Beware Alcoholic Favours!!

Oooh i would never have thought of that!

It's just part of the con that is corkage, so you have to (or are supposed) to buy their overpriced alcohol rather than bringing in sensibly priced stuff yourself.

Yah I know (though our venue's bar prices are actually quite reasonable!) but just thought I would highlight it, as personally if I had spent money on mini booze bottles as favours only to find out on the day that we couldn't use them I would be pretty gutted!

Its isjust crazy the mark up on alcohol at our venue, for wine for our tables are being charged at £14.95 per bottle!!!! OH is still findng this hard to swallow (pardon the pun lol) as we know it will be the same wine you can pick up at the supermarket, 3 for £10.

Ph and they dont allow corkage so got us over a barrel really unless we look really tight and dont have any drinks on the table. In a bit of situation really as we just cant justify spending £500 on what is essentially cheap plonk!!

Having said that we cant fault anything else with the venue.

As most of the people coming to our wedding are not heavy drinkers, and many will be driving several hours home afterwards, we simply decided to provide non-alcoholic drinks (fruit juice and water) on the tables, plus shloer for toasts and welcome drinks.

When you think about it, most drinks packages are at least 4 glasses per person, which is enough to put anyone over the drink-drive limit.

Our hotel has its own private room with a bar in it adjoining our function room so if people want alcohol they're more than welcome to buy their own.

I know most weddings contain lots of alcohol, but that's not our type of party so it'll be interesting to see whether anyone has a moan or not. I think, knowing our guests, people will be fine with it.

AJ that is a great idea, I would definitely do something like that as am not a big drinker myself but I am in the definite minority amongst my friends and family so would probably get lynched!!

There's no reason why you can't have both alcohol and fruit juice/shloer/water if you want to - after all, what are the children going to be drinking regardless?

Venues shouldn't charge you for jugs of iced water anyway - and it's always good to have that on the table as an option.

We will be having water on the tables of course but as the venue has a limited capacity we won't be inviting any children (apart from the flower girl and page boy) as a little bum on a seat was costing as much as a big bum on a seat!

So we will probably just stick with the water as reluctant to pay for something extra like fruit juice etc on the table when it may not be drunk...every penny counts!

Which is a good reason to stay away from a "wedding factory" venue.

Our venue charges per person - one charge and that was it. That was to cover costs of ice, glasses, waiter service, etc. If we wanted to haev cocktails served all we had to do was supply the intgredients and a recipe and they'd do the rest.

And we also had jusg of iced tap water ont he tables which we didn't have to pay for (naturally!). They were topped up regularly. I hate water so didn't care about it and everyone I know drinks tap water at home so they could have tap water at our wedding! I did have shed loads of soft drinks available ?

That's really good advice to check, MrsShark!

In terms of drink costs, keeping guest's costs to a minimum was key to us. I'm surprised at the number of people who don't factor that in when deciding on their venue!

That's a really good to highlight, I'd have never thought they would be opposed to it.

The thing is, it's not just wedding venues who charge a lot for drinks - you have to pay nearly £5 for a glass of wine in a pub/bar/restaurant when you could buy a bottle for that. But that's the price to pay for the building, staff, lighting, heating, etc. You pay a lot for meals out too, where you could cook the meal at home for less.