My frugal wedding venue

by Donna Werbner on 26 May 2010  |  8 comments
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Donna Werbner is having a big fat frugal wedding. Here, she reveals how she managed to avoid getting ripped-off when it came to the wedding venue.

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This year, I got engaged and became a woman with a mission: not to get ripped off at my wedding.

Now, don’t get me wrong, this is not another money-saving tips blog about how to have a wedding on a small budget.

I don’t mind spending money on my wedding. I just want that money to be well spent.

In other words, I want to be able to invite everyone we care about, no matter how big the wedding is as a result. And I want all my guests to get drunk and have the time of their lives celebrating the fact that, well, we are having the time of our lives.

But most of all, I want to know that when I sit down to my wedding breakfast, I’m not getting ripped off – even though it may well be costing me thousands.

Quite simply, I want a big fat frugal wedding.

Here’s how I went about getting it:

How I found a cheap wedding venue

Before I got engaged, I had no idea that the biggest cost at any wedding is likely to be the venue. But then I discovered wedding venues literally charge room hire for just the room. By which they mean: the space you inhabit for a few hours. Food and wine are always extra, along with the cost of registering the marriage licence.

So how do you avoid the rip-offs?

After some helpful pointers from lovemoney.com readers, I realised the best thing to do would be look for a venue that isn’t primarily hired out for weddings, but is big enough to accommodate all my guests. Community halls and council-owned venues are a great option, for example, as you can usually bring in your own food and wine, thus potentially saving thousands.

Here are five of the best venues I found in London, all of which allow outside catering and don’t charge a corkage fee:

Some are very beautiful – for example, Islington Council charges just £150 an hour for this stunning hall in the heart of London that fits 150 people. Or for an extra £60 an hour, you can hire out this neoclassical country house in Highgate, built in 1666, and invite up to 90 people for a formal, sit-down reception.

The reason these two venues in particular are cheap (by London standards, at least) is that, when they’re not hosting weddings, one is a library, the other an arts and education centre. The same principle applies to all the other venues in my table.

Recent question on this topic

• Donna Werbner asks:

  I'm getting married and I would love some money-saving tips so I can have a cheap wedding but still invite lots of people.

  • 
    manzanilla answered "many congrats Donna! no sensible ideas - lots of people / unique / in London don't really seem to..."
  • 
    SoftwareBear answered "For me it would be treating friends and family as one ... no seperation ... and hence no special..."
  • Read more answers

The good news is, while my research was London-focused, it’s not just London community halls that allow you to cater for large numbers of people at a relatively small cost. You can check whether the local community halls near you charge similar prices by searching for ‘community halls’ or ‘halls for hire’ + ‘your town’ on google, locallife.co.uk, upmystreet.com, accessplace.com and discogenie.co.uk.

I’d also recommend asking your local council directly about local ‘halls for hire’.

A word of warning

Like budget airlines, the cheaper the venue, the more hidden charges you’ll find have to be added on. Some venues, for example, seem extremely cheap until you realise they charge separately for tables, chairs, a licensed bar, bar staff and even party lights.

Plus, you will usually have to provide your own wine and champagne glasses, crockery, cutlery and table linen. All these extras can easily add hundreds of pounds to your budget.

The other downside is that you will also have catering and waiting staff costs to pay – as well as the hassle of organising and coordinating everything beforehand. For these reasons, I decided to look at pubs and restaurants that cater for private functions as well.

Now, the key thing to bear in mind with these venues is that they make most of their profit on the alcohol they serve. In London, that translates into around £15 per bottle of (not very nice) wine.

Talk about a rip-off! But then, pubs and restaurants don’t tend to charge for the hire of the venue itself, and they provide staff and all the extras (such as tables, chairs and cutlery) at no extra cost. Plus, most pubs I found were only licensed to play music until 2am, while most community halls kick you out by midnight.

So which is the better option: a pub or a community hall?

For me, it all boiled down to the cost of the food - which will be the subject of my next post...

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