Finding a budget venue in Midlands

Hi I have been a wedding photographer in Leicestershire for many years and shot 100s of weddings in the area and so have a good view of some venues or ideas that may work for you. If you would like to send me an email I can give you some pointers.

Have you tried the Belmont in Leicester?

That's s where I'm marrying. Decent prices and lovely people there

I’m a midlands bride too! I defiently think 8k is an achievable budget if you dont want too many added extras. Our original budget was £8500 but we’re going to end up going over that by around £1000 I reckon.

We spent around £3600 for our venue including exclusive use, canapés for up to 50, 3 course meal followed by petit fours and tea/coffee, an evening buffet for 100 people, accommodation for 10 people (5 rooms at £150 each for the night), Dj, sweet buffet, corkage for 15 bottles of wine (for the wedding breakfast) and prosecco corkage (for toasting) plus a few other bits too. If you work on that costing, that would leave you with around £4400 for everything else.

Like I said, our total will be around £9400 in the end, but if you take fireworks, photo booth and 3 rooms at the venue out of that, our total spend will total around 7.7k. It just depends on what your non-negotiables are.

I’m more than happy to give you our cost break down for everything we’ve bought. Send me a message if you’re interested x

Can I ask which venue this is? I am also looking around the Midlands

Our reception is at Brooksby Hall in Melton Mowbray. They have an offer on for £4k all in at the moment for remaining 2018 dates.

I can't advise on the area, but with the other cost-cutting things...

Try to pick a place where you can get your own suppliers in and just pay for basic venue hire - that way if you have any catering friends, they can maybe give you mates rates. Or you could do the cream tea and have a go at making it yourselves! We're planning on doing this instead of canapes!

Also, I know you said you only want a basic room, but if you pick a room that is actually quite jazzy (cute signs, fireplaces, paintings, whatever), you don't need to spend so much on flowers or decorations. One of the venues we are looking at is a barn with loads of gorgeous exposed wood, tools on the wall and sheepskin throws - if we added much more than a few candles, it would seem too cluttered!

Hope this helps, good luck finding your dream venue X