Engaged. hurrah. What venue for the young & poor?

The hipsters are scuppering our ideas by inflating the prices of charming places built of wood.

I’m looking to become a genius by coming up trumps with a venue that is just a space who will let us do the rest ourselves.

Anywhere in Scotland, preferably around a city.

Coping mechanisms from FionceTrackWorld also required.

Congratulations!

I have no suggestions but am shamelessly bookmarking as my other half proposed 10 days ago and we have a similar wish list

IF I were looking to get hitched a again, I would buy a s***load of cheap and nasty pop up tents, sleeping bags, sleeping mats and barbecues and head for a beach with half the stock of the local offie and the local butchers and get everyone to meet me there.

I reckon I could do that for about 30% of the cost of our lovely wedding 🙂

You need a village hall or something similar which should cost little find one with a bar and kitchen and sort the rest yourself ?

You have the right idea: A friend of mind got married and they chose a 5 star resort. On each table there were 10 people but because the price of booze was so high, they only allowed 3 bottles of wine per table. We ended up going up and buying our own wine @ £25 per bottle for the cheapest house plonk.

I wish more people would think of their guests when booking a venue.

No actual suggestions I’m afraid as we got married 3 weeks ago in Dorset. As a pair of poor graduates, we went for a local village hall, and then trawled ebay for bunting and fairy lights to decorate it.

Most of the afternoon and evening were spent outside on the field playing rounders, welly wanging and generally mucking about. We also did speeches outside (so we didnt need/ have a PA system)

It wasn’t my definition of cheap, but with a hog roast (went for a local butcher rather than a catering company) and bring your own booze it was about 25% of even the cheapest all inclusive hotel weddings. Our biggest extravagance was a local folk band, who played a couple of sets so energetic we didnt need a DJ as well!

+1 on the village hall, we had our do in a village hall 3 years ago. Got a caterer to do a big barbecue and got a DJ, wanted a band but left it too late for the good ones!!

They let us decorate the place how we wanted and we had the place from Friday lunchtime to Sunday lunchtime. Was great.

We also bought loads of wine/bubbly from France and bottled beers from supermarkets when they were on spesh and told people if they wanted cocktails bring a bottle but the rest is free.

Stoner +1

You’ll need a backup plan given the weather’s unpredictability in Scotland but if I had my time again, I’d do that.

We had a cracking wedding onna cheap – everyone knew we were skint, all invited knew it and made he best of a wee hotel, buffet and ceilidh band – and they’re still talking about it 20 years on!.

Moral is – invite those who are there for the right reasons, do music and as much grub as you can offers and enjoy it!

Advice regarding the fiancé? May as well start off on the right foot – she’s right, even when she’s wrong!

Village hall, get friends to cook rather than gifts, have the biggest party ever – no-one leaves until sun up. Everyone would remember it way more than the usual Scottish castle and bagpipes nonsense

No clue but congrats

How cheap is cheap?

We spent ~5k in total (I think, been 5 years nearly) which was venue, dress, rings and all that stuff plus a sizeable portion of the honeymoon which is miles below the ridiculous figures that get flung about. Of course it helped that my FIL is a wedding photographer and the video was a favour called inbut it’s not hard to have a great wedding on the cheap. We had ours at Culcreuch Castle in Fintry which is an easy (hired) bus trip from Glasgow. No cars to worry about, reasonable rates for the rooms, easy use of the hall.

Going cheaper a wedding I’m going to this year is at a Scout camp. I imagine lots of tents or a hall will be the choice of venue. You may be lucky enough to find a hall or farm that does functions, kinda like this but cheaper (in fact that’s the wedding I was at!) bearing in mind that costs can be brought down considerably the more you do yourself and the more you decide is utter toss that can be forgotten about.

Friends of mine used this place last year, sourced a band, did a BBQ and provided their own beer (the groom owns a brewery).
http://www.morayvillagehalls.org.uk/hallhire/inchberry.html

Some folk camped outside the hall too

Edit: Congratulations!

I’m looking to become a genius by coming up trumps with a venue that is just a space who will let us do the rest ourselves

I give you Kinloch Ard village hall:

It is a stunning spot.

Ok, I’m just gonna say it – moaaab wins teh interweb!

That looks fantastic!

By the way – it has big kitchen two rooms, stage, loos, BBQ area (with massive oil drum BBQ’s, parking and its own meadow down to a loch shore beach.

A friend has her summer birthday party there every year – cue 30 canoes/kayaks/inflatables, a hundred people and kids and picnic time..

And if you want some post wedding ‘fun’….a short paddle away is..
Autumn Canoe on Loch Ard by Matt Robinson[/url], on Flickr

Village hall. But one not too close to houses, the police came to our wedding twice to turn the (borrowed) PA down. Stunning views and ‘local’ rate was about £40. Few barrels of local brew, 300 Cornish pasties.
Probably cost less than my new set of wheels.

Don’t go for a marquee, used to put up hundreds of them for weddings every summer, far from a cheap option, even for a basic one.

Station Bar, Middle Street 🙂

Comrie croft has a byre they use for weddings, accommodation on site as well and hotels nearby. Comrie Croft.

Oooh, Comrie is another good one.

And Big Shed on Loch Tay – quite ‘hippy’ and simple.

It overlooks this chappy.

Its a shame my mate Jim sold Cantle, or I would have suggested that:

Village hall +1. We had ours at Slaidburn and Iowa s great. That Kinlochard one looks fantastic.

This reminds me we’ve been engaged for about 20 years – should probably get around to getting married at some point, but no rush 😉

Do you know anyone with a weatherproof barn and some land they don’t mind a hole in?

Clean and decorate barn, cook a pig in the hole on fire pit mark 1 for 16 hours. Get married about 3 hours before the pig is due out of the hole. Bit of photography, then the chaps excavate the hot food and feasting begins.

My sisters wedding on the Fens. The pig going into the hole looked like a body dump to the two coppers that drove past at just the wrong moment.

We had ours at my wife’s old school. Fully fitted out kitchen meant we could get our own caterers in, and decorating the ‘dining hall’ was a better option for the night before than a lad’s stag, as far as I’m concerned. Add in a local ceilidh band, a few friends with talent to be our photographers, 4 firkins from the local brewery and 100 cocktail cornish pasties delivered at 10pm to fend off the munchies, and most people had a cracking time. I know I did!

Village hall was our Plan B, but if we / our guests were a little younger (and we’d thought of it), Stoner’s suggestion in the 3rd post would take some beating.

Congrats, by the way, just remember whose day it is. And if things don’t quite go as planned, who gives a whotsit? It’s just a party to celebrate 2 people who love each other to bits.

I don’t have a great awareness of Scottish wedding venues, and in any case dont think I can top some of the location suggestions above. wow!

Our own wedding was a very low key day, civil ceremony late morning, then a small restaurant full of people for a relaxed lunch at our favourite Chinese place.

bestest wedding I ever went to (apart from my own of course) was great not because of where it was, although that was good, but because what the couple to-be asked for as gifts was: a item of food to share. this meant that every guest really thought hard and resulted in an almost unbelievable selection of incredible food. all they had to provide was some quality disposable plates and cutlery. I like food, I like to cook (and actually used to cook professionally) but I’ve never seen such an amazing array!

Please, please remember that weddings are about people! You and your other half and those friends you choose to invite. everything else, and really, I do mean everything else is incidental. So many people get caught up in thinking that flowers on tables are important (and so many other bits of inconsequential crap) and lose sight of what the day is actually about. sounds like you have the right idea

grey – I honestly thought for a minute you were suggesting a nissen hut in the old Cultybraggan camp! Although now I think of it, if she likes vintage…

Groupon have packages on regularly for wedgings round our way. Usually includes so many guests, a cake etc etc

Its a shame my mate Jim sold Cantle

Did he? It still shows up on rightmove – I look at it from time to time and tell myself ‘if only I had a million quid, I’d have that!”

He sold it to a company….who then decided they don’t want, so are flipping it on I believe.

Congrats! 🙂

I’m looking to become a genius by coming up trumps with a venue that is just a space who will let us do the rest ourselves.

Anywhere in Scotland, preferably around a city.

I was looking into a big, cheap space with a bit of character a while back in Glasgow.

If you fancy something in a city, the community services teams within each areas council can give you a list of the buildings/venues that are available for hire. Some are surprisingly inexpensive and they offer additional services (such as arranging a licence/bar).

Congratulations to the OP.

I really wish I’d had moaa’s career adviser!

You say that until you see my payslip. 🙁

You say that until you see my payslip.

Yes, a friend of mine advertised a job the other day on Facebook that thought would suit me as a “last job before retirement” – a number of senior watersports instructor tickets required, line managing a team of instructors, unsociable hours and a shed load of other responsibility; in a not particularly cheap part of the south coast of England – £18K.

We’re getting married in the soon to be MrsMomos parish church (about an hour away from our home) and then coming back to ours for the reception in the garden, have hired in a big marquee (c£1300 with tables, chairs and a dancefloor), bogs (£500) and hog roast for 200 (£800). We went to france on a booze run a few weeks ago for wine, lager and sparkling wine, need to order a couple of kegs of ale and some cider and that’s the booze sorted, total cost c£800.
We’ve got a ceilidh band which MrsMomo used to play with doing us a cheap rate and we asked everyone to request a song which I’ll compile into a playlist for when the band isn’t on.
We’ve roped a bunch of friends in to help decorate the marquee in the days up to the wedding and the mother in law has been busy making bunting for the last 6 months.
All in we think we’re somewhere around the £7k mark including the dress.

We only had 30 guests at a nice hotel for our wedding. Mother in law and her friend did the flowers gratis, my mum mate the cake, wife’s uncle (trained baker) iced it, wife’s god father was president of the 2CV Club so that was the wedding car…..cost less than our 3 week honeymoon to Canada.

All depends on the desire/pressure for a big flouncy wedding. I know a few people who’ve done it as a fuddle for next to nothing.

@convert – it’s endemic in the industry sadly.

Congratulations

We did a four figure wedding by using a local brewery in Northumberland. They didnt charge any hire, chairs etc – just ask you drank their beer (not hard!). My brother provided the meat for the BBQ, my Mum pulled in some favors for some non wedding cakes, my wedding dress was in the sale, the suits came from M&S, my bridesmaid, Aunt, Mum and friends helped arrange all the flowers, decorations were sourced off of eBay (and re sold afterwards!) and the local car hire company did us a really good local rate. The biggest expense was the photographer, but that is one thing I am really really glad we paid for.

We even got featured on a wedding blog![/url]

Key things I suggest, dont try and grow your own flowers (its not worth the stress) – I ended up panic ordering flowers from Holland 2 weeks before (though we did arrange them ourselves in jam jars that everyone had been saving for a year!). Transport does add cost (in our case only ~£250) but if your wedding and reception are next to each other, that helps. Keep the guest list down (every guest adds cost and you wont get to speak to them all anyway!). We only paid for the welcome drinks, but as it was only £2/pint no-one seemed to mind.

All in all, have fun!

+1 for doing it cost effectively. I’ve been invited to a wedding and when i rang up to book a hotel room is £295 a night ! **** that. I asked them if I could park my camper somewhere and pay to use the facilties, to be fair the bloke was nonplussed and said that he would sort me out somewhere to put it. Its not that i can;t pay that much, i just flat out refuse to !

Congratulations! As has been said, those people who want to attend will make the effort so if you are skint don’t worry about putting on too much, keep it simple and expect people to be able to transport themselves.

Been to a number of cheaper weddings which were all fab. One was at Hawkshead YHA where the couple hired the whole venue out for the weekend. Some of us stayed in the dorms, the families tended to stay in B&Bs. Registrar office (Kendal) on the Saturday mid-morning, sorted ourselves out for lunch while the couple had their photos taken and then had fish & chips delivered from the local take-away for tea. Got full use of the kitchen and pool room with activities to keep everyone occupied. Had music on an iPod.

Even cheaper was camping in a friend’s Dad’s field – I am sure you could hire somewhere if you ask around? Something like the Private Camping company in the Lakes. Big marquee (you can never guarantee the weather), few portaloos rented and you can ask friends to bring food, beer and games / activities.

The cheapest by far was just registrar office then to a pub around the corner that allowed the couple to use a back room and kitchen (friends did the food) as long as the group bought a certain number of pints over the day – which they more than managed.

Register office wedding in historic Rutland building followed by morris dancing in the square (picking up the bride etc) then buffet upstairs in pub, speeches and open bar for 12 hours. Not much over a grand all in despite some of the musicians’ predilections. Best wedding I’ve attended.

Also look at country homes / hotels that are just going into the wedding venue game (not everywhere has a licence).

We got Hazlewood Castle (between York and Leeds so not Scotland) in their first year of doing weddings seriously.

Spectacular venue that was the same price as the Best Western (so not cheap but not astronomical). Staff couldn’t have been more helpful.

A year later some friends looked at it and the price had more than doubled.

Some tips.

Echoing the buy your wine in France, a long weekend tasting wine while sitting in the boot of our car watching a tricycle race, gave us a bottle and a half per person (still and sparkling combined) for less than the hotel drinks package even after corkage.
Good Samur is as good as all but the very best Champagne and costs less than cheap Champagne. 99% of your guests will see French sparkling and think Champagne – the remaining 1% will nod knowingly and appreciatively.
Getting married on a Sunday save a bucket load of cash – but your guests may need the Monday off. Depending on where you all live that’s not an issue because a Saturday wedding often necessitates a Friday off.