… as both mothers now have found their outfits.
We went to the Solent Hotel again for Valentines day and saw another wedding going on. The bride looked really pretty and really made me feel like it won’t be long now, which I suppose it won’t be.
Graham
I’ll post a bit more later on but I thought I’d post these photos from Flickr of the venue done up nicely (for a wedding exhibition)
Angle 1 (Click for more)
Angle 2
Suit hire should have just got a little easier. It seems that there is a Moss Bros in Hull now (at the top of House of Fraiser) so everyone who needs a suit now has one. Should make everyone match a little easier.
There is also a Moss just behind the hotel to make it even easier to drop them off.
Forgotten to say we have finally started spending our money.
The venue now has a £750 deposit down on it and the council has 25 of our earth pounds to save the date.
Our letter said that they arrange all the details 10 weeks beforehand but I think that we (or should I say Amy) will be arranging things well before then.
Graham
So now we’ve nearly got an initial booking for a venue. Graham has been exchanging emails with the hotel and we’ve got some dates to choose from. The next step is wedding insurance from the looks of it. Now this cost as much 28 or 78 quid, dependent on the value of the wedding. We have a more modest budget then your average wedding, you’re average weding being being around 15k it seems…hehe we’ve decided to not be that extravagant. We were looking at various insurers on a web based money saving guide Graham uses, and looked at Greenbee and Confetti. Now something strange was going on there. They both have exactly the same form to fill in when buying it online!! Why is that I wondered? They’re both underwritten by the same company from what I can tell, yet charge different prices!! Lol
Our venue search up to now has been the following cycle
Nearly without exception.
The only place that seems to be the exception to this is the first place on our list. The Solent Hotel where we got engaged in the first place.
This hotel’s prices work on the ‘All Inclusive’ model that some people like and some hate. I really like the idea of letting someone else do all the hard work but I think that Amy would like a bit more of a hands on role. The compromise will probably come in the centrepieces.
Solent has a price per head of somewhere between £80 and £100 for the wedding breakfast, food, bar drinks, wine at the meal, toastmaster, etc. Impressivly they have no room hire charges (for the breakfast, there is still one for the cerimony), which I think makes up for the expensive price per head (that an an hour of free bar and ‘free flowing’ £28 a bottle wine included in the price). However the important thing is that they actually have a range of rooms to put people in.
Many other hotels seem to have a wedding area. This area fits 200 people in and they want as close to that many people turning up, paying and staying. We aren’t anywhere near this number. This hotel has a room that fits 100-200 people, however it also has an area for 60-100 and 20-40 people. We’re very close to 40, but not nearly close enough for 60.
What has really empressed us though is what they are doing for us in the evening.
Average age at our wedding will be nowhere near the 30 mark. Hiring a disco would end up being a £2-3000 first dance photograph and nothing else. We don’t even fancy it ourselves very much. We’re more social people than dancers.
Solent have offered us an area of the bar that we can have to ourselves for the evening (no hire charges), we can put a few quid behind the bar for people to get a drink and people can also buy their own if they have really had a bad evening (maybe if they have kicked themselves in the face and given themselves a black eye… just me then). Despite it not being an evening do, they have even said we could order some buffet food, maybe a few plates of sandwiches, but just something to be there while we all have a natter. We don’t want people to come 250 miles for a few hours and then be sent straight back home again, so this really has worked out for us.
And to top it all off they are offering 20% off Friday weddings for next year*. Great stuff
* For anyone who hasn’t planned a wedding recently here is how days work out
** OK, so I even know some people who got married on these days, but you get my point. We even thought of doing it this way as 90% of our guests would either have as little problem with a summer holiday weekday as a Saturday or would need to book holiday for a Saturday as well as a weekday. Pretty much only Ian, Amy and I who do a normal Mon-Fri doing summer.
Found another venue to add to the list of possibilities. I’m have slight trouble finding venue options at the moment really. We’re looking at about 40 guests for the wedding – and the sorts of places that are really nice but moderately priced in terms of the venue and cost per person are wanting minumums of 60 or 90 people. Boooooo!!