Small wedding for older bride - venues don't seem to want me:(

Hiya Merigold!

Basically, the packages that the venues are selling are cheap because they make money back on extras. The bar, chaircovers, more canapes, more welcome drinks etc.

If you only have 20 guests, the 'up sell' for your wedding will be a minimum, therefore, not of interest to them Sorry!

You could always book the wedding for 50 guests, but just have 20 people turn up? I can't see how they can stop you? Make sure you check the T&C's THOROUGHLY before you do that though!

Alternatively, you could get married at a local registry office and then just hire a nice restaurant for the evening. I'm sure they'd be a lot more accommodating!

Pete x

I am from that area (live in London but from Hants / Surrey borders and having wedding in villages around Guildford) so might be able to think of some places. Where have you already tried? I can think of a few places that have different sized function rooms for smaller or larger parties. You might not have exclusive use but does that matter to you? Here are some I thought of:

http://www.guildford.com/weddings-and-ceremonies

https://www.angelpostinghouse.com/

https://all.accor.com/hotel/6621/index.en.shtml#origin=mercure

Or have you thought about going to a restaurant or nice country pub? There are loads in that sort of area and Guildford registry office is in quite a picturesque setting considering how central it is.

I imagine the hotels use packages as loss leaders to generate bar and hotel room spend from your guests so if you take the numbers down, they see it being less profitable. However with your numbers, budget and the things you are not fussed about spending money on, you should be able to find something nice in this area.

I'm sure that these venues would have calculated the cost of these packages to optimise their profit from these 'smaller' weddings. I can completely understand why it's not 'worth their while' in financial terms to have fewer people than this, but that obviously doesn't help your situation.

BUT the beauty of your position is that you can be so much more flexible than just having a 'typical' hotel wedding!

We're having 50 guests and we've just booked the registry office and a local restaurant / bar for ours. The whole thing (ceremony, food, booze on tables, evening buffet plus room hire) is costing £3k!

I'm 45 and a second time around bride! We didn't want a huge do, so whilst looking at venues, I came across https://montaguarmshotel.co.uk/ .........I told them I only planned to have 15-20 guests and they were fine with this, they will host my ceremony FOC if booked between Oct - Apr, costs work out around £100 per head, with chair covers extra but that's fine ?

I don't think that what you're after is an issue, but more the venues you've been to so far wanting to make money from their weddings. It's probably about finding a more intimate venue who is more flexible in their approach.

We got married in April 2011, it's my second marriage & we got married in our local register office (situated in the recently (just before our wedding) refurbished town hall), then went onto a meal & then a separate venue for our evening reception. During the daytime, there were only 18 of us in all. For the evening, we had approx 125 in the end. We didn't go mad with decor or have to resort to doing loads of diy stuff. Due to our budget limits, we were looking for venues that were within budget financially. I think, off the top of my head, that the 3 course meal (in a secluded conservatory of a local 4 star hotel), with arrival drinks, wine with meal & sparkling wine for toast came to about £500 for the 18 of us. The table was set up in white linen/tablecloths/napkins, we gave name cards & favours to the hotel to put out on the table for us & the table centrepieces were silver candelabra's with lit white candles. We could take in our own cd for music, had 2 designated staff & the hotel went out of their way to help us - especially as we only spent £500 for the meal & drinks. We did however stay there overnight & also recommended the hotel to evening guests (a few did book & stay there).

The evening venue (a lovely set up YMCA sports venue function room) cost us about £1,250 for room hire, a buffet for 100 & a disco & dj. It was a cash bar. We paid about another £50 - £100 table decor.

I'd be tempted to look at boutique hotels or those who have smaller function rooms. When we initially looked round at venues & gave rough number ideas, we were met with some who wouldn't take us due to lack of day time numbers, or who would want a minimum spend, or where we couldn't see 18 of us rattling around in a room with space for 200.

We are hiring a pub. 45 day, 80-90 evening, plenty food and drink for £3,000.

Have you tried Frensham Pond Hotel, near Farnham? We are getting married there and they definitely do the packages for larger weddings but the wedding coordinator is lovely and i'm sure she'd let you know straight away if a small wedding is possible. It's a small wedding venue so I dont see why not! x

We're also having a smaller wedding with only 28 of us during the day but we did find somewhere. When we were looking on the web, I spent a lot of time looking at the small print and a lot of the larger venues had minimum numbers so we just ruled them out straight away. Keep on looking and I bet you'll come across somewhere perfect before too long!

Hey it won't be an age thing, it'll simply be about the size and how much money they can fill the room with per head. The same issue occurs when someone wants like 1-2 hours of photography, sadly we'll be less inclined to take it simply because we're be losing out on money by not being able to fill that full with a full day's booking. You could, as others say go for registry office+ gastro pub, a lot of my couples have done that!

I agree with Pete. You can get some gorgeous restaurants so I would book the meal for there.

Hello

Chin up we are having similar numbers to you its definitely doable .

Basically as others have mentioned forget wedding packages most venues will not offer them to smaller weddings for reasons already mentioned.

In fact I found many venues do not even advertise their smaller function rooms in the wedding sections of their websites despite them being licensed for wedding ceremony's. So check their 'meeting rooms' and private dinning spaces too.

This was in our top 3 https://aviatorhampshire.com/ our quote for 30 people was in your budget and that was not having the cheapest of everything. (This was in 2011 for 2013 wedding)

We also viewed this one https://www.handpickedhotels.co.uk/woodlandspark (I think our quote was cheaper than Aviators)

Good luck in your search!

We are having 30 people too and our problem was we wanted to find somewhere that wouldn't feel like it was too grand for our small group. We were thinking of going to the registry office (ours is quite pretty and has big gardens) and then booking our part of a restaurant for afterwards, but then I had a little mooch on our local council website at approved venues for ceremonies and found a gem. It's run by our local council and I guess that's what makes it cheaper than most, a lovely grade II listed tudor style building, and the venue hire for the whole day was just under £400 (plus the £354 for the registrar to come out) and they don't have minimum numbers for the catering. There's no package, the wedding breakfast will average about £28pp, drinks package £24pp, evening buffet £8pp. The wedding coordinator there didn't seem at all fussed when we mentioned our small numbers, and the lady I was talking to at the registry office when we gave our notice was actually really enthusiastic about it and started telling us how to make the most of the venue, sitting the chairs around the fireplace for the ceremony etc as we could make the most of the room.

So anyway, I didn't mean to go on about mine (as much as it makes me warm and fuzzy) but just hopefully show you that it's doable.

Wow guys - some excellent tips - thank you!

Especially liking the look of the Aviator - I know my H2B will really like it, I had actually dismissed it because I thought it would be out of my price range.

I will be calling some of the recommended venues.

I'll let you guys know where we ultimatley book.

Our quote for Aviator was around the £4k mark but that was with the most expensive food and wine options, (plus cocktails in the evening) They have a few rooms which caterer for smaller numbers and 2 booth type areas which are a nice option to break out to in the evening (they were not charging 'room hire' for the booths when we went so it helps keep the cost down a little too) hopefully the prices have not gone up too much, Chelsea the wedding coordinator (if she still works there) was also very nice, and the bedrooms/suites are beautiful.

Yeah I tend to agree with everyone here, instead of set packages to look off the beaten track, rustic pubs, restaurants and the ilk,