Venues in the North West

Helloo, don't worry you will find something.

Do you have a rough idea on numbers of guests, do you want everything in one place? Do you want/need accommodation?

Lots of hotels do package deals (my brother has just booked Rookery Hall in Cheshire for example) it is also worth looking at pubs (like me!) And village halls.

Yup, I certainly was!

I eventually went for the Abode in Chester, £5250 includes arrival drinks, 4 course meal for 60, bacon baguettes for 100 DJ, bridal suite, linen, cash bar, cake stand etc.

Double tree in Chester looked good too, Wychwood Golf Club and hotel in Crewe had £5000 package too including partially everything to chair covers. Theres Peover golf club too, glass walls and timber frame, beautiful! if not a touch small. Mere court in knutsford looked good too until i read there small print of 'we can increase prices at anytime' clause.

The Lord Binning near Chester has an awesome deal of a package for 50 day guests and and 100 night for £2500! Also The Crown pub and hotel in Nantwich had a similar deal at a similar price!

My advice is manor house, barns and stately house are expensive and include venue hire in the thousands!! Look at hotels*, pubs, village halls and the like, they're much more affordable

* well some hotels, some still cost an arm and leg!

Wow - thanks guys! This was very helpful.

We'd like to try and get everything in one place. Mainly because we both have really busy jobs and trying to plan around two venues sounds like an utter nightmare. But we're open to multiple sites if it comes out cheaper Accomodation I'm not too worried about as we can always plump for that outside the core wedding budget. The main issue is the size of my family...there are rather a lot of us. Whilst I don't want the world and his wife showing up for the ceremony (which I've started calling the ceremoney!), the evening reception would have to support 150 guests at minimum (counts out Rookery Hall and Wychwood though they're both beautiful).

There are some really great venues here. I'd initially counted out the Abode as it's very close to where I work (I can see it from here!), but it's actually really nice. We'll be making an appointment to look around there, and the Doubletree I think.

Abodes max capacity is 140 i think, but them that incase i have it wrong.

Another thing to consider, its petty but I was surprised by this. Cheshire East's civil ceremony is almost £200 more than Cheshire west & Chester. Just something to remember when tallying up prices!

Also dont be afraid to haggle! I haggled with Abode, got a good deal as they half the price of my evening guests and dropping the civil ceremony room hire (£200)

Peckforton Castle in Cheshire is gorgeous, if I was getting married back up north and had the budget for it I would book there in an instant. The palm house in Sefton Park, Liverpool is stunning too. I haven't been in Crewe Hall, but that has a very good reputation and is supposed to be lovely.

I wanted Peckforton Castle ... til it burned down (fix now i think) and also i heard a LOT of rumours about poor service, deposits lost etc. Crewe hall is a good one, bit pricy for me plus 2 other cousins have gotten married there so I had to rule it out

We got married at a restaurant in Knutsford:

https://larkspurlodge.co.uk/

It's probably pushing your search area a little though, and falls under the dreaded Cheshire East premium for registrars.

We had our whole day there - for 58 guests, the venue cost was about £8k. There wedding prices are "a la carte" i.e. you pick what you want from them, so what you see as our venue cost will have included some unexpected extras (for example, the table centrepieces and venue flower arrangements) and may exclude some obvious things (we had to pay separately for our DJ). To give you an idea of budget proportion, this cost represented approx 1/3 our wedding spend, which makes it quite cheap. The food is renowned as being lovely though (mentioned in the Michelin guide!), so we didn't hold back on our menu choices i.e. we could have made it cheaper if we had wanted.

It would fit your desire for low key glam perfectly. Although the dinner capacity is about 80 (they can push it to 100 if they open up another room), I think the evening reception capacity would be OK for you.

To note though - they operate on a minimum spend policy, so if you want a Saturday, you'll have to spend at least £7.5k. I think on a Sunday/Friday, that drops to £5k, then less during the week. They will negotiate though and were happy to count our bar tab and the booking of their hotel rooms as part of our minimum spend. They have exceptionally good offers for weekday weddings, which you could check out.

I went to a wedding in Peckforton.

An awful lot of style (if you like that kind of thing) over substance.

After attending our wedding, the couple who married there admitted that they wished they'd chosen our venue (which was on their shortlist)

It's fixed now, sad to hear that though.

Yeah Crewe Hall is very popular come to think of it. What about Alvaston Hall in Nantwich or Rookery Hall.

Ooh just remembered some more; Chester Zoo would be awesome, Capesthorne Hall in Macc, Wrenbury Hall, the grovesnor in Chester but if I remember rightly it's really expensive in there.

In Liverpool; Hard Days Night Hotel, Croxteth Hall, Blemheim lakeside, Hope St Hotel.

It's fixed now, sad to hear that though.

Yeah Crewe Hall is very popular come to think of it. What about Alvaston Hall in Nantwich or Rookery Hall.

Ooh just remembered some more; Chester Zoo would be awesome, Capesthorne Hall in Macc, Wrenbury Hall, the grovesnor in Chester but if I remember rightly it's really expensive in there.

In Liverpool; Hard Days Night Hotel, Croxteth Hall, Blemheim lakeside, Hope St Hotel.

Ooh and Beeston Castle, do they still do candle making there? That could be a good activity for the kids!

I can recommend Classique Florist in Crewe for flowers too if that helps.

Ahh that's a shame about Peckforton Castle, I always loved visiting there as a kid. It's a shame it's so bad as a wedding venue, if they did the right stuff with it it could be a gorgeous venue.

I had seen the Belle Epoque but thought the complete capacity was 100 and didn't pursue further. So glad to see I was wrong! We're looking to wed on October 31st, and that venue has a lovely alternative feel to it.

I have a friend who is getting married at Peckforton...yikes! I hope her wedding is one of the good ones.

Haha...I tried to talk my other half into looking at Chester zoo. His argument was we wouldn't see the kids for dust. He's not a Beatles fan either, so had to rule out Hard Days Night. A real shame as we'd recently been to a party there and it was awesome.

Loving these ideas. All my bridesmaids are too far away to contribute much to this part of the planning, and there's so much information to sort through it's kind of been blowing my mind.

Just checked - it's 160 capacity for the evening reception.

Oct 31st this year is a Thursday, so your minimum spend would be £4.5k (as you would need the entire venue).

I couldn't recommend them highly enough.

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I’m getting married at Belle Epoque in a couple of months and we have gone for a ‘package deal’ with added extras such as canapés/more booze/BBQ at night etc, just because it was easy!

I think our basic package was £3.5k for 50 people.

I don’t know how many people you are having in the day, but they do packages for 50 and 70 people and you can add extra people on too.