corkage fees...

Restaurants and venues make a lot of profit on wine so the corkage is to make sure they still make a profit even if you bring your own.

Our corkage was £7 a bottle or £8 for sparkling/champagne. That's cheap though compared to most. £13 is more standard across the board.

Of course, some places don't charge corkage at all but it will be rare to find a hotel/'traditional' wedding venue that will do this. Our venue was the british campus of an american uni so they were a bit cheaper on things like this.

I thought that ours was expensive but looks incredibly cheap against yours Kharv. I'm paying £5 a bottle for sparkling.

It's why I bought 66 bottles of fizz fromSaino's on their 25% off if you buy 6 deal and at a time when their best prosecco was also 25% off, because with the corkage fee at both our venues it still comes in at much less than what they would charge for their own prosecco - and Saino's Conegliano is better prosecco too. We haven't bothered for the flat wine as it's not worth it. We're paying £7.50 at our wedding venue then £5 at our party venue.

But not all allow you to take your own sadly and yes - they basically make the price up :/

I think they generally like to discourage you from taking your own.

That said, our lovely Pizza Express lady is letting us take in all of our bottles of fizz for the welcome drinks/toasts for no corkage fee!

We are paying £15 corkage fee for each bottle of champagne. When the champers is about £15 a bottle (bulk) it still works out cheaper than their £42 bottle of champagne that is rubbish. We asked to negotiate but they wouldn't/couldn't budge.

We have to supply all the alcohol for our wedding breakfast and luckily our venue or the caterer is not charging any corkage fees so that's saved us a fortune!