Venues - Just out of interest

I have to be honest...i want to tell you it was because of the lovely things that normal brides to be usually have in mind...

but for us it was because it was cheap as they did a package which included everything. we went...looked round..liked it...not loved it but liked...and booked. it made sense to have it in the city centre in a hotel because of people traveling & the price was good. we are having pictures at the castle (that bit i do LOVE) but for us over all it was the rice & the package.

x

My reception venue was an old cathedral in the town where my parents live (and where I grew up). Walked past it many a time and never knew you could have a wedding reception there. My mum and I walked past it just after I got engaged and we popped in on the off-chance and fell in love with it!

My ceremony venue was the register office my parents got married at. It also happened to be 'ours', as in the town hall for the council where we were living. My H and I went to visit it and loved it.

For us I had to get married in the church where I was christened as that was what I always wanted.

I then wanted a venue that was close to the church and that had places for our guest to stay. We also wanted a relatively small venue as we have both got tiny families so knew that going somewhere with minimum guest numbers would be an issue. Once we had those criteria we only had one venue that fitted the bill.

x

Neither of us were bothered about a church wedding, so we started looking at hotels in the area. I had always fancied something different, like a barn or a cave or something like that, but OH wanted a nice normal hotel wedding venue.

When we found our venue, we fell in love with it straight away. I was harassing OH all the way home to turn around so we could go and pay the deposit there and then (I am quite impatient when I get an idea in my head!) It is still the hotel wedding that OH wanted, but the ceremony room is in an old barn, with stone walls, wooden beams and candles. So it has the edge to it that I wanted. It's beautiful.

TBH I may have picked my venue before I even got engaged (but only about a month before, after he'd taken me shopping in hatton garden to look at rings). I made a polyvore set around a wedding at Hever Castle back in early december, and didn't get engaged until christmas!

I'm an art historian (wow, that sounds poncy), and one of the great things about getting married here versus back home in Canada is the amount of history that's just sitting out on the coutryside whereever you look! So I searched for historical properties, castles, etc, in Kent/Surrey and compared their websites and brochures, then visited 3 and picked based on that.

I wanted something as old as the period I studied; which was late medieval, and Hever Castle is perfect (even though the Astor Wing is practically modern!).

I'm not religious and would have felt hypocritical having a church wedding when I don't believe it so we wanted somewhere we could have the ceremony and reception in the same place. We've been to a huge amount of weddings in the past 2-3 years (about 12) and we really enjoyed the morning after breakfast at the ones where everyone stays at the hotel where the wedding reception takes place.

That really narrowed things down and in the end we went for a hotel near my parents that has fantastic views over the golf course!

Quite a cynical decision really... Looked around the area within about 25 miles of where we live, plus close to where our parents live. As it was going to be a church wedding (originally more for OH's benefit than mine) we needed somewhere we either had an existing connection to, or which was close enought that could "manufacture" a connection by attending the church regularly. Church needed to be big enough for the planned number and ideally have an organ. Reception venue had to be big enough and not ridiculously expensive, which wiped out most of the hotels in our area that were big enough. Enough accommodation had to be close by that people would not be needing a 10+ mile taxi drive afterwards and we didn't want a complicated journey between church and reception. Plus given we're in a rural area and most of our guests are "townies" we didn't really want to traumatise them too much with our narrow lanes with grass in the middle, 10 foot high banks and passing places that involve more or less driving into a hedge.

Came down to a heart vs head decision in the end, between a small country house which was lovely, but borderline on budget and the church was marginal on size (and probably a bit of a pain to sort the connection with as services only once a month). Major issue was that there was nowhere for people who wouldn't be staying in the house to stay without scattering people for miles around. Plus the evening party (necessary due to proximity to OH's work) would have been really expensive as there was substantial per head charge for people over the house's accommodation capacity.

Venue we chose was the Victorian town hall in a small market town, which is adjacent to the stunning 14th century parish church. Going regularly for the 18 months we have been engaged hasn't been a chore at all. Only slight flaw with the church is its size - about 500 could squeeze in, so 100ish might look a little sparse. Town has hotels and B&Bs and being in a tourist area, there are also a good few campsites and self catering cottages around for those not wanting a hotel. So worked out pretty well in the end, even though it was by process of elimination. Only properly went to see a that venue (looked around the country house when a friend was staying there) as most of the others were eliminated by just quick drive bys (where the route there was "interesting") or just going in for a drink - considered a pub with a good special offer as well.

The church was already decided and we wanted a reception venue within a 10 minute drive of the church.

Then it came down to availability of accomodation, price and the look and feel of the venue within this radius.

We narrowed it down to about 3 before picking the final choice.

We started talking about venues soon after we got engaged, especially as I'm from Manchester and my OH is from Derby (we live in Manchester) but I couldn't get Midland Art Deco Hotel in Morecambe out of my head.

I went to university in Lancaster as I was in my last year when Midland reopened and remember going for afternoon tea and cocktails.

We went to see it and thankfully it was as amazing as I remembered and OH fell in love with it too - it's sooo cool and mixes modern with the old style art deco perfectly.

Morecambe is a bit shabby, I won't lie, but this hotel is fantastic and looks out over the sea. The sun terrace (one of the 3 rooms we have access to - all 3 open out into each other for the evening reception) has floor to ceiling windows out over the sea with the sun setting on that side in the evenings.

Our bridal suite also has a HUGE bath, two loos and sinks and a hot tub on the balcony overlooking the sea again.

Only negative is that none of our family live near - mine are all at least an hour away and OHs are over in Derby (3 hours) and London but nobody has said anything about it being too far!

We have blown a LOT of our budget on the venue but we don't mind cutting back on things like my dress etc.

Flashy flash!!

Sorry for the waffle and huge pictures!

We had a list of criteria of things that we wanted and things that we had to have - a church wasn't for us as we aren't "traditionally" religious - and I visited the ones that suited us the best as my OH works away during the week.

I made a short list (of 2) based on my visits and the photo's that I took when I was looking around (and the broken promises by certain venues) and took M to see both, and decided on it from those

Lady_lyla I am in love with your venue! I was just looking at these pictures and OH walked behind me and asked where it was and said how nice it looks. Bad case of venue envy in the freckles household ?

The place where I work does weddings so every now and then I see brochures from competitors floating around. I came across our venue - before we were engaged - and thought it was lovely. When we got engaged, we went to see it - along with lots of other options mainly because my H2B wasn't really sure what he liked. At all the others he thought they were just 'okay' but when we went to this one, he was really excited and so I knew it was the one. Luckily, it was my favourite too!

Besides the setting and the beauty of the house, we liked that it is exclusive to our event and that there is no time limit for the evening. The party can go on as long as people are still up and celebrating. As my H2B is Irish, I imagine it will go on all night!

It was by far the nicest out of all local venues. Most of them were very dated in ntheir decor, but in ours the reception room matched our colours scheme perfectly. Like it was meant to be.

Its also got a lot of features that are of interest to me such as Georgian influences and a bit of art deco. As well as some fun and quirky elements.

I also liked that we can get married outside.

We were both of the opinion that we wanted a small intimate wedding as we both wanted to treat ourselves and our nearest and dearest to best we could afford rather then cutting back on lots of things to accomodate more family and friends that we might not be as close to or have seen for some time.

My OH and I have also worked in the food/hotel/wedding/event industry/media so have vast experience in the area although we both decided we wanted to enjoy our day without the stress of organising everything ourselves so one of the key things when we were shortlisting venues was the quality of food and service because it would ruin our day if both of these eliments were bad on the day (we would both be thinking grrr we knew we should have done this ourselves and i have been to many wedding where food has been shockingly bad which i would be fuming about when considering the money you are spending on it).

Fortunatley living in London their is no shortage of 5 star 'luxury' hotels that claim to offer just that so the next task was to find a hotel which had nice small banqueting rooms, this was harder then expected as the majority of the smaller rooms were all pretty corporate boardroom style and not what we wanted for the wedding so we selected The Dorchester which we fell in love with because i thought the rooms were very elegant and woud not require much dressing, and a beautiful outside terrace.

https://www.dorchestercollection.com/london/the-dorchester

When we started looking for venues we were going straight to the prices section before actually looking to see if we liked the place as we were on such a budget! I found our venue recommended ona site for cheap weddings by other brides so had a look at the site. It looked ok, then i looked at the reviews on hitched and it had hundreds of great reviews so we went to view it. it was the last place we looked and actually the nicest, much nicer than it seemed on the site. We loved it in fact, and the staff were lovely and very helpful. So we were attracted mainly by the price but now we've booked it I think I would have gone for it even if we had double the budget.

aww this made me smile! I have been questioning it a little bit recently due to it being a bit of a trek and the fact it's taken most of our budget but i really love it...!

WSS, but we looked in a radius of 20 mins from our church. Mrs C and I obviously had the same idea, as I have my reception at the same venue!

Accomodation was a big plus for me.

If you have found the right venue then it doesnt matter, You can always find decent and cheap b&b's (especially around morecamb bay carnforth, arnside, sandside, bolton-le-sands) around and family given enough notice are more than happy to turn it in to a long weekend.

Lady_lyla your venue is fab, I love Art Deco style places!

We're getting married in the church I grew up in which is really close to my parent's house. We looked at venues all around the Glasgow area that were big enough for our numbers which pretty much meant we were restricted to big hotels or football stadiums (!). I fell in love with a hotel in Ayrshire (The Brig-a-Doon) but in the end chose to go for a hotel closer to our church as we are having a December wedding and we didn't want to risk a long drive if it snows.

The place we've chosen maybe doesn't have the wow factor but it is nice, there are gardens for photographs, the food is good, they have an excellent wedding co-ordinator, there is plenty of parking and accommodation for anyone wanting to stay the night. Oh and they gave me a voucher for a free spa day!

I fell in love with my venue as soon as we saw it - only went there to rule it out, and when we heard the cost said no way, but after a lot of bartering and tears (from me lol) We booked it - and I still love it!

www.olddownmanor.co.uk

We had narrowed our options down to two - one was cheaper, had accommodation and was in a fairly convenient location, it was beautiful BUT they had the capacity to hold two weddings there on the same day (a big downside for boy who really didn't fancy this) and the stadd seemed a bit disinterested. The other was far more expenisve, no accommodation, slightly less convenient location BUT the staff were fabulous, we'd get exclusive use of both properties and all of the grounds, the increase in cost was matched by an increase in quality of food/drink/service in terms of number of staff. So we went for the second option - I love our venue, it's absolutely perfect - I just wish I had a venue twin!

Our close friends run a pub/restaurant and we were adamant from the get-go that we wanted our reception there. Neither of us are remotely religious so we didn't want a church and I didn't want a register office as all our local ones look so dingy so I started looking at local hotels.

I first tried the one in my small rural town, there are often weddings there and it looks beautiful but they were unwilling to just have a ceremony and drinks hour, so they were out.

Then looked at another in the next town, my ex's dad was married there and it was fabulous, again, unless it was the full day, not interested.

I didn't know of any other hotels so Googled and one hotel came up and it looked lovely, I emailed them and a ceremony with drinks reception was absolutely fine but it had to be Sun-Thurs as they do reserve Fridays and Saturdays for full day bookings, which is totally understandable. We booked an appointment to view it, it was lovely inside and out and the events co-ordinator there was really friendly and helpful so we booked.

So although the main reason was our no reception needs, had it of not looked nice enough I wouldn't have booked it so it was a bit of both really

Our venue is by where we live now, it's just fortunate that it is absolutely amazing. It was the 1st place I thought of that I'd want to get married, but never thought it would be affordable. The main problem with it is that it is a heritage place so has to be open to the public for a certain number of hours. So you can only hire the place from 5 on a Saturday, or 3 on a Friday. Hence having a Friday wedding.

We were going to get married there, but thought that it would be nice to extend the day and have the ceremony earlier on, to make the most of it all! We were going to have a civil wedding purely on the basis that we couldn't find a solution to the CofE/Catholic church dilemma we've had for years. However, it looks like we've possibly got one so are definitely looking at a church wedding, and it looks as though we're leaning towards the church where I was christened. I didn't think the logistics would work as it's a 25 minute drive away, but it means a lot to my mum and dad and so it looks like we're pulling out all of the stops to try and make it happen.

Hi again ,

Thank you for indulging my nosiness ladies !, and its nice to see the different things that has inspired people

lady_lyla your venue is ABSOLUTELY amazing!! - I'm so looking for word to seeing your wedding photos, that stair case is fabulous ! (think I can see a wknd for 2 in Morecambe in my crystal ball hehehe)

In the past, when we had theoretically discussed the idea of getting married, my H2B had always maintained that he couldn't imagine getting married anywhere other than his family church, I was uncomfortable with this for a few reasons but felt it unfair to ask him to compromise something that seemed so important to him.

Fast forward to around last christmas time and with a LEAP YEAR fast approaching ? I "theoretically" raised the subject again and we reached the compromise that WHEN we finally got around to it, a civil ceremony somewhere around the lake district area ( 1 side of family Scottish, other side mostly around South Yorkshire) with a blessing in his family church at a later date.In January 2012, we booked a Valentines weekend in the lake district with a view to looking at a few places we had in mind. I had done a bit of research online within our budget and booked to stay the weekend in my fav one.

When we arrived for our weekend we both loved it, thought it be perfect for a summer wedding, as it had nice gardens and the function room which was of the size we needed had a roof terrace which would be exclusively ours aswell. After chatting with their very helpful and friendly wedding co-ordinator and view of ceremony room etc my H2B was TOTALLY SOLD !! and wanted to book there and THEN. I did love it but was concerned at booking the first place we had view so made him spend the entire Saturday looking at other possibilities (I did let him to look at the classic car museum- he's a fanatic) , none of the others really grabbed our attention and some for various reasons we didn't even get out the car to look at some. So after further thought we BOOKED our wedding before leaving on the Sunday ?

Stopping of at Aysgarth Falls on the way home, I found a quiet spot and asked my H2B to marry me ❤️, Thinking I was joking he replied " Don't be silly !! Of course I will ! we just booked the wedding " then he noticed the ring box I was holding ?

I had bought the ring weeks earlier in January (no idea how I kept it quiet!) and he was so stunned he couldn't speak for the majority of the rest of the journey home ? and our friend's think its fabulous that we actually booked our wedding before officially getting engaged even if it was only by a few hours ?

Both unreligious so no churches for us.

We originally wanted an all-in-one hotel venue to suit our travelling guests but local to suit us, there were two within our budget but one I had already married at so that ruled that one out!

I was getting ready to book the other, more contemporary than I would have liked but cost dictated, when they said that to bring in our choice of real ale they'd charge us £2 a pint corkage.. We could have afforded it, but pulled out on principal that it was a rip-off and felt they were trying to take advantage of the W-word.

Had a brief look at the non-hotel ceremony venues, which were all out of town (a guildhall with no function room, a golf club with limited bar, an expensive outdoor museum), but none of them wowed us, and after the massive cost of bringing the registrar out, it didn't seem worth it, when we'd all have the inconvenience of more travelling as well (we're lazy ?. Joking aside, OH can't wait to get to the other side of the dreaded W-day, so it needed to be as painless, unfussy and cost-effective as possible for him to agree on it, unless I was smitten).

So RO it was for us. As we wanted just quite a large relaxed, evening do, most pub reception venues were too small for us. It seemed natural then to use the large function hall of our very local cricket club- we'd already been to a friend's milestone birthday party there so knew it did the job. I love the fact that it's so close that we can walk up and have a peep inside any time we want. It's a 1970's building, so a bit more character than modern buildings, but unfortunately the RO we'll probably have was built last year and is built onto a leisure centre (?). We are stuck with that, unless it's opening gets delayed again (it's already slipped 8 months so fc!) and we get to have the current detached Victorian villa RO. As we are doubtful about the new RO (the staff haven't even been allowed a look in yet), we are coming back to the garden of our cottage for photos, which are more 'us'.

We are both scientists and very un-religious, so getting married in a church felt hypocritical and not 'us.' However, we wanted somewhere with a bit of charm. We chose Cley Windmill for our 2pm ceremony and afternoon tea.

Looking at reception venues, nothing felt quite special enough, so we decided to host our own reception by hiring a marquee with all the trimmings (REALLY not cost effective compared to using a venue!) and do it our way.

I'm quite excited to be the only bride ever to have their wedding reception at our 'venue.'

Thank you! I am really lucky that I remembered the venue from my uni days as I've never seen it on any wedding venue searches!

Yours sounds lovely too!

Ducky this is beautiful! Where are you having your marquee?

Neither myself or oh are religious so thought it would be hypercritical to get married in church so we knew we wanted a civil ceremony venue.

We also knew we needed somewhere large enough for our family's and wanted everything in same place. We looked at loads of venues but they were either out of our price range or we didn't like them!

On the off chance we visited the venue we picked which is 1 hour away from where we live and as soon as we pulled into the grounds we knew. My oh said it's like a fairy tale dream wedding. The venue had everything we wanted and could accommodate all our guests.

Oh Ducky thats stunning!

I made a list of requirements (good outside space, allow certain amounts of DIY, not fixed to certain scheduls and menus, something a bit different, not crazy expensive) and then a list f all wedding venues in Sheffield, Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham, West Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Derbyshire and googled everyone!

Some we discounted on distance, some price, some were just too bog standard hotel packages.

Made a short list and a second list and ended up viewing about 6 venues I think. Fell in love with one, but it would just have worked out too expensive (though looking back at how our budget has expanded maybe we could have done it!) as it was grounds of a hopuse - you married in the cider press, and then we would have needed marquees in the gardens, it was stunning and the owners were brilliant and totally invested in supporting the 10 weddings they did a year - but budget stopped play.

A couple of others would have done but weren't perfect, one too small, one needed us to do too much etc etc.

Our venue we actually ended up visiting because I had a space on a weekend of venue visits so pulled it up from the second list... we saw it and were wowed! the interior is quite simple but smart, the coordinator was great, so into helping us make our day as we want it (and 17 months on she still is) but most of all we get use of the Huge gardens and they are stunning! (and theres an adventure plyground!)

http://www.wentworthcastle.org/view.asp?id=145

https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g528795-d2312775-Reviews-Wentworth_Castle_Gardens-Barnsley_South_Yorkshire_England.html

https://www.hitched.co.uk/wedding-venues/wentworth-castle-gardens_5622.htm

DarkMoomin your venue is only about 15 mins drive from where I live ! we've been there a few times its a lovely place for a wedding and the grounds are really lovely too, I think the adventure playground was only added about 2 years ago as I rememeber the "kids" ? liking it on our last visit.

Duckybum ! what a unique venue with stunning views !!

My parent's have bought a house with a mahoosive garden. They are currently living in and renovating the house - which needs a LOT of work. But the garden is lovely as it is, so we are having the marquee there. They also live next door to a golf course and B&B so we will sleep there instead of in my parents house (can't think of anything more un-romantic than sleeping at your parents on your wedding night!).

This is the part of their garden where the guests will get a glass of bubbly while the band play (weather permitting), before going further over to the right (behind the long yellow-green hedge) where the marquee will be for the hog roast and BBQ and to party the night away (ignore the pigeon-flown-into-the-window marks!). We will be putting fairy lights in the bushes to give the place a magical feel: