Читать книгу The High-Street Bride’s Guide: How to Plan Your Perfect Wedding On A Budget - Samantha Birch - Страница 21

This is just one reason why the size of your guest list counts: it alters your venue-spotting strategy. The best way to pin down an unusual place? Look for venues with that all-important separate hire space.

Let’s take restaurants as an example. If you’ve got a super-size group of, say, more than 100, you can try your luck with asking to hire out the whole place, but in some cases you’ll find they want you to cover the cost of all the custom they’d have got in and out of the door over the periods you want them for. That can mean – and I’d sit down here if I were you – as much as £10,000 or more if you want to hire them over lunch and dinner. For guest lists of that size, you’re better off looking at a bigger building to start off with – somewhere like a university that’s built for large numbers of people, and will have a big enough room just idly going spare.

Let’s call a medium group between 40 and 100. For this sort of size you’ve got the chance to downsize to the type of medium-to-small place that has a spare floor. Leaving downstairs free for other customers to come and go as they please means you won’t have to cover the costs of what they’d usually eat or drink, and places that haven’t been hired out for weddings before will be keener to help you if they don’t have to turn away regulars.

If you can keep your numbers intimate – in some cases as small as 10 or 15, or up to 50 to 70 if you’re lucky – you can simply hire a room. Plenty of eateries offer secluded dining areas for private parties where you can celebrate completely undisturbed, and since they rarely charge, an agreement RE food and drink spend should pretty much do the trick.

The only issue with this smallest option is entertainment – check with your venue about whether they’d be happy to clear out tables and chairs for dancing and mingling when you’re done eating, or whether they have the facilities for you to pipe in some of your own playlists. If not, can you bring your iPod and hook it up to a set of speakers? Or maybe you’ve got an unexpected way to while away the time in mind – stand-up comedy, close-up magic or a silhouette artist and some good old-fashioned conversation, anyone? Check out the Entertainment section for more ideas.