Did you haggle on the price of your venue/catering?

We managed to get our venue hire cost and per person cost for last year's price but weren't able to reduce it by anymore. That saved us almost £1500 though!

Its not really that kind of venue where the prices hike up every year so its down to trying to get more for our money on the catering package.

I understand the principle of your post, I was just sharing my experience.

Yes, we did. A couple of venues wouldn't budge full stop, so we promptly dismissed them.

We haggled with the venue we finally went with before saying yes to having them as a venue. We managed to get our main course upgraded for free, canapes thrown in for free, evening buffet amended so not everyone had to have the buffet, we added a couple of platters instead, which cost about half the price of the buffet would for the same number of people, got another 5% discount off on top of the 15% they'd already taken off as a general offer. The 15% off is a bit misleading as it was available to everyone, they must think it makes people think they're good value...

We basically looked at our budget, what we wanted, what price they were offering and then asked for money off, or free upgrades. We did stress that we were very interested in the venue, were looking at others and also that we would be looking to put the deposit down straight away if we came to an agreement that we were happy with. Not sure if that helpe, but we got more or less what we wanted.

Cricket Bride, thanks for sharing your experience.

hannioli, that's interesting. I'm thinking of asking how much the drinks are if we pay for what we use rather than the package and asking if they might add canapes or something on to the food package for free. We're looking at getting married early afternoon so would probably need to stagger the food a little bit.

I hate asking people for extra stuff I'm always worried they'll just say no and look at me as if i'm an idiot.

We didn't exactly haggle but asked if they were willing to budge on the ceremony room hire which wass 500 pounds and they waived the entire fee!! so definately worth asking. We didn't ask for a reduction on drinks but the co-ordinator actually suggested having sparkling wine or pimms instead of champagne for toast or arrival drinks would bring the price down so we appreciated her giving us the choice should we wish to do so.

There's no harm in asking at all! I think most places are amenable to throwing in extras or upgrading, rather than actually knocking money off, if that makes sense? Bridal shops seem to do the same. If they do say no, you won't look silly.

To be honest i think your drinks package is reasonable for 4 glasses of wine... We did haggle on ours slightly but felt we weren't being ripped of so we were happy. We changed the evening buffet and changed to a friday which saved us over £3k. Its worth asking them 4 options..

We managed to get our wedding breakfast swapped to the bbq option and replace the evening buffet with bacon butties at £8.95 per head. Considering that they'd usually insist you have the wedding breakfast and then the bbq/buffet option in the evening (at £30 per head by the way, on top of the £55 per head for the WB!), we saved about £2000. We didn't even have to bargain that hard!

We didn't really haggle but we did get them to put together a custom package for us based on our requirements, as an adjustment of their standard package.

The better venues often won't haggle because they know that if you don't take their package for that date someone else will, however there's no reason you can't customise something to your needs, such as changing the drinks offered.

One thing a lot of people don't think about, for example, is that most standard alcoholic drink packages of 3 or 4 glasses of wine, is enough to put any drivers over the limit, which is why it's important to consider non-alcoholic alternatives.

Definitely haggle!! I'm of the philosophy if you don't ask, you don't get, and besides, the drinks side of any wedding normally takes a heck of a lot of money (of course this despends on numbers).

So far, we have added a bolt on pack for half price, this was for chair covers and a few other finishing touches, have haggled with extra rooms for guests coming from further a field.... saving £40.00 per room per night, this is inc breakfast, and have got the D.J thrown in. Total saving so far £750..... excluding guest rooms (we're not paying for those).

Good luck

x x

Ours isnt the type of venue where you can get things at a lower price (although like CB we locked ours in at last years price for our wedding next year) We plan to spend a bit with them, so when we meet again we will try and get some freeness. Maybe canapés or something

Our caterers standard package was for up to 80 guests, and we're only having 50 for the meal. So we haggled extra rounds of wine with the meal, an upgrade on the evening buffet, having them clean the venue at the end of the night for free, and a few other bits and bobs. Hopefully your venue will give you some options.