Village Hall Experiences?

It can really vary. looking at village halls for my parents ruby wedding prices were varying from £200 right up to £850, and that was without the 'w' word!!! some wanted extra for using their tables and chairs, some it was included.

i finally found a venue which wasn't a hall at all- it's a small gallery and it's only costing £180. it doesn't have a bar, but i'm hiring one for free- they make their money on sales and they organise the licence for me at cost price (£36 but that varies from county to county), and food is M&S catering coming in at under £200.

my best advice is to keep shopping and look at options. look at venues who don't have bars or catering because alternative options can be sourced fairly cheaply. a lot of bar companies will do the licencing stuff for you. and hog roast companies often provide enough staff to keep it from being too DIY food wise.

ultimately costs will vary in the same way that they will with hotels etc.

we got married in a private stately home whose attached caterers are award winners- and yet somehow they were the cheapest place we enquired at!

we've had two friends who married village hall style and both had vastly different budgets. but both weddings were stunning from a guest pov and i know both brides were thrilled with their days.

shop around hun- and good luck! xxx

I have booked a recently renovated community hall which the owner inherited. For over 48 hour hire, pa, lush red sofas, chairs, kitchen and tables, upstairs space and alcohol licence it is costing us 300 pounds. It is a blank space which i love so we can put our stamp on it.

We much prefer this option over an overpriced wedding factory with shocking corkage fees and rules amd regulations that we initially booked before we heard about our new place :-)

We've got a village hall - paid a bit more to get it from earlier on the Friday, and have it until Sunday lunchtime. Includes full use of the chairs and tables, and the site has a main hall and a smaller room we'll use for food and as a quiet spot for the oldies ?. That all comes to £450, but we're having their bar open as well, which is an extra £50. If they didn't have an on-site bar and rules about not being able to sell alcohol, we'd have hired a bar for free where they make their money in sales profits. That's for a place in a little village in the middle of the New Forest, which can be a quite expensive area.

There were other places for around half the cost, but from the outside they looked like public toilet blocks or my old school sports hall! I'm happy to pay a bit extra for the whole weekend for somewhere that looks gorgeous and has a little stream running through the garden ?. We also need as much time to set up as poss as it's half an hour fro where I live and from where we get married, and I don't want to be worrying about tidying up at the end of the night, even if we will have to get up reasonably early Sunday to get there lol.

Main thing is it's a blank canvas so we can decorate as much or as little as the budget allows as we want to

My OH and I opted to rent a hall for our evening do, we've ended up with a lovely village hall which has cost us £800 with £100 returnable deposit.
We can decorate it on the Friday night, and will have the Sunday morning to clear up. There's a local bar that the caretaker at the hall recommends, so we booked them for an additional £100.
Originally we were hoping not to spend that much but the hall is very nice and there's lots of options to add our own decorations, make it a little bit more 'us'.
Plus the hall has quite a few rooms so there's space to have the buffet in a separate room and also somewhere where people can sit down and have a quiet chat if they prefer

I've immediately discounted ones which look like public toilets! I just can't justify so much money on a venue when our original plan was rent a function room at a gorgeous restaurant for £150! It only seats 30 though so we are pushing it with guests, and obviously can't bring in any of our own food we were wanting like a sweet buffet!

Sorry to hijack this post but just wanted to ask heavy metal maiden... Do you mind me asking how you got out of your initial contract if you had one? i'm having venue wobbles but i've resigned myself to the fact that I can't get out of the contract we have

Catbox - sorry, it is in South Wales! Im sure there will be lots of hidden gems where you are!

Hallowedding - we havent cancelled it yet, so far we have just paid a non refundable deposit. We are hoping to get at least half of it back from the cottages we HAD to hire, as if they dont resell the date for a wedding they can resell to holiday makers. Hopefully that will work, but if not at least we tried. I will keep you posted and wish u luck with your situation :-)

Where abouts in west yorks are you? I know the Leeds Met uni buildings can be rented my friend had her wedding reception in one last year it was amazing! Not sure on the cost but would deffinately look in to it.

We've booked a local village hall for our reception, it's £375 for the Saturday, tables and chairs included as well as the PA system. The bar will also be open and we don't have to pay nay extra for it.

We knew we wanted a VH as I am quite crafty and like the idea of a DIY wedding as well as not having a huge budget. We found some that were £200 right up to £750 so they do vary, it just depends what you want to do. The one we have booked has a main room, a smaller room and a massive outdoor area and that's what won it for us really.

What I did learn while looking was that you need to check the times they allow you to have the hall for, ours has a dance class that needs cancelling in the morning for example.

We're paying £500 for our village hall. This is for the saturday all day from 8.30am to 1am sunday. We can't have it on the Friday as it is booked but we can drop stuff off. This includes their music system (for between the bands), the main room with bar and coffee bar, a separate chill out room, and the conservatory for welcome drinks (and the cheese boards in the evening), and the kitchen. We get tables, chairs, and tablecloths. It would also inlcude crockery and cutlery but I'm supplying my own as I don't like theirs. They set everything up, do all the table clearing and washing up, put all my decorations up, set tables, put out table centres and favours etc. They also do all the cleaning and clearing away. They staff the bar, serve welcome drinks, and serve tea and coffee and the ice-creams we're having from the coffee bar. They are phenomenal!

My daughter was searching for a village hall for her engagement party and had prices coming in from £500 to £850 just for hire, then she found a place in Chichester which was really nice and you could easy have a wedding reception but they said she could have it for free and the staff will set it all up for her, they only wanted her to have the paid bar where the guests pay for their own drinks, she did put quite a bit behind the bar for this but it was a really a good night.

We are having our reception in a village hall in Oxfordshire. Hire of the hall only is £250 this is from Friday lunchtime till Sunday lunchtime so we can set up and clear up. We are then having strings of lights which is £355 and having to sort out a bar license ourselves (thats only £21 pound though). Look for halls in small villages as these are likely to be cheaper. Just make sure you budget carefully as you can easily end up spending more than you expected as you have to hire everything separately.

For food we are having a pizza van! When I was looking around I found these guys in Yorkshire if you fancy pizza, they were really nice when i spoke to them.

http://www.artisanpizzacompany.co.uk/index.html

X

I've found another hall that is £350, plus £50 deposit. Much more manageable! No Marquee lining but FH doesn't like that anyway, doesn't include glasses or crockery/cutlery though or tablecloths (£6 each to hire). Neither of us like chair covers so no worries there!

Just had a look at the pizza guys, looks pretty good but their minimum number of pizzas is more than our number of guests!

Sounds pretty good to me! Ours includes plates but we said no to their cutlery as it didn't all match (fussy i know!) and we need to sort out our own bar and glasses etc.

That just means that that will be the minimum amount they will charge you. Ours has a minimum order of 80 people we are only having 70. Depends on your budget really, we thought it was still pretty good value for us as it works out as just over £14 a head. But i guess if your only having 20 people that would work out as expensive!

I have been emailing their wedding coordinator.. Turns out prices haven't been updated on their website!!! It's £450 total not £400 so I can't complain. We get full use of the kitchen therefore crockery and cutlery, and the bar is now included so we get glasses too!

I may give the pizza guys a quick email and see. Me and FH are both vegan so were going to cater the whole thing vegan, so it would just be a case of missing the mozzarella off the pizzas, but I worry the guests will get bored of basically 4 different versions of tomato bread!

If the other restaurant would get back to me it would be great, they do amazing vegetarian curry dishes, loads of variety, but think it'll be about £28 per head, ouch!