100 People Wedding for only 5K ?

If you're willing to DIY this venue is stunning and closish to you. We booked it originally for a fete wedding but didn't have the help to make it work.

A modern and fully equipped barn, plus a garden. You'd need to do the ceremony in Rye.

Unless things have changed they have no tie ins with caterers etc so you can do it your way. £5000 should more than cover it.

Doh - here's the link to their FB page https://www.facebook.com/pages/St-Marys-Community-Hall-Udimore/153472404674996?sk=wall

Have you looked at midweek out of wedding season dates? I have a huge family and have had to just put aunties, uncles & close friends down for the day and cousins and other friends for the evening. Even though I'd probably rather some cousins rather than some of the aunties and uncles there for the day time, its the only way I can do it in budget and be fair.

Totally do-able, our wedding cost £8,000 for 100 guests, but that included our flights because we flew from NZ to the UK to get married, and a mini-moon in Italy with friends on the way home. If we didn't include those travel costs we'd have come in around the £5k mark.

Also, we hot married on a Saturday in peak season. Most people will tell you that is very costly and it's true you can get cheaper deals for week days and off season weddings.....work out your priorities and the things you won't compromise on, then find ways to economise on the rest.

For me I wasn't willing to compromise on my dress, on it being a church wedding or on the number of guests so they were fixed points.

I saved money on: Having a small bridal party - only one bridesmaid, one flower girl and one usher.

All men in the bridal party wore their own suits saving a fortune in tailoring/suit hire. The only cost for the men were tne matchungbties i had designed and hand printed on silk for them for the princely sum of £20 per tie.

We had a 3 course buffet for the wedding breakfast rather than a sit down meal

We hired an amateur tog. Many people will tell you this is a big mistake and I agree that there is a lot of skill that goes into bding a wedding tog, they definitely earn their money BUT my H hates having his photo taken and doesn't like having photos up in the house, xo we knew we'd be content with a simple record of the day. We hired a photography student, did our research and checked portfolios and got over 1500 photos of our full day that we were more than happy with for only £150.

I did my own make up, and my sister in law who is a hairdresser did my hair as a gift.

Finally our venue, we used a local golf clubhouse rather than a swanky hall or hotel, they charged us the princely sum of £75 for the full days hire.

Good Morning! I live in West Sussex too, and we too have a 6K budget so I'm hoping to help you out as much as I possibly can.

Unfortunately West Sussex seems to be one of the most expensive places to get married!

The most value for money hotel packages that are nearby are at either 'The Old Thorns' hotel in Liphook, Hampshire OR 'Winchester Spa and Hotel' again in Hampshire and I still don't quite know if they will hold all 100 people you want to invite.

In my honest opinion, like us we wanted 75 people, and up to 120 in the evening. With our budget there was only one was to do this.. a village hall.

We looked and looked and there were some right naff ones untill we found 'Bracklesham Barn' in Bracklesham Bay. The scenery is beautiful its a 2min walk from the beach for photos, and the venue itself is amazing and would be able to fit your 100 people. It's the only village hall that you can have your ceremony at as well, so you wouldn't have to tell your guests to move on after. And apart from the sports hall lines on the floor you could honestly mistake if for a vintage barn.

This cost us on a saturday with set up the day before and to have the ceremony there also £1000, an absolute bargain to be honest with you, but I think prices will inflate soon like everywhere as it becomes more popular.

We too are having a Hog Roast, to feed 75 with the Hog and tons of trimmings we got it for £1320. Obviously to save money you can have the wedding on a weekday or even a friday or sunday that will save a couple of hundred.

My hubby to be calls me a right bargain hunter, so if you would like to know any of our suppliers I am more than happy to recommend them to you!

Honestly for all 100 of your people to be fully fed, have a great time and laugh a village hall is best bet. Like you my partner had his heart on a hotel, but our budget just would not stretch and this way we can honestly say we will come out the other side debt free!

Just let me know if you want any other help with things I will add a couple of pics from our venue to give you an idea:

I got married in London, at private members club in Mayfair (University Women's Club), then got a routemaster to a pub in east London (Leadenhall Tavern) for dinner and dancing. The whole thing costed about 5k and the venues were great. It can be done!!

Hi MrsJD,

I've been a lurker in here for a couple of weeks but this is my first post so please bear with me! We had a similar issue, we're in Surrey but were looking in the Surrey/West Sussex area and everything does seem to be rather expensive!

Our numbers are similar to yours (95 in day and 150 for evening) and we also wanted a hotel as many of our guests would need to stay over. In the end we chose the Holiday Inn at Gatwick Worth in Turners Hill - they offer a package for 50 guests for £2500 and I think extra guests are £55 (includes ceremony room also, even though we're having that bit at the church). We only really looked around it because there was a wedding Fayre there (I must admit I thought it would be horrible!), but it was the nicest hotel we looked at (some of the others were a lot more expensive too). There are other hotels in the area which do similar deals (I think the Europa Hotel was even cheaper, and I actually preferred the layout of the room, but the hotel in general had bad reviews on trip advisor which put me off).

Our package was the same price any day of the week, at anytime of the year, but I imagine you could negotiate a bigger discount on 'off peak' times. We also have a large extended family (many of which we don't see often but felt we had to invite), and by having it on a Friday found that some of them didn't want to have to take a day off work, so worked out cheaper than if we had had it on a Saturday (sounds harsh, but if they were that bothered, they would've come!)

I'm not sure if these are within your budget, but when I was looking, I couldn't find many cheaper hotel options.

Good luck x

Have u thought about getting married later and just having buffet in the night ? That would cut down costs as u would only have to feed them once, you could have a cold meat buffet if wanted it more like a meal

We are having a late afternoon wedding going into an evening reception/BBQ, with no wedding breakfast, that has saved us money. We're getting married in a Hotel, which is the lesser known one in a chain of hotels, so it was cheaper than the others. To us it feels more intimate, we're having only 45 for the main ceremony, but going to 140 for the evening, so a bit larger than your party.

One piece of advice is negotiate with your suppliers, just because they state a price for their services, you can sometimes get discounts if you're prepared to ask for it! Also make a list of things you really want and are not prepared to compromise on, and then a list of things that you don't mind about. It'll help you decide where to spend your money.

We have 80 on our day list and an extra 40 in the evening. We have booked the venue (without ceremony) for an afternoon tea and bbq plus two.nights in the bridal suite and drinks package for around £3200. We took our budget to them, told them what our ideas were and they sorted it. Always worth asking what your budget will get you.