Please share venues to help me find one!

Finding somewhere that will let you hire it only for a ceremony that isn't a church or a registry office might be quite difficult.

Have you looked at the National Trust venues near you? They will often hire for ceremony only.

Also, the best thing to do would be to get a list of licenced venues in all the relevant local authority areas and work your way through them. At least then you know you're not missing any.

There aren't loads round here that do ceremony only, but there are some. I've had a quick look though the list of licenced places but none so far have either jumped out, aren't miles away or aren't to expensive. In stumped. I just didn't want to miss somewhere if someone on here had found a hidden gem. Because our budget is about £1500 for everything, we need to find places that are in our price range. X

Is there a town hall rather than a registry office you can get married in? Or a council owned building that's quite pretty? I'm sure I've even heard that some museums and art galleries are licensed. Otherwise I would be tempted to find a nice barn or similar that can do the whole lot in one place.

Bolsover castle hires it's ceremony rooms in 2.5 hour slots. I've never been so not sure of disabled access and they start at 1250, so with registrat you are looking at 1750 before drinks. I'm not finding anything much else that states that it hires for ceremony only. If you coudl hold your nerve and go for a last minute booking they may be more flexible, but this far in advance I expect most venues woudl rather have a wh=ole day booking if possible.

Any approved venue iis going to charge you more than £500 I think. Our venue is charging an extra fee on top of the hire charge towards the cost of their licence. I think many venues do something similar, which is why the mechanics of getting married at an approved venue works out more than a church or registry office ceremony.

Not what you were after at all but The Fox and Goose has a special 2014 offer on for sole use with a hog roast in 2014. No idea what it's like there but Pudding Pie Hill, Wigley sounds cool :-D

I'm going to have to dig a bit deeper, we really can't stretch our budget at all, and we want our reception somewhere understated like a village hall so we can have a buffet and an MP3 player going, plus we just have not a lot of money! Most places as I said charge £2/3K and we just don't have that kind of money, me and OH need to sit and look - but you know what blokes are like when you shown them wedding stuff lol.

I think the Red Lion do their ceremonies not too expensive. I'm photographing a reception at the Fox and Goose in September, the hog roast doesn't do it for though lol, not vegetarian, but I can't look at it!

I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure every licenced venue will be listed in the local authority lists - so if it's not there they won't have a wedding licence.

I think this depends on when the list was published/when licences are applied for and how good the admin team are! The venue MOMB and I are having has been licenced for years yet it doesn't come up on the list (or didn't in February when I checked)

How frustrating!!

I know you're not keen on a registry office but some are lovely. Don't forget you don't have to use the one in your town if you're willing to travel half an hour there may be more than you think

There are a few local ones, but I'd rather not get married in Worksop as I work there and it really is a depressing place! Other ones are Mansfield, Chesterfield and then further afield like Sheffield and further into Derbyshire. You can get married at Derbyshire County Councils' head office which is a really old building built by John Smedley - but OH works there so refuses! lol

I know of venues that have popped up on searching the net that don't appear on those lists!

Just having a really teeny budget is very hard when you can't find a venue you like!! As I said our budget is roughly £1500 - for everything! The registry offices round here aren't anything special at all and one of my clients said for the price of some places you might as well get married in church - which is something we would consider, but apart from me attending Sunday School when I was younger, neither of us are particularly religious.

So £1500 for the ceremony, registrar, reception venue, food etc? or just the ceremony venue and registrar fees?

Have you looked at hotel packages? Holiday inn and the like have great £1000 deals for everything all in. Some are really lovely inside!!

The problem is the closest Holiday Inn for example is Sheffield and I don't like driving in Sheffield at all! Also even if it's £1000 all in, I then onlt havw £500 for both rings, OH's outfit, 2 dresses for my BM's, photogrpaher, cake, shoes, decorations etc. It just doesn't add up. My Mum's trying to encourage me to go for a registry office, but most round here really aren't my cup of tea! (And I don't even drink that!!)

being totally honest I don't think you're going to be able to do it on your budget without going down the registry office route. You will be looking at the best part of £500 just for the registrar to come to your venue, then you'll have two lots of venue hire, one for the ceremony and one for the reception. I'd say that's your £1500 gone before you've even thought about feeding your guests. If you go to the registry office you're approx. £250, that leaves you £1250 for the venue, food, drink (even if you're not supplying alcohol there will still need to be something other than tap water). With 50 guests your probably looking at around £250 for the most basic of buffets.

I think the National Trust properties allow you to have the ceremony without the reception - they're beautiful and I think cost around £500 for the ceremony. Just had a quick google and found Hardwick Hall. It looks beautiful and would make a stunning ceremony location!! http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/hardwick/

I think you're going to find it really hard to get everything you want for your budget. Having said that it's always worth trying!!!

Have you looked at/thought of The Old Rectory near Sheffield, they're a not for profit organisation and therefore cheaper. I had a look at their website and there's too many options to list here but the prices look quite cheap both for room hire and food, they have a civil licence and it's a lovely looking building as a backdrop for photos. You can hire rooms on an hour by hour basis right up to booking exclusive use of all rooms and they say they can be flexible and adapt to what you want.

http://www.orh.org.uk/weddings.html

Another thought I had was have you considered having a later ceremony and making it an evening event? Now the law has changed it's legal to get married in the evening and means you don't have to worry about feeding people twice!

I'm going to agree with Icklefee, something has got to give, either you will have to resign yourself to the registry office wedding you don't want or you'll need to increase your budget.

Also you're counting out Sheffield because you don't like driving there, can't someone else drive?

Have you looked at local golf clubs too?

It is on the list Icklefee, it's just under the name of the charity that owns it rather than the name of the venue.

I think all approved venues have to be listed.

Piestar, it looks like Clumber park have updated their wedding download and it now specifies ceremony room only for £450. I suspect it's aimed at those who want to hire one of their paddocks for a marquee but might be worth a call.

Just to point out that you will have registrar's fees of about £350 or so on top of this.

That's the problem with anywhere that isn't a registry office - you're looking at having to find somewhere for only £150ish once you count in the registrar's fee.

Just to throw a wild card into the mix... Have you considered Barnsley? The town hall is gorgeous and I'm pretty sure it costs less than £100 to get married there.

It's about a 35 minute drive from Clowne.

I'll be honest, I'd prefer somewhere more country as we live in the countryside and I'm not a big fan of cities! Plus we have some guests that will be coming from Lincoln. We found a venue that is only £250 for the ceremony (excluding registrar fees) but its just over an hour away and OH has agreed its a little far. My Mum will moan if it's too far.

FMIL is annoying me again, went to OH's cousins wedding reception at the weekend (they got married in Malta) and she was all like 'you could get ideas for yours' etc, which is fine. I don't mind input from other people but when I tell her what I want to do so far so kind of puts me down.

I told her I was thinking seaside as I LOVE the seaside. Said I'd found someone who could do me a cake I like for £70 and someone makes bunting with the fabric I like for £10 and that we have seaside pails that I'm going to have as centre pieces with sweets in. She was like 'you have sweets to the side like this one, if you have them in the middle there won't be anywhere for centre pieces'. THEY ARE THE CENTRE PIECES! I was going to get some stripes fabric they have in IKEA and put them under them. She said having everything seasidey was kiddish and it will be all like kids stuff. I am THE biggest kid known to man - this is totally me! It's when people get like this I feel like not bothering! Eh dear!

Spending two thirds of your budget on the ceremony/venue hire/food/alcohol/evening buffet is a very reasonable proposition.

I think you need a bit of a reality check. Many of us would have killed to find that gorgeous country venue where we could get married for pennies - they don't exist.

With £1500 to spend, you are going to have do some serious prioritising. Do you need to spend £70 on a cake? You can get rings for £20, with a view to saving up for upgraded models in the future? Do you hate driving so much that you'd sacrifice money you can barely afford to avoid it (do you even have to do any driving)? Could you do a legal ceremony on the cheap, then have a single venue for a mock/humanist ceremony and your celebrations?

I think you're either going to have to up your budget or compromise.

Even if you went to the hour away venue, you'd still be paying £600 just for the ceremony when you could have a registry office ceremony for £100?

Well these are all the venues in Derbyshire that are registered for weddings, and i'm sure there must be something in there that will work one way or another!

https://www.derbyshire.gov.uk/images/Approved%20Premises%20list%20-%202013-03-25_tcm44-90040.pdf

It is hard a budget many of us know, but maybe there are things that family and friends can help with like, instead of paying for a cake could someone make it for you as your wedding gift? things like that?

£1500 everything (this is a rough amount, but won"t be much greater); my dress (I've bought another that makes me look like an actual bride not a guest, so I'm down £175 already), venue, reception, food' decoration, photographer, transport (I'm hoping to call in a camper offered some years back), OH's suit, BM's dresses (one purchased £40), one to go, rings - OH isn't fused and anything expensive but I want either platinum or palladium as my ER is platinum and anything else that needs doing. I'm making the invites myself, have all the materials but can't start till we have somewhere. In up for doing anything I can myself and don't want anything OTT, just special and memorable. ?

Upping the budget is something unlikely to happen, OH has an ISA but that is for a new car as his is slowly dying, emergency money should anything go wrong in the house and some for the wedding. I'm not really against registry office weddings, OH would prefer something else though and I've got to compromise as he has to too. I can do good enough cakes, but I couldn't decorate them to the standard you see lol. I'd give it a bash though. My Mum made my sisters, just a single tier. Hopefully my photographer is going to be cheap or free as it's a friend from college where we did photography together and she said we'd come to some arrangement as she's just starting out as a business. It's a pain the bum being where we live as there isn't a lot immediately nearby. Main problem with gavel is mainly my Mum moaning most places are too far.

I believe Narnia is rather nice at this time of year and you only need to pay for an old wardrobe ?

Working out your total budget is all well and good, but it doesn't avoid the fact that you are severely underestimating the costs involved in hiring a ceremony venue and shipping in a registrar.

If you wish to spend a significant proportion of your budget doing this, fine. But you seems to think it should be easy to find a lovely venue with a ceremony-only hire policy and a registrar for, what, less than a few hundred quid?

In Derbyshire, your registrar cost is £300, to officiate a ceremony on an approved premises. You're going to need £70 to give notice. And you say you will pay £500 for the ceremony venue. So that's nearly £900 on your ceremony.

If you can't up the budget then compromise it'll have to be!

I must admit, I don't understand the aversion to registry offices when some of them look like the one I posted previously.

A wedding with your budget is possible but I would honestly be looking for a pretty registry office then village hall to make the most of your budget.

With regards to the cake - my mam made mine and decorated it with buttercream as she's no cake decorator either. Personally, I think it looked fab and it didn't matter if it wasn't neat as that was kind of the point.