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!