorry to hear about your brother and also your Nan.

guardiangirl

Hi

Definitely set and work to a budget - it's so handy. I have a spreadsheet I use almost every day and it's brilliant.

Haggling - yes do it. It's definitely worth a try and they can only say no.

We haggled quite a bit. For example -we have exclusive use of the venue yet they wanted to charge us £5,500 for the marquee use in the evening! We got that down to £1,000. And where they wouldn't drop prices we got an upgrade instead - for example we upgraded the red wine in the package cost to a better one for the same price.

Bean83

We booked our venue in 2013 for a 2014 wedding (only a few months to go!), so I got them to agree to only charge me the 2013 price. This saved us about £300 in total.


This may work well for you as you are booking at short notice. They should be glad to get the booking, so may be more amenable to haggling!

Picky

I think it depends on what day of the week you plan to have your wedding. A midweek wedding will probably have more scope for price-haggling, whereas weekend dates are more popular, so there isn't as much room to budge on price. For my 2016 wedding I knew that the set package could not alter in price, so I tried for upgrades and got a free hog roast thrown in!

mazziem

It all depends on the venue but were getting married on a Sunday in feb and I got free ..... Ceremony room hire (£800), reception room (£1500) 2 x extra bedrooms, ice swan sculpture surf fruits, centrepeices and mirror plates.
It's a very sought after venue hence their prices but my bargaining took was I'd be having lots of room hire. So far iv brought them £5000 in room bookings so it's been worth their while to give me that extra stuff to book xx