Please help - Need advice! :(

Eek, difficult situation. I'd be very honest with the venue and say your not sure you can afford the current price etc and try and see if there is anything they can do to bring costs down in terms of altering some of the bits included. You have paid the deposit so you wont risk losing it by asking, then I would take it from there. That sort of money is an awful lot to lose x

Also could catering do a buffet or 2 courses, or anything to bring price down?

I don't really know what to advise I'm afraid, just wanted to ask if you've found anywhere else you like? Remember it'll need to be more than £4000 cheaper otherwise you'll end up paying more in the long run.

Like others have suggested, is there anything you can do with the catering side of things maybe a hot buffet instead of a sit down meal or something? What a horrible situation.

To be really honest, I would have thought you'd have thought the whole costing through BEFORE putting down a huge desposit. I realise that comment doesnt help, but if you rushed into the whole booking of the venue, maybe you are rushing into thinking you cant go there anymore? Take a deep breath & look at the whole thing.

Does the venue have a minimum spend? Can you cut down numbers or make savings elsewhere? We had a 2 course meal served, then the wedding cake as dessert. This saved us paying for a dessert that often gets left. Could you provide say 1-2 bottles of wine then let guests pay for more? Basically, is there anywhere else you can make cut backs?

You need to contact the venue. let me know your finances have changed or whatever the reason is for not being aware of the total costs. See if you will indeed loose the whole deposit, even if someone else books the same date & also check if they can help in cutting costs.

As a guest, if I'd already booked my hotel & paid, I'd be pretty annoyed that you were changing the venue. Are you also going to compensate them for paying for another hotel? Might be better to stick at the venue but save elsewhere.

If you're worried about space surely the venue will work with you to try and make it work, so could you put a marquee in the grounds of the venue therefore solving your space problem and still managing to stay at the same place?

I thought the problem was that it's so expensive as well. I don't think a marquee will help keep the cost down.

Ah right ok sorry. I must've misunderstood the OP. Ignore my comment!

A marquee might be a cheaper option on its own though. I'd love one. Never liked the idea until I ready Ducky's report.

If the original venue would be £25-28k and you're not rolling in money, why on earth did you book it?? You need to ask yourself is £3300 is a fair price to pay for peace of mind. Yes, you can definitely get an amazing venue for half that cost, but you'd still be losing your deposit. I would suggest you do what make the two of you happy, and obviously you're not happy with the venue. Unfortunately I think it will likely be impossible to get the deposit back, even if they're able to re-book the date.

That's a good point from JoJo.

You say the wedding would cost £11k but the wedding £25k - how does that work?

How many guests are you having (for the figures above)?

Eeek I cant think of anything to say that has probably not gone through your head already...all i would say is you need to bite the bullet and make a decision ASAP if your guests are already booking flights, hotels etc.

You started another post a few minutes after this one saying that you want venue inspiration for a small wedding. Are you keeping this venue? A small wedding for 30-50 people (as said in the other post) at these prices is just crazy.

OK, so venue £11k, catering £8k. If venue doesn't include catering, what exactly are you getting for £11k??

Let's assume you don't change venue. Changing caterers won't cost you that much - a £600 deposit lost. OK, so can you then have a hog roast, or other buffet style catering? As others have said, serve wedding cake as the dessert, and cut down any free booze.

How many guests do you have? I'm really really struggling with this tbh. My first wedding was, IMO, uber extravagant. Dinner was about £60 a head, plus we provided 3 bottles of wine per table. Venue cost though, was still under £10k. In fact, the whole wedding, including £2k dress, horse and carriage, big stately home, £1k on flowers, live band brought up from London, photos, video, etc, etc was under £15k. How is it possible to spend £28k on just the venue & catering?

Let us have a breakdown of costs to get you to a) £11k and b) 28k and we'll see if we can suggest anything.

I think she means that the overall cost of the venue including catering is £11k. So Venue hire is £3k and catering is £8k.

The rest is on dress, photographer etc?

Yes, maybe, but I find it hard to believe you could spend £17k on the "etc". Unless it includes a £10k honeymoon. But that wouldn't be affected by a venue change. Nor would the dress. Hmmmm. OP - can you enlighten us?

I'm confused, why do you need to spend a lot more and total it up to £28k? That's a huge amount to spend on a wedding, regardless of the venue and catering. What on earth are you budgeting for?

Sorry, don't think Ive been very clear! First of all though, thanks so much for all the replies, I love the honesty, it's exactly what I need. My fiance and I can afford to have a wedding up to £30K, it's more a question of whether we want to spend this on it or whether we would prefer having a few nice holidays out of it. I posted another thread asking about a wedding for 30-50 people just as an alternative consideration. Our guests that have booked their hotel haven't paid a deposit or anything yet so they wouldn't lose out on money, they're all in a nearby hotel so they would all be in the same position - not losing out on money.

So the money, this is how we've budgeted, any help would be so much appreciated:

Venue: £11,000, including 15 bedrooms for 2pm Friday - 12pm Sunday, cooked breakfast both mornings and afternoon tea Friday.

Catering: Budgeted approx £7,000 - £8,000 for 70 day guests and 120 evening guests. You're right though, there ae many ways we can get this down perhaps £2,000 or so.

The rest is for dress, kilts, flowers, wedding coordinator, bridal accessories, piper, harp for drinks reception, registrar, buses, band, photographer, bridesmaids dresses and accessories, bridal party gifts, hair and make up for myself and bridesmaids, nails, stationary, chair covers and sashes, favours, cake, rings, insurance and honeymoon.

The venue is stunning and I could deal with the money if there wasn't the problem of the splitting of the evening reception or vice versa (bar in one room, dancing in another and tables in another). All rooms link together but only through a normal sized door so I'm worried it may be a bit broken up.

Thanks again, your help really is appreciated x

Ok, firstly I think you should keep your venue as its a huge amount of money to lose. At my wedding we had a separate bar area with chairs that linked to the main room, it worked really well as it meant that guests such as grandparents etc had somewhere to sit after the meal that wasn't in the noise of the dancing. Also it meant people could have somewhere to talk, it wasn't an issue and it was nice having a choice.

By wedding co-ordinator do you mean planner? I think that's a waste of money personally. Why not save money on food, what are they providing for £8000? Gold plated food? Can you do corkage and buy your own wine? You don't have to provide a lot. Everything else you can save money on as well. You don't have to provide transport either. I've only been to two weddings that have done this, any other we just got a taxi, it didn't matter.

Personally I wouldn't spend £30k on a wedding even if I could afford it, it's a huge amount of money on one day of your life. I've been to more expensive weddings and I've been to cheaper weddings and I couldn't tell the difference. I don't see how you can moan about the venue prices when you were going to spend another £17k on everything else anyway, why not just stay with the venue and save money elsewhere. You can still have everything you want, but cheaper if you know how to do it. And you can use the rest for holidays.

Everyone is going to have a different opinion on what is an acceptable amount to spend on a wedding. As your venue costs more than my entire wedding I'm on the side of using the money for other things. I think it depends on how important all the "extras" are to you. If I'm reading this right and you have £30K in total, minus the £11K for venue and £7K for food, you still have £12K left for everything else, which is a lot. Have you looked around to get an idea of how much the other things you want cost? If you add up a rough idea of the other big things (i.e dress, photographer etc) you might be able to work how much you need left over for the things you want.

Didn't read this bit first time, I totally agree. Unless you work a ridiculous number of hours I don't think they're necessary.

Is it worth contacting the venue and asking if you would definitly lose your deposit. Our friends changed venues, their original venue stated the deposit was non refundable. They decided it didn't matter about loosing the deposit as they wanted their day to be perfect for them and the first venue wouldn't meet this criteria!! What surprised us more than anything was the venue gave them a full refund on the deposit. The date they had booked was in June and as the venue knew they could re-book for this date with another couple they refunded in full. It might just be your venue have had other enquries for that date and would agree to cancel with a full refund. If you don't ask.....you don't know. I would do this first and then make the decision.

Jen x

Right...

£11,000 is VERY expensive for venue hire, even if it does include 15 bedrooms. I hope it's bloody gorgeous.

Would you be charging the rooms out to your guests if they choose to stay there as if it was a normal hotel? If they are having to stay in the area anyway then you could claw a few thousand back from that.

£8,000 for catering for 70 day guests??!!! Even at £50 a head it only comes to £3,500. Then add in maybe £15 per evening guest would take it to £5,300. What the hell are you feeding them for £8,000? Does it include the alcohol? As someone else said is there any way to bring the booze cost down?

Is the venue providing the catering or are you hiring an external company? If external, does the venue insist on a particular company?

Can you give a breakdown of what you're expecting to spend on the rest? Have you seen a particularly expensive dress?

My bar was in a separate room to the band and it worked really well. Dancefloor was always packed and the bar area was full of people having a good natter.

Oh just to give you an idea - my venue had, what I consider to be, a very expensive venue hire charge of £6,500 (this didn't include any bedrooms etc).

But the catering at the venue was extremely reasonable as was corkage so, because we had a large guest list, it actually worked out good value for us.

I do think it is a little on the expensive side, but then if you take in to consideration that is is for a 2 day wedding with bedrooms, afternoon tea and breakfast included in there, it is not that bad. Is the breakfast etc just for the people staying in the house or is it for the whole wedding party? My bar is in a different room from the disco and we also have another room that is totally seperate that we will be using to show DVD's in for the kids/adults to have a little chill out if they like. As everyone else has said there are certainly areas that you can get some money back, such as catering and drink.

I've just been looking at their website and it says that flowers and photography are done by their own people. Is this also included in the venue hire or do you have to pay extra and if so do you have to use them?

To give you another example: our venue hire was £2500 and included room, flowers, DJ, bridal suite & breakfast, table confetti, cake stand, water on the tables etc. We didn't have to use their florist but we did if we wanted it included in the price (which wouldn't change.)

Eclair what's their website? did I miss that?

ETA - Ignore me - I'm a moron!

Why the HELL is a venue telling you which photographers to use?!

OK, well if you're including honeymoon then I can sort of see where you're coming from.

FWIW my wedding this time cost approx £20k BUT the breakdown of that was:

actual wedding/venue/photos/3 nights accom/video/flowers/wedding planner (abroad): £3200

UK reception inc. venue hire, band, flowers, hog roast, drinks, venue, decor, cake(s): £4100

honeymoon (inc. flights to get to the overseas wedding): £8600

outfits and rings: £3500

Like you, we could have afforded a £30k wedding if we wanted to. However, we like our holidays (as you can tell from the honeymoon spend LOL!!), we still haven't finished doing up the house we bought a year ago, we want to keep a decent savings pot, and we're planning for kids in the next year or so. So whereas we could afford more, we didn't want to spend more. And I think this is where you're at at the moment isn't it?

I'd cut down by having a cash bar, asking guests to pay at least some of their accommodation bill, rethinking the menu to get to maybe £30 a head etc etc. At the end of the day, I've said this many times, all you will have the morning after the wedding is a new husband, a new ring, and fab photos to remind you of the day. The rest is nice, but doesn't last.

I know. I don't think I like the tone of the website to be honest. I really hope that if they're telling you which suppliers to use then that's included in the price.

I'm pretty sure it's not. It's quite common to have preferred catering suppliers but hair and makeup, photographer, videographer, florist, dress, transport and even the church?!

I sincerely hope these are suggestions and not the suppliers you must use.

Well we're coming from different places because the amount you've pai in deposits is more than my entire budget, lol. But if my venue included rooms I'd ask guests who wanted to stay there for a contribution towards the hire.

Like others have said, I'm sure you can cut down on catering. My venue inc 3 course meal and buffet for the same numbers is under £1,500 and it's unfair they're charging above the odds on catering just because your venue's expensive.