Can u tell me ur corkage charge please.

Ours was 15 pounds per bottle so we are not supplying our own!

Wow that is steep.

Good ploy to make sure u buy theirs or they get a lot of money for nothing!

x

My thoughts exactly ?

Ours is £7 for wine and £8 for champagne.

We are supplying our own. We won't save much money on the wine but it does mean we can have the wine of our choice rather than the bog standard house wine at the venue. I'm a red wine fiend though.

We will probably save some money on the champagne side if we manage to get good offers.

"Corkage: £10.50 for Wine, £11.50 for Sparkling Wine and £16.50 for Champagne. Please note corkage is only allowed with the Wedding Breakfast"

As we were negotiating a 'non alcoholic' package, we suggested Shloer for toasts, and they are unable to source it but "graciously" waived their normal £4 corkage for non alcoholic drinks if we supplied it!

Given that they're getting almost £4000 out of us for the wedding I suppose we should be grateful...

It was a while ago i was venue searching but if i remember correctly £8 seemed about average. More for sparkly. If food was done by the caterer rather than the venue it seemed to be a bit less - nearer a fiver.

I'm not too sure what would work out best if you are only doing a few bottles. If you were having loads then a booze run to france might make it worthwhile. But if it is just a few bottles there is prob not much in it in getting a bottle of similar quality = corkage and the price they are charging.

Is this for all venues AJ? I wasn't aware.

We didn't have to pay any corkage charge which we were most grateful for!

If you aren't too fussed about the quality of the wine, look at it this way:

If you pay for their wine, you pay £14 a bottle.

If you want to get it cheaper, then you pay the corkage and have a £6 budget to source your own wine. If you're only going to have it for the toasts, would you prefer sparkling wine? I don't know much about sparkling wine but someone here might be able to tell you if you can get alright sparkling wine at that price. If you don't want sparkling wine, then yes, you can probably get wine for £6 a bottle or under. It won't be the best obviously but if you manage to get a good deal on a case somewhere it might be perfectly adequate!

Ours is £8 I think, but they sourced what we wanted for drinks for a reasonable price anyhow.

I don't know - I just copied that from the wedding pack from our venue, that's their restriction but how common it is I don't know.

Ok thanks

£6.50 which I am pleased about.

Most places only allow it with the wedding breakfast.

Ours is GBP6. I can recommend Blossom Hill Sparkling Zinfandel for toasting with. Its a pale Italian Rose available for about GBP8 a bottle. Supermarkets were doing it at half price around Xmas and valentines. Give it a whirl.

£6 wine and £8 fizzy I think. Was a no brainer for us to pick our own and pay corkage as we know what we like for wine, and my parents often buy wine in France.

We got our wine direct from a vineyard in France that my parents have bought from in the past, and it cost approx 5 Euros for the region's fizzy wine (not Champagne, but pretty well identical method) and approx 3.20 for bottles of white and red which were single grape single vintage rather than the AOC regional blend as we preferred them (chardonnay and pinot noir in the end).

For potential booze cruisers - don't bother with Cite Europe - Tesco Calais is no more, and Carrefour had only French wines when we passed through a couple of weeks ago. I assume the various wine warehouses still exist, but wouldn't know where they are

No idea how much ours is sorry- but for those buying their own wine- waitrose is doing 25% off 6 bottles or more on all their wines if thats of any help to you ?

Tried this yesterday and thought it was vile...sorry...but I definitely think if you want to save money a sparkling wine, cava or asti is the way to go!

Ours was £10 for Red or White and £15 for sparkling.

A bit of a 'dilemma' for us, as i don't drink wine much at all, but i did try and loved a wine at a restaurant once, and one we have found very similar to in Marks & Spencers. Our venue dont do the restaurant one i liked so we did consider buying/using our own, till we heard corkage (we actually bought 6 bottles) the wine and food manager is looking to see if he can source the one i like - but as i said i drink it very very occasionally and usually don't even finish a glass, i feel its a bit of a palaver to ensure i like the wine we have seeing as i am unlikely to drink much of it, H2b disagrees n says even if it is a mouthful it should be one i enjoy - he likes wine so he will drink anything lol

Sorry but I agree, not good at all I would recommed Prosecco as a cheap alternative to champagne.

Our corkage charge was £10 per head but I think it went up to £15 after we booked, worked out well for us as we were there for 3 days and was only 17 of us so we saved loads

If visiting France, look into the French vins moussants/cremants, which are like cava/prosecco/champagne but not actually from the Champagne region. Taste first obviously, but they can be as good as Champagnes (or better...) Bourgogne definitely has some, as does the Loire Valley. Similar pricing to Cava / Prosecco as well.

Admittedly they are more difficult to get in the UK, but V easy in France.

Ours is ridic!!

£20 for champers and £15 for sparkling wine and like AJ's venue we're only allowed to bring our own bottles for use during the wedding breakfast!

Slightly OT our NON alcoholic drinks package is £15 for 2 glasses of fresh orange and 2 glasses of a fruit cocktail (J20 standard) - how does this sound to anyone else??

Gem x

Our venue has it's own bar run by an outside company and we have to use a caterer from the venues list. We are having the bar opened after the wedding breakfast and have opted to provide our own wine and beer for the meal. Both our venue and caterer said they would not charge corkage even though they will searve the drink and provide the glasses for us.

This sounds really similar to my venue. No corkage for wine and sparkly with the wedding breakfast, so we've bought our own which the waiting staff will serve. Think we're quite lucky with this x

ETA: It could actually be the same venue, as I'm in Kent too!

Ours is £5 on wine and champagne

Sorry to hijak but can I ask - Randomsabreur - which vineyard is it that you buy from? I am planning on making my summer holiday this year to be a wine buying trip also. I would be so grateful if you could reccomend somewhere or point me in the right direction!

About average really, when you think its £3.50 a glass essentially.

We're paying £3.50 per glass for a fruit punch as a welcome drink after the ceremony, then £5.50 per jug of juice on the tables, and jugs of iced water which I assume is free (although I wouldn't put it past them... any way to make money).

They are 'allowing' us to provide our own Shloer for a sparkly toast drink as they are unable to source it from their supplier - we have now got 48 bottles which will do 120 people quite easily we think. Although our 'wedding breakfast' is, in itself, purely a meal for closest friends and family, and the speeches are carried over to the earlier starting "evening celebrations" for everyone to endure enjoy.

Make sure your orange really is fresh orange and not cartons of Tesco Value though You'd expect at least a Tropicana kinda thing for those prices.

You'd have thought that, in these days of awareness of drink driving, that they'd be less inclined to over inflate the prices, particularly when you think that the average alcoholic package of 4 glasses is enough to put anyone over the driving limit, even if they drank water the rest of the day.

Http://www.vin-valencay-leclair.com/

is where we went. They were really helpful about buying for a year in advance and which wines would be the right age then.

But if you know a wine region you like, you should be able to tour around a few and pick whatever you like best, which is what we'd've done if we hadn't already sampled some of their wares at my parents house on various occasions.

The impression I get is that a lot of people only sell direct and at markets rather than through shops, so once you've picked a region, judge on taste rather than being a known name in the uk.

For holiday purposes, if you're interested in visiting various chateaux, the Loire valley and the area around Tours are both good wine regions with other things to do. Bordeaux is another obvious option (probably a little pricier, although not necessarily crippling).