Has anyone gone abroad to buy the wine e.t.c for their reception?

I don't think there is as much difference between the price of stocking up abroad and most supermarkets these days particularly if you keep an eye out for deals.

My sister did this & saved a fortune as her venue also didn't charge corkage. She bought proscecco, red & white wine. She bought so much is worked out extremely cheap per bottle. Unfortunately my venue charges about £17 per bottle corkage otherwise I'd do this too.

Thanks for your replies ?

I'll keep an eye out for deals here before we go away to compare, and try and find somewhere to store anything I buy so I dont keep 'sampling' everything ?

p.s Just read my post back & realised I may be over using smilies - sorry! Hope this isnt on the pet peeves thread.

You can get some really good deals on Tesco wines if that's any help? Think this is what we will do

You can get just as good deals here I think.

If you buy two cases of this for example,

http://www.marksandspencer.com/Marks-and-Spencer-Prosecco-Case/dp/B000PX6AH4?ie=UTF8&ref=sr_1_1&nodeId=525974031&sr=1-1&qid=1345495576&pf_rd_r=1EZYYM0BQGRSD0YNSATH&pf_rd_m=A2BO0OYVBKIQJM&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_i=525974031&pf_rd_p=215570647&pf_rd_s=related-items-3

You save 25%, making it £7.50 a bottle. Barg.

Majastic Calais http://www.majesticinfrance.co.uk/find/category-is-Champagne+and+Sparkling+Wine

We are going to save up our tesco clubcard vouchers to purchase our wine. so far we have £45 saved and we still got over a year to go adn plus they always have half price on there wine online

We got a great deal on tesco wine.com I think we ended up getting £8 bottles of wine for under £4/bottle and spent about £275 altogether on 72 bottles of wine. Keep an eye on the website for their deals, all gets delivered as poer normal home supermarket delivery.

Hello

We go top Brugge for weekends and stop at calais for wine for parties on the way back. Last time we went to Pidou, stocked up on more boxes of wine than bottle but did get sparkling for our engagement parties. The sparkling wine we got is called Pol remy - it is very cheap about 2 euros a bottle and tastes lovely much like presseco which is lighter than champagne. ( they were also selling belgium choc here - yummy!)

I was thinking of doing this, I think it could be a big saving! We only have £3.50 of Tesco clubcard vouchers at the moment

We looked into this but it worked out more expensive (and much more hassle) than just ordering from Tesco and Asda. We looked out for good deals and snapped them up when we saw them. We had our red wine in the cellar for about a year before the wedding. I did not drink ten bottles of it. No siree.

I suppose another factor is where you live and how much it'll cost you to get to France- from the south east is one thing, from Scotland probably not so much!!

I was planning to stock up on some spirits in Morrisons/Asda at Christmas as there's normally some offers on.

Our venue doesn't charge corkage (yay!) so I reckon it means our booze bill will be a lot more manageable than I'd originally thought.

As we're providing all the drinks during the day from soft drinks to alcoholic ones, we're going to.. I say 'we' but its actually my brother. He works for a removals firm and travels abroad (about 3 weeks at a time every month) and so they often bring alcohol back.

Personally, if you've not go any plans to go abroad then I don't think it'd be enough of a saving by the time you've put fuel and ferry prices ontop.

We are having a free bar which we are stocking ourselves and have decided that to hire a van, cost of diesel, ferry crossing and the time doing this (along will roping someone in to look after our dogs), just IS NOT worth it.

Bring on Costco I say - also MIL used to work in HR at a supermarket so is stocking up on champagne for us using her old staff discount.

Also I've just discovered a friends hubby (someone I work with), who has a market stall can get booze almost at cost, so ask around, you will surprised who knows who and who can find a deal for you. People are always happy to help and of course my mates hubby will be getting his cut from the deal and we get cheap booze - hopefully it won't make my guests blind ha ha.

I gues what I'm saying (in a very long winded way), is do your research, talk to people and more importantly sit down, work out what you need and what you will save, that way you know if it's worth taking the time and energy to do it.

x

Thank you for all the replies everyone, loads of suggestions so Im going to give it some thought and work outs what'll be best for us.

I dont think we could afford to provide the drink for the whole night but as we are only inviting close friends and family and they will have to travel quite far for the day Id like to treat them a bit.