Veue Hunting and Date Setting- Part 2

Well, after our adventures in outdoor weddings (see previous post) we started researching some different venues. A village hall might not sound like the most glamourous location for your wedding day, but I was pleasantly suprised by what we found.
The first village hall we viewed, Chilham Village Hall near Canterbury, turned out to be "the one" for us. The village of Chilham is ridiculously pretty and the village hall, a 15th century tithe barn on the edge of the grounds of Chilham Castle, is no different.

Chilham Village Hall

We were shown around by Stephanie, who's a wonderful character and she quickly showed us everything, including how to use the tea urn! The building is separated into three main rooms, the large hall, the small hall and the green room; as well as two small kitchen areas, toilets and a large outdoor space. The large hall boasts an impressive stage-which is probably what sold it to us-as performers we're planning on having that stage filled all night with all manner of entertainments and musical instruments and were delighted to see somewhere with ample space to do so. The dark beams and pillars would look beautiful wrapped in fairy lights or flowers and there's plenty of space for a large number of guests. The small hall, where we're holding our actual ceremony (another plus point! No paying for transport between a day and evening venue!) is intimate yet could still hold 40-50 people if needed. The green room will make an excellent "chill out" zone for the evening, if it should all get too much for some of the younger (or perhaps, older!) guests.

The large hall, Chilham Village Hall

Despite the hall not being free on our dream date, we went ahead and booked up for the next best free date in 2015-September 19th. If you've chosen your own venue you'll know how exciting it is, I was over the moon. As soon as we saw it, I was mentally decorating the hall and I'm sure it's going to look great, I can't wait to be showing you all the pictures.
We were lucky and found our village hall venue pretty quickly-but we did consider a few others-Eridge Village Hall was the furthest afield we considered, though the day we visited it was unseasonally warm and the drive was lovely (as was the gorgeous pub down the road where we had a delicious dinner afterwards!). This Victorian chapel style hall has fantastic bank-balance friendly rates, and a cute little garden area, but was just a little too small for us, even with the marquee you can add on, which coupled with the extra distance just discounted it from the running for us. I'd love to attend a wedding here though as I bet it would be so sweet for vintage style day.

Eridge Village Hall decorated

Another brilliant, budget venue we thought about was The Old School Hall in East Farleigh, we love the village and this would be fantastic for a small gathering, but again for us, was too small.
Village halls are a great budget wedding option-maybe there's a gorgeous one near you? Why not ring and enquire about booking-you could even be the first wedding party there and truly have a one of a kind day! Do remember though, that though you can make huge savings on venue hire you're probably going to have to keep on top of catering, drinks, decorations, transport etc...but if you're trying not to splash the cash the DIY route can be fantastic! Do let me know in the comments if you're planning on a village hall bash!

Venue Hunting and Date Setting-part 1

Right, so once the question (and a few bottles of bubbly) has been popped, you're going to want to get down to business. Unless you're one of those girls (or guys) who's been dreaming of your wedding day since you were five years old and know EXACTLY what you want for everything, there's going to be a lot of decisions to make.

my gorge engagement ring

The first thing everybody wants to know is "when?" Luckily, we did have a date in mind-our 10 year anniversary falls on a Saturday in May and we loved the idea of tying the knot that day. So what we needed was a venue.
A few google searches and we found somewhere that seemed perfect for the laid back, festival-vibed wedding we imagined.
Wise Wedding Venue near Tonbridge, in Kent is a totally amazing woodland site. After foolishly following our sat nav (pro tip-never do this) several wrong turns, a few phone calls with helpful owner Sam, and a friendly local, we eventually found it. It was worth the wait.  From the awesome light installations, to the treehouse, the swinging armchairs-did I mention the treehouse?! This place is magical. We fell in love instantly. Sadly, Sam was already booked on our date, but we thought we could be flexible on this for a dream venue. Then we did the number crunching.

Wise Wedding Venue

The basic cost of hire was for just the land alone. When you added in the price of the marquee (British summer time people!), toilets, treehouse (an absolute must once you've seen it), catering, bar or corkage, tables and chairs, not to mention an additional ceremony as Wise isn't licenced for the legal ceremony, only a blessing...it was just miles out of our price range. Devestated.

Wise Wedding Venue

We were disappointed to not be able to afford our dream venue, but we decided rather than wait another year or two and save up, we'd rather get married sooner-after all, what's really important about a wedding? The venue or the person you're spending the rest of your life with? So, having come to terms with the fact we might not get the date we wanted, and widening our search for venues we looked at some more, and found some gems!

If you've got your heart set on an outdoor-festival inspired day (and who can blame you?!) check out these other venues in Kent: Allstar Catering run this lovely venue near Sevenoaks, with hire including a marquee and a glamping bell tent for the happy couple. As they are a catering company first and foremost though, be aware of the price of the catering on top-though they don't charge corkage which is a bonus! The fab wedding blog Festival Brides have a secret woodland venue in Kent, as well as others around the country-check their page for the one closest to you. The one we enquired after had several different prices dependant on how long you booked the venue for-ceremony only, until 8pm or over night.
In the rest of the UK check out Camp Katur in Yorkshire, The Haymeadow near Taunton, The Country Wedding Company in Bucks (great rates for dry hire if you can get discounts on everything else from other sources!) and The Keeper and The Dell in Norwich. Some of these venues would be too pricy for a tight a budget as ours is, but they are great inspiration for a festival themed occasion!

Intro to me!

OK, full disclosure, this wasn't going to be the first post. I had a whole long post about wedding venues written up, and I was proud of it....then I accidentally deleted it. THE HORROR! After being seriously annoyed about this for a few days, I decided to try again.

So this time, here's a bit of background on me.
I like things that are a little out of the ordinary, so when it came to planning my wedding it was never going to be a big, traditional affair. My fiance and I are both in the entertainment industry, as are most of our friends, and I think often this makes you a bit non-conformist by default. Throw in our love for rock, punk, alternative and emo music (ok the emo is me, not him) and we'd already hit upon the motto for our wedding plan-"breaking the rules".
There were things about "traditional" weddings that really weren't us, or we outright didn't like. So we decided to do away with them. Ripping up the rule book is liberating, but can be a little scary too when taking on something as big as organising a wedding.
James, my other half, plays in a wedding band regularly so has been to more weddings in the past few years than a lot of people do over a lifetime. Safe to say, he knew exactly what he didn't want. Oh, and we've got very little money to play with, in weding terms. Apparently the average wedding in the UK costs £20-30k. We're thinking more, £6-8k. And so, this is where this blog comes in. To try and chart the highs and lows of planning a dream wedding day, our way, within our budget. Hopefully you can pick up some tips and inspiration along the way if you're planning your own!