London venues... why so expensive?

Why do you need bouncers and a cloakroom? You're paying a minimum of three wages with that. Are you expecting trouble? ?

The venue I liked insists on bouncers on top of what you pay for the venue and given that the reception will be in the winter, I think it's important to have a cloakroom.

Definitely not expecting trouble! Well behaved lot mine and his!

Up here in bonny scotland the venues varied from £250 for our local hotel to £4k for a whole castle so that price doesn't surprise me of london...!

As its Greenwich, have you considered having a boat for the reception......no need for bouncers then as any gatecrashers would need to be able to swim....?

I have had a look at a few websites for boat companies. Same problem though... thousands need to be forked out before you can even provide a packet of peanuts for guests!!

It's still very much early in our planning, so pretty sure it will all work out eventually... just hoped I wouldn't have to look too long or too hard!

The rip off factor stretches out into the home counties too. I looked at one barn who wanted a £4.5k just for the hire, nothing else included ?

It doesn't surprise me to be honest. I think at lot of the problem is the wedding ceremony is not the expensive part, it's the reception. I live in the home counties and we had the same problem. The thing that annoyed me was the price of some function rooms went up if it was for a wedding, which I could never work out how that was justified.

Hi.. we too were on tight budget.. we managed to get a lovely modern hall in wimbledon village.

https://www.terrypawson.com/stmary.html

.which has lovely courtyard garden and modern glass panoramic sliding windows that open up into the garden.. we paid £480 for this.. then have booked a local caterer to do a rotisserie with duck, chicken, beef, lamb.. hot potatoes.. salads.. & puds.. this cost £1900 for 100 people.. but on top of that had to hire tables..linen glasses etc.. @ £450.. we've provided our own drinks.. beer, wine, pimms and soft drinks approx £1000.. that includes the drink for the evening..approx 130 guest for the eve.. then the disco £250.. we think we have done pretty well..as we have tailor made everything we wanted..the location is beautiful..we just have to do the setting up /clearing up ourselves but are lucky enough to have an army of friends to help.. we briefly looked at hotels/venues around.. the cost was just ridiculous.We could of got the food cheaper if we had fork buffet with something simpler.. but this was our only real 'splurge'.

Not sure where abouts in London you are but we are having our reception in a fantastic pub in East Finchley called the Bald Faced Stag:

We have the whole pub to ourselves, are having arrival drinks and canapes, a two course meal with wine, champagne for toasts, an evening buffet and wine, beer and soft drinks all evening and this is coming in (depending on how much people drink!) at around £5k, and that includes service as well. The only thing we've had to pay for on top of this is the DJ and flowers for the tables. There was no charge for hiring the venue, we just had to guarantee a minimum spend on food and drink.

It's got a big dining area, a bar area and a pretty garden and the staff have been absolutely fantastic so far - I can't wait!

A lot of places expect you to pay out for bouncers after a certain time in the evening. Have you tried missing out the word "wedding" when you contact people? That's often what bumps the price up. We must have some Royal British Legion/Conservative-type clubs near us that you could use? Or a village hall and you hire in a bar from one of the pubs like the Union or somewhere? Why not make us pay for our booze? No one would take offence (especially not when you consider how much we can drink!) I'll put my thinking cap on about other venues though. I've gone through most of them at some time or another. Bars in the city on a Saturday night often don't have hire charges and you just pay the staff costs as they'd be shut so any money they take is a bonus.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I've been having a look at halls in the area and they seem more reasonable. Will have a look at city bars as well. Ideally, I'd like somewhere not too far from where I live as I plan to do some of the set up myself.

Just want to get the London bit of the wedding nailed down so I can focus on researching the actual ceremony abroad. I'll be having 2 different budgets, and finding it hard to know how much to put in each!

Have you tried the Trafalgar Tavern in Greenwich. I did a wedding here a couple of years ago and thought it was a really nice room. The bride told me at the time that it was reasonably priced.

Denise

The Trafalgar has been taken over by Greenwich Inc. They are the ones that want £2,800 just for venue hire (on a Saturday) and insist on one bouncer per 70 guests at extra cost. It is a nice room, but add on the minimum food spend of £3,800, it seems a bit too expensive for what it is and what I want.