Any hidden or unusual costs?

I'm not tipping my suppliers but I'm getting a few bottles of fizz for my hairdresser and MUA for after the day.

Hidden/unexpected costs for us were the Orders Of Services (I forgot we'd even need them) and alterations (turned out to be waaaay more expensive than I was expecting).

Other than that my budget was pretty dead on - there wasn't much we hadn't thought of!

Really ridiculous venue charges, e.g.

£60 PER BOTTLE corkage fee, when I only wanted to supply one type of booze from my home country.

£250 for taxis home for the catering staff, if the venue finished after 11. BUT, the price included bar until 11:30, so you would have to pay that in every circumstance.

"Outmess" fee for the staff working your wedding - i.e. another full plate of your wedding food per staff member. I don't know why they deserve a 3 course wedding dinner, when a sandwich from Pret would suffice.

Charges for cake stand/cake cutting

Charges for bringing in unapproved suppliers, even if they are doing something like providing a sweet trolley.

Wedding venues try to rip you off at every opportunity possible.

We're having canapes at our ceremony venue but no other catering there. When I got quotes from 3 different companies initially they gave me a per head quite to budget with. Further down the line I discovered that this quote didn't include staff costs or equipment costs so the £8 per head I'd budgeted ended up being more like £18. They all did it do it must be pretty standard.

I'm worried now.... I haven't encountered anything like this, nor have I seen it in any of my contracts.

I did see something about corkage, but i wasn't planning on supplying booze myself anyway. Theres the usual extra people cost x amount per head thing but that's standard.

There were two worrying clauses in the venue contract though, anyone sneaking in booze will have it confiscated and then we would have to pay a corkage fee for it, and the B&G accept all liability for guests. So if one of the guests gets drunk and breaks a window, we're footing the bill apparently. Fortunately, I'm only having a small reception at the venue and a party elsewhere the following weekend (works out much cheaper haha)

Are Orders of Service essential? I don't think we are bothering with them!

I would mainly say remember to ask about the VAT. It has caught me out already a few times - its funny how they forget to mention VAT!

True!!

You don't need to tip suppliers in the UK, we really don't expect it.

I think the main hidden costs are VAT and corkage. You must ask about corkage before booking the venue as rates per bottle vary dramatically! Once you've booked you can't use it to negotiate.

VAT is also something you can avoid in certain cases by asking prior to booking a meeting with the supplier. Suppliers have to be VAT registered if they turn over £83,000+ a year.

I work for an accountant so checking for VAT wasn't something I thought of as hidden haha! We only had one supplier that quoted us without VAT in the first instance and I caught it.

We're having Orders Of Service because we're having hymns. I went to a wedding where they wrote the order of the day on a mirror. Normally I'd have rolled my eyes at that but it was actually very pretty.

Alterations by the way - we got stung with that. I had a list of how much each alteration would be but you're not paying attention to that while they pin you into your dress.

I meant to say as well - we didn't have any of the problems listed above. Best thing to do is read the contract first and ask the venue and suppliers if there's any extra costs not listed.

I seem to recall there's a thread on here somewhere where a couple fell foul of the guests sneaking in booze thing. Some idiot left an empty supermarket vodka bottle under the table or something and the venue stung them with a huge bill. Nightmare! There's another kind of silly one that i came up against - we are having a pork pie wedding cake and we wanted to serve it as late night munchies. Our venue is charging us . . . which at first sounded really unreasonable but then i realised that it's 3 hours after the meal, and they will have to keep at least a couple of members of staff on to serve and clear, plus put out all fresh cutlery and crockery and clear it away.

'Charges for bringing in unapproved suppliers, even if they are doing something like providing a sweet trolley'.

This is common. Especially in London.

Have you got wedding insurance? We have insurance (I think they call it public liability) so anything that gets broken should be covered. It might be called something else but breakagesd is included. I think my insurance was £30-35 and is definitely worth it over the cost of the wedding!

After starting this thread, I had a meeting with the barn (venue) and she has now said she wants a contract raising as the previous wedding party broke the toilet and it may cost us £200 extra!!!! That is a lot compared to the rent of the barn and completely out of the blue! She said we will get it back straight away if nothing is broken (apparently), but that is what insurance is for right?!

Yes I do have insurance, forgot about it though, yes there is public liability included, one less worry haha

The extra £200 sounds like a security deposit if you'll get it back after -you could ask the venue if they'll re-consider and give them the details of your insurance?

One "hidden cost" I forgot to mention -and trust me there may be some heated opinions on this one (I had to drag the groom away from 90% of the photographers we spoke to):

Photo copyrights.

Depending on your photographer, if you want sole copyright of your wedding phtotos you will have to pay for it seperately to the fee for your wedding photos.

So depending on how your phtographer handles this issue, you can be charged for re-printing or sharing your own wedding photos, plus they can use them as they please without your permission (i.e. sell them to a catalog or magazine)

This is different between photgraphers though, mine turns over all copyright, but theres a clause in the contract that states we are happy for him to use them in his advertising materials -which i personally am fine with. I get full use of the images i paid for, he gets to showcase his work -everybody is happy

Some keep copyright but state you can re-print or share as part of personal use, some charge you if you try to print with anyone but them -it vaires, so read your contracxt with the photographer carefully

Regarding copyright - yes, definitely check the contract, however please bear in mind that the copyright ALWAYS stays with the photographer according to the UK law. It is possible to buy the copyright off the photographer, but it usually costs a lot of money and most photographers won't do it. So don't worry if the contract says that the copyright stays with the photographer, but check what sort of licence you will get and ask to explain if you have any doubts. E.g. we give the couple licence to use print and share images as they please with the exception of selling them (which is unlikely anyway and we ask them to let us know if they are going to submit the photos to a blog or a wedding magazine. We are always happy for them to submit the photos if they wish, but we just want to know about it and make sure we are credited. On the other hand, some photographers will charge for prints etc. so it varies a lot.

Andy

I think you've had most of the suggestions. We didn't tip, but bought gifts for a few.

The only thing we had that wasn't expected - we always knew we wanted a cheese tower as well as our cake. Our venue couldn't supply this, so we arranged it ourselves. But then, I guess because the venue saw it as loss of money where we would have paid them for more evening food, they charged up something like £5+ per person for crackers, chutneys etc. We ended up paying as we really wanted the cheese, but it just wasn't a cost we were expecting, and it felt like a bit of a rip off!