help for a bride running out of options

Are you getting married somewhere official i.e. a church or register office?

In which case, have you tried searching for lovely holiday cottages etc? You might be able to hire one for the whole weekend and be completely free with who brings food and when!

Congratulations, and welcome ?. What a lovely gesture from your dad's employers!

A venue only using approved caterers is probably quite common. One we looked at would only use their own, and another charged £500 to bring in outsiders, making it no cheaper and not really worth it. But as you're getting the food as a present, maybe worth trying to negotiate something?

I can't help with location, different part of the country ☹️

Would you be open to a village hall wedding?

We found that the only venue that would let us bring our own caterers was the local town hall, everywhere else said no, try looking at church or village halls

I'm a Cheshire B2B too, and have given up looking for places that let you use your own caterers! Like others have said the only places I found were church halls which weren't big enough for our guest numbers

What about a marquee or tipi somewhere? Could that work?

Good luck!

Hi,

We are getting married at Haigh Hall in Wigan and they definitely do a self-catered option.

Or have you thought about putting up a Marquee somewhere?

xxx

Thank you for all your lovely and helpful comments.

Feeling alittle better then i did when i posted the comment. guess i just felt upset and disappointed!!

Going to start looking at venues again this week - and im gonna to look at villiage halls and the possibility of tipis

Jx

We chose a village hall for the reception. It's a well equipped modern building but not very weddingy so we are having a company in to fit a marquee lining to pretty it up. It's cheap.... £250 Fri to sun, can do what we want catering, bar and entertainment wise, and we will hold the keys for the whole weekend so we are free to come and go as we please. It's defo worth not ruling something like that out xx

Could you maybe ask the catering company for a list of venues they have catered at before? As other people have said, it may be easier to find somewhere that will let you do your own food if you don't need it to be licensed for weddings (ie have the ceremony somewhere else). Otherwise, some councils have their own approved premises which you can usually "dry hire" and provide your own catering, might be worth a check