New to hitched - decisions to make

Either can be lovely. Congratulations!

With a reception in your home it's much more relaxed however consider who will set it up, clear away, sort food and or decoration. Will you have 100 people and one toilet. Are any of your friends and family the type to be the worst for wear drink wise in your home. What if it rains is the inside big enough.

a wedding at a venue will relieve you of most of those problems and probably give you a more relaxed day. That's not to say it's not all doable either way.

you can hire a caterer. Some friends of ours use a catering company to do a massive BBQ every bonfire party. You can have cleaners come in the day after. If your garden is big enough you could have a marquis.

I suggest have a look round at venues and what's available and then decide which type of wedding you would prefer.

where abouts in the country are you?

If you book the wedding on a weekday you should find most of the issues re venues being already booked and having minimum numbers disappear.

Consider register office then country pub receptions as well. Some pubs have permanent marquees and great gardens.

Another idea is to get married legally the day before at the registry office with maybe just direct family / bridal party and then have a blessing / reception the day after.

We did this and our list of potential venues suddenly grew! Not needing a lisence meant we could chose between LOADS more!

In my search, I found that although a lot of venues had packages which had a set number of guests as minimum, if you approached them more often than not, they are willing to either negotiate or work out a completely new package for you!

I agree with previous posters - if you have a wedding on a weekday, sometimes this can make your life a little easier. We're getting married on a Friday and it opened a lot more doors.

In regards to having your reception at home - do you have enough room for 100 people? & could you really be bothered to clean up after everyone?

I would be cleaning up as the night went on, and just ruin it for myself - worrying if anything was going to get spilt. So choosing a venue might alleviate any of this stress.

Thank you for all your replies and suggestions.

A Friday wedding would definitely be a possibility for us.

We would have room to host it in our garden but the more I think about it the more I am beginning to think it would be stressful.

I have contacted a couple of venues to see what they can do for us in terms of a smaller number of guests in the day and more in the evening but no one has come back to us yet.

I'm sure you will find somewhere especially if you have the wedding in the registry office so only need an un wedding licences venue for the reception or have a service in the venue and do the legal bit with two witnesses prior or after.

So many options.