Village Hall wedding - Getting Staff in to assist

Who's doing your buffet - have you thought about asking your caterers to provide the drinks service too? We are having a hot fork buffet for our hall wedding, they are also serving our drinks and keeping table wine/water topped up (but not actually serving the wine to guests, they will pour it themselves at the tables). We are providing the drink ourselves and like you, just wanted someone to keep things ticking over/put out drinks. We wanted a really informal wedding, so our caterers are just doing the minimal to keep things going, as well as serving the hot food to guests when they come up table by table. I didn't want to ask family or friends to help as I wanted everyone to enjoy themselves and not stress about serving people, etc. If you are having someone cater for your buffet, it would be worth asking them about what they can do to help. If not, you could try agencies that supply staff for events, but this can be quite costly and you will probably also need to pay for some kind of manager to oversee the waiter staff. OH used to work for one of these agencies years ago, so that's how we know about it, but we're doing everything through our caterers.

We are having a village hall wedding. Still sorting out caterers but most caterers seem to include staff to clear tables etc. Is your buffet through a catering company or are you doing it yourselves?

Have you looked to see if there are any local community groups that might run a bar. Apparently in the village where I'm getting married theres a local community group who try to raise money for community events and one of the things they do is run bars at village hall events. Then all the money made on the bar goes back into the local community. Also have you considered the cost of the alcohol licence if you are going to be selling the alcohol. The hotel opposite the village hall has a bar and they have told us they can run a bar however we would need to pay for the licence ourselves as well as pay the extra staff to run and have a bouncer on the door.

You could try seeing if any of your friends have friends who have hospitality experience. I once worked at a wedding where I was a friend of one of the guests. They had a low key wedding in a local hall. All I had to do was provide champagne top ups after the ceremony and help set up the buffet (some of the wedding party helped here). The food had all been provided by friends and family. Then I just had to make sure plates were cleared. During the evening part of the reception me and a couple of guys ran a small bar. Can't remember what was on sale but think it was mostly soft drinks, wine and cans of beer. For someone with minimal hospitality experience they should be able to manage this. The best man (or maybe he was an usher) I think had some hospitality experience and was quite good at briefing us on what to do.