Postponed wedding = a fresh start

Sorry it was a difficult decision, but yes! a fresh start

I'm a huge fan of village hall weddings, because I had one, because I like inexpensive and informal and because I could have everything just the way I wanted it.

How many people will there be? day? evening?

What food are you hoping for?

Will you have bar where people pay for drinks? (you can get these at no expense to yourself if you have enough guests)

Personally I don't think you need cars if you're on a budget

Will you have a DJ? Something else?

There are loads of lovely shoes that don't cost the earth.

Lots of questions but the more you know you want the more the Hitchers can help you ?

Thanks for your reply. We have about 70 day guests and 100 evening. We would like a hog roast as the meal with a dessert and then a buffet in the evening. We would like to provide guests with a drink on arrival and something with the meal, but have a bar for the rest and the evening so guests buy their own.

We have found a pub that does weddings and another venue, and both we could marry at and then have the evening do there too. If we we to need to go to another venue my friend has a Rover 75 and could chauffeur us

We had 70 and then 100 also. And hog roast, cheeses and ice cream van

Do you like the venues? What is the cost? Both of the venues can serve and sell the drinks you want? Do you want/would you be allowed to provide your own evening buffet? Personally there's no way on earth I'd have found time to do my own food, but that's because I was working and we had houseguests etc. If family chipped in with helping it could work out?

Have you got prices for a hog roast? Ours was amazing, really surprised us, and was only £675 with salads etc and there were leftovers used again in the evening

Sorry you had to postpone, that must have been a really difficult decision. But fresh starts are nice and you seem to be really positive about it so I am glad for you!!

I know a few venues where I'm getting married (Cheshire) do afternoon tea style weddings, where you get married at lunchtime and have afternoon tea rather than a wedding breakfast. You could do something like that! Just get gazillions of finger sandwiches and then pastries and cakes and you'd be sorted This would work really well with a village hall I think, hope you manage to find something

Where are you based? We cut back on the day by only having 50 people and have worked the meal, toast drink, arrival drink and drink with the meal out to be £35 per head and the caterer has great reviews. We wanted a hog roast but are having 150 people ish to the evening and it was£7.95 /head so instead we are having bacon buttys sausage buttys and cones of chips - this was even cheaper than an ordinary buffet because they dont have to provide such a large wuantity just for variety. It isn't something we put too much thought into we went with it purely because of the price but actually it works out great, food will circulate from 8-10:30 without being too obvious so the disco wont have to stop whilst people go for food which i really like the sound of! Ebay for favours is always good and go to wedding fairs to get discounts!

i really like two venues that are offering good deals on late availability, Friday / Sunday and midweek options. They are nearby and in keeping with what we originally had in mind. One is a pub on the edge of the area we live in. We can marry there and if we do this on any day other than a Saturday we get the following free:

Bridal suite

Room hire

Desserts

Bucks fizz

plus if we have a weekday wedding we get an additional 20% off the food bill.

i've worked out that based on us having 70 day guests and 100 evening it would cost about £4000 which includes the civil ceremony and registrar fees, hire of the rooms, there course meal, drinks, evening buffet, DJ and bridal suite. Is that good? I've based that on everyone having two glasses of wine each plus a glass of fizz. We could look at our day guest numbers again as you've suggested. There are a few friends who I'd like there but I don't really know their partners so I did think I could ask the partners to the evening and not the day, or is that a bit off???

We are in Cannock Staffordshire and would like something fairly local.

These are the two venues we are viewing on Saturday:

http://www.thebarnshotel.co.uk/weddings/

http://www.hawkesyardestate.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/HawkesyardEstate-Wedding-Brochure-low-res.pdf

I do think that's reasonable. Trying to think what we paid. Hall and celebrant £1,000, hog roast and cheese tower £900, ice cream van £150. Drinks must have been £250 but had loads left. DJ £140. We didn't pay for the bar. Room decoration, set up, hire, bunting, coordinator £1,000. Then fish & chips for 110 was about 700 with mushy peas and curry sauce.

Cakes in the evening - we had a cake table and about 8 different desserts from family, plus wedding cake and cupcakes all made by family/us.

So there's not much in it price-wise except you're getting a 'venue' which might be nicer to deal with (instead of loads of different suppliers) and might look and feel more wedding-y.

Some folk don't like to miss out on plus-ones (we offered them to everyone) but if your guests would know someone and would understand numbers are tight they can either graciously accept or just come to the evening.

Can you get a Friday out of school hols? Are there many children invited? Because if not just do a Friday and the kids can have a day off. No one would mind just for one day, I reckon...

I thought it seemed pretty good too. Like you say at least that way it's all sorted, I think I might stress to much if I'm organising caterers etc too. Tis way we book and they sort it. I'm looking at a Thursday because we would get an extra 20% off the food, which is quite a good saving. I work at a college, so even though I'm not term time they don't like you to have time off during the term, plus a lot of my Friends I'm inviting work their too, and also wouldn't be able to get the time off.

The other venue we are looking at a rme offering a similar deal, plus they have availability on the Thursday before the Easter bank holiday weekend, which I think we work well for us as it means we don't need to use up as may days on our annual leave (OHs only gets a limited number of days a year) plus it would feel more like a Friday with it being a bank holiday the next day.

Just hope the viewings go well now!

Easter Thursday would be a top choice!!!

Good luck with the viewings ?

The ramada in Cannock do really good package deals.

WE DID THIS - we get married in the easter hols on a wednesday! The people that wan't to be there will hun! saved us a lot! x

Isn't Wednesday the traditional day the marry anyway?

I actually quite like the idea of midweek and like you say those who want to be the will be. They will have plenty of notice to book the time off after all.

We are off to view the two venues today. The great thing about our situation is we get to do this part again (great for me, maybe not so much in OHs eyes lol!)

Sorry you had to postpone, sounds like you'll have a great day though with your new plans and it'll work out a lot better for you both
Good luck with the viewings let us know how you get on

To save money could you get married at, say, 3pm. You could then just provide a drink after the ceremony with a meal (hog roast) starting at 6. Meal and speeches if you are having them probably wouldn't finish tilll 8-8.30 so you wouldn't need a buffet or just put on some cheese, biscuits and pickly things. Just invite everyone instead of having the day and evening.

Ok have been to visit both venues and like both! Pros and Cons for both and quite a big price difference! I think I'm going to start anew thread to go through both and ask for help!