Weddings – Cheap and fun. Ideas? (done anything similar)?

Anyone done any elements of this/similar? How did you go about?

Idea would be huge hall with camping (or field) that can be block-booked.
Buy/hire huge kegs of Cider (where from?)
Spit roast pigs – local butchers planned ahead?

Other ideas?

My cousin-in-laws wedding was absolutely awesome Hora. Rob’s parents have a big field out the back of their house so they shoved up a BIG marquee, loads of hay bales to sit on, tables and chairs for the meal (which was a big help yourself buffet) and an old caravan they bought cheap on eBay as the (free) bar! It was flippin brilliant – by far and away the most chilled out and ace wedding I’ve ever been to.

So if you know a friendly farmer with a spare field and someone selling a cheap caravan…

Friends did something similar with a teepee tent and everyone camped.

http://www.papakata.co.uk/?gclid=COmHnafWiMECFQQTwwodrl0AIA – don’t know if it was them but looked similar.

Had a bar set up in a horse stable and toilets.

Food was picnic hampers full of local produce. Lots of games for the kids. Really fun day.

By the way – Elland Brewery do kegs. Good stuff too… Had a few for new years etc.

Mr Hinde did all the above a few years ago. Have a word with him. A Roundhouse in Mabie Forest with camping. Hog roast. Bikes. Kegs of ale. What more do you want? It was absolutely bloody brilliant!

Anyway… never mind that…. should I start writing my best mans speech then?

I’m liking this- keep it coming. It’d be in the W.Yorkshire area too.

registry office
pork pie based buffet at a good local boozer
ace holiday

win!!!

We DIY’d a lot of ours and I think it worked pretty well. In the end it still cost quite a bit but that’s what the inlaws wanted.

We rented a venue that had a field people could camp in. I camped the night before with a few friends so we had a good pre drink. Free camping for the guests. Thoroughly recommended.

We bought a load of bottled ale, cider, and lager from the supermarket when it was on special. Basically scooped up a trolley full every time we saw something good in the weeks before. We also bought a couple of barrels from the local brewery. they supplied a tap and the barrel had a deposit. Can’t beat a free bar weddings IMO. Really not a fan of drinking overpriced hotel faux ale. I built the bar from railway sleepers.

A few friends helped out with photos, supplying cakes and some booze, bit of bar organising, some DJing. Mine were happy to help. As long as it isn’t all night I think most people would like to do something.

Kids area. We set up a few tables with craft stuff and room with a DVD player to keep the kids happy so the parents could relax and enjoy themselves.

We went to a wedding a couple of weeks ago that had those tipi’s for the reception and evening do. It was really nice and much better than a traditional function room or whatever. Quite shocked at the prices though, they had 3 tipis joined together and it cost them £7k!

Edit: ton have a look at this!

Can’t beat a free bar weddings IMO.

This 1,000%. No wallets allowed on the night. A good booze up shouldn’t hurt the bride/grooms pocket either. Win all round 😀

Pit roast the pig FTW, takes about 18 hours on fire pit mark 1.
Excavator hire for the fire pit is a good idea as you cover the wrapped pig in earth to keep the heat in.
Melting pork, mmm

Sign up for Don’t tell the Bride , 12k to spend and a free wedding video .

He’s already got his benchmark for a rest classy do…..

Quick plug, sorry 🙂

A mate of mine does hog roasts, he’s Huddersfield based too Hora. They raise, butcher and roast the pigs themselves so you know where it’s coming from. They do pork pies too.

http://www.the-porkery.co.uk/

This 1,000%. No wallets allowed on the night. A good booze up shouldn’t hurt the bride/grooms pocket either. Win all round

I think we paid around £1/pint for the barrel and most of the ale/cider was 4 for £5. Basically most people could drink as much as they wanted for less than a couple of pints in a hotel. I was happy to pay that bar bill!

Cheers woody. Will add that to the file.

Binners stop posting those links and you are invited 🙂

The ‘good’ thing about the field/etc is kids can come/stay within the area if parents desire and it saves the headache of trying to find childcare arrangements.

We did this too – a big marquee in the mother/father-in-laws’s garden, car parking and portaloos in his field, bouncy castle in the field, a small (£100 single light) firework display in the field etc etc etc.

Still cost quite a bit, but that’s cos we got outside caterers in and also paid for lots of the drinks (we bought our own wines and champagne then had a ‘norml price’ paid for bar but with a hefty ‘tab’ to get the guests merry before they had to dip into their own pockets.

saves the headache of trying to find childcare arrangements.

We did get a children’s entertainer in too – we had quite a few younger children so it was nice that their parents could relax a bit more knowing the kids were being kept busy.

Dunham Massey Brewery[/url] do firkins and kilderkins and provide the pumps too. Works out about a £1 a pint and needs to be drank on the same night 🙂

Perfik. I’m going over to Germany for NY’s- I could pick up max allowance on wine on the way back (for the ladies and wino’s). Worth it though (hassle v savings?).

Depends how many wine drinkers I suppose. We had good beer and a couple of special cocktails. Meant the wine barely got touched. We just got it sale or return from the local merchant and a lot of it went back.

We hired a working barn for ours and did the whole thing up ourselves, had a pig roast and it was an absolute blast. Filled it up with wine from virgin wines so worked out really reasonable.

We also looked at hiring a boutique bowling alley in central London – which looked great and a whole lot cheaper than a usual venue.

Let me know if you want more details, I can also put you in touch with one of the guys at virgin for wine buying

what a fun collection of ideas – lots of creativity going on out there 🙂

We hired a Youth Hostel (Holmbury St Mary for Surrey Hills visitors) and stuck a marquee on the games field in the grounds.

Supported a good cause, got the place to ourselves and we could offer relatives a room for the night on us meaning hotel costs wreren’t a factor (esp for those less well off).

Beer was Shere Drop and Gilt Complex from Surrey Hills brewery. Wine was from a trip to france.

Seeing dogwalkers/MTBers faces as a whole wedding party hiked up to the top of Holmbury Hill mid afternoon was excellent 😀

TM

Cheap and fun? Don’t involve either family in the planning.

A mate and his now wife are both Scout leaders. Used their local district campsite, big marquee, hog roast, from what I recall it was a great night!

We did similar Hora,

Had a marquee at the Farm, bales and grown up games, slaughtered a Cow and 2 Sheep for the food, asked guests to bring cake & nibbles & games for the Kiddos.
We got hold of 3 kegs of Black Sheep and brought some wine over from France.
We already have some portaloos so just used those.

It went amazingly well.

How the bloody hell do I like LIKE on these posts? 😀

boutique bowling alley in central London

A little bit of me just died reading that…

We just went to Leeds registry office, then had a do at East Keswick village hall, north Leeds. and put on a vintage double decker bus to get people there.
We had a caterer do a big BBQ, then pie and pees in the evening, we put all the booze our on selves, bottled lagers when they were on special at supermarkets, keg of beer (wifes Dad knows people at copper dragon bewery) filled the car up with cheap champange and boxes of wine on a trip back from france.
would have liked a band but left it too late to book a decent one so just got a DJ instead.

Our wedding came in at about 5K for everything inc dresses and suits for the wife, the kids and me.

Oh and we had a bouncy castle outside for the kids.

We hired a local village hall – was about £250.

Food was a BBQ, we bought a few whole sirloins from Costco and carved them ourselves + various posh sausages and Chicken.
Had a local guy bring a huge gas BBQ and cook it all.

(BBQ was very well received, was funny watching elderly relatives dashing back to their tables with about a kilo of meat balanced on their plates!)

Drink – we gave it all away (buying drinks at weddings is a bit wrong) wine was ‘buy 2 get one free’ from the local off-licence, they let us have it on sale or return, and did free glass hire.
We bought cans of beer/Guiness/cider from ASDA on one of their ‘3 crates for £20’ deals.

Everyone who came seemed to enjoy it, although most people can’t remember much after about 9pm…

Can’t remember what it all cost, but i’m sure we didn’t go over £6k for everything, including dresses/cars.

Music-wise what did you do?

I’ve recently watched locally two folk bands:

https://www.facebook.com/TheRubberDuckOrchestra

https://www.facebook.com/sipsmithandtwine

But they can’t play non-stop all night can they so you’d need a stereo of some sort? Or a bloke speaking northern commentary/poetry with a guitar inbetween?

http://www.purenorthciderpress.com/ get your cider from here in Deanhouse near Netherthong. Here http://thenookbrewhouse.co.uk/ for the beer in Holmfirth.

Hire the village Hall at Upperthong here, http://www.upperthong.org.uk/?page_id=18

The cricket club should let you camp if you ask nice and offer a little money.

A pre-wedding bike ride would be great from there.

This may have been done successfully by others.

wow, cheers mt. Meat on the bone 😀

Ooo, that, piggy from Hudds etc.. Could a wedding based in Gods own CountRy work? 😀

See if you can get the Betrunken Wurst Band to play. Oompah versions of modern songs, conducted by a drunken band leader dressed in lederhosen. Seen them a couple of times and they are blooming brilliant – from Huddersfield too 🙂

https://www.facebook.com/betrunkenwurst?v=info

Slaidburn village hall for ours – it was great!

hora – Member
Music-wise what did you do?

Hmmm, we were lucky, some of our mates are DJ’s.. We also had a collection of fave songs from each family played. They’d select 5 from thier past/faves and we got them all together and had best part of an hour and half played whilst folks mingled and ate.

We also had lots of games for both kids/families together. Sort of mixed up the families into small teams and then had things like treasure hunts and pin the tail on the donkey, silly stuff but it certaily worked bringing all the under 7’s into game mode late pm before they scuttled off to bed.
We then took turns on guard whilst the kids dropped off, just in case one decided the adults were having too much fun and wanted to rejoin.

Can you get hold of some wheelbarrows? we had some cracking races around the fields, one in the barrow, one on the handles, swapping then carrying on.. etc. whilst the music blared away.
😆

I had England vs France football match in 30° heat with suits on ,would you Adam an Eve it England won.(i was reff and the rules were pretty flexible).

We used an ipod, some speakers and an amp after our band cancelled on us last minute.

“Could a wedding based in Gods own CountRy work?”

You make cheap enough lad and they’ll come from as far a way as Brighouse.

Loving all these ideas, ours was similar – Hired a common room and its garden from a local school as it was in holiday time, ran a (free on 1 months trial) spotify playlist through a stereo for our day time music then got a mates band in to play the evening, had a ploughmans as a wedding breakfast, making sure all the bread / pies / hams etc were uncut to encourage my highly antisocial family to talk to each other and share stuff.
Had hay bales and a few gazebos in the garden that we had begged / borrowed from friends, along with Frisbee and a cricket set (even the wife had a bat. In her dress!) All the booze was brought in advance so no-one had to spend any money on the night. Had enough left to give bottles away the next day as payment for the clean up to the guests that we roped into acting as designated drink replenishers.
The only thing we paid proper money for was a BBQ for the evening guests. You just need to think about numbers, location and different ways of doing it. I still swear it was the best party I’ve ever had.

Like Wallop, our band cancelled/upped the price, we hired a PA and plugged the iPod into it. ( I spent a fun evening with Tangerine making up random playlists of about an hour each and some old fave in another list and switched between them during the evening).

Question- on the two bands that cancelled. Was it a Saturday (i,e opportunity for the band to find an easier/closer/gig to play on a Saturday night? and make an excuse up?). For a band to cancel on a wedding is out of order. I imagine they pulled ‘singers voice’?!