Venues

Depends the kind of person you are? Are you good at looking for bargains to hire/buy in for the £6k one? I’m that person and that’s what we are doing. But if you don’t have time etc don’t add stress go for the dearer one. Just make sure it’s worth all that money. Is the £6k one a DIY? If so you may need a wedding planner to run your wedding day for you? Does the dearer one have that included in the price? Write it all down and see your pros and cons. Good luck.

I looked into a venue where we would have to hire everything separately. I never got to the point of contacting caterers etc for personalised quotes but from what I could see online I just wasn't going to save enough money to justify the amount of time it would take to plan everything. However, I get stressed easily and I don't have a lot of patience! Like Shay says, if you're good at looking for bargains (plus if you like DIY etc) the £6,000 option may be great for you!

I imagine that weddings where you have to hire everything in would also be a lot more stressful on the days leading up to the wedding, the morning itself and also afterwards - don't forget you will probably need to clean up in a limited amount of time! If you have family and friends who can pitch in, or you can hire a wedding planner just for the actual day, then these things won't seem like problems!

I'm SO PLEASED we went for a package deal. It's actually insane how much stuff you have to hire in otherwise and it's so expensive to hire even really basic things like chairs! It takes a lot of stress away from having to find a load of vendors also available on that date, and when it's part of a package venues are usually so much more willing to move stuff around for you to work for different parts of the day and sort out the clean up too.

We did an excerise in curiosity a little while ago and researched the costs, and it definitely would have been a lot more expensive for us if we'd gone down the hire route than the package route.

As others have said though, it's dependent how much you might be able to DIY or have access to within your social circles, so it might be more achievable for you than it would have been for us!