Wedding Locations

[sheepshagger]

Oh yeah, one MAJOR thing that you might not think of, but is a huge deal - make sure whatever room you choose has the bar actually inside it, as opposed to out in a lobby or annex or somesuch. You will lose 50% of your guests at any given time for the whole night after dinner if the bar isn't in the same room, take it from me. I've been to a couple of weddings where this was the set-up and it really, really makes a difference to the atmosphere when the function room is half-empty the whole time because half the guests won't leave the bar between drinks.

Yes! This is a very good point! Not something everyone would think of, but it does make a difference.

Yep - exact thing happens at any event in The Burlington Hotel where the bar is to the side of the main room.

[gfo]

Venue:
http://www.leixlipmanor.com

Band:
http://www.beatclub.ie/

Photographer:
http://www.clique.ie/

Flowers:
http://www.craftyfox.ie/

Cake:
http://www.sweetcreationsireland.com/

Suits:
http://www.astonformal.com/

To be honest, we went for all fairly high end stuff, Tiger Cubs etc, but these guys made the day perfect, I would highly recommend them.

[RoboProp]

Not location related but does anyone know of a shop that sells spats aka wingtips? I would not risk getting them online as I am hobbit footed

[TerenureJim]

Trying to work out budgeting for wine requirements. Herself has heard you need to get a half bottle per guest. Seems a bit on the low side IMO. Just wondering what people who've been down this road would have done? I'm thinking a 70/30 split percentage wise between white/red (depending on menu) and for a bottle each per guest.

[Peg Leg]

Trying to work out budgeting for wine requirements. Herself has heard you need to get a half bottle per guest. Seems a bit on the low side IMO. Just wondering what people who've been down this road would have done? I'm thinking a 70/30 split percentage wise between white/red (depending on menu) and for a bottle each per guest.

50% per guest is more than enough. Even at that it won't be used.

[RoboProp]

Trying to work out budgeting for wine requirements. Herself has heard you need to get a half bottle per guest. Seems a bit on the low side IMO. Just wondering what people who've been down this road would have done? I'm thinking a 70/30 split percentage wise between white/red (depending on menu) and for a bottle each per guest.

50% per guest is more than enough. Even at that it won't be used.

You will get a lot people for whatever reason won't bother with wine so it will work out more than half a bottle for the wine drinkers.

[TheBear]

We brought 78 bottles with us, and got 12 back. Worked out at about 2/3 of a bottle per person, and that was including the fact that they left extra bottles of the wine on the tables when the band started, and topped up for toast drinks.

Sign up for a loyalty card for O'Brien's; they often have deals where you get back 15% of the purchases on a particular weekend, which effectively saves you money. Places like Wines Direct can be good, but we found it was cheaper and handier to get half of the wine from O'Brien's and the other half from Fíon Wines. The guy from Fíon was great, and we got samples of different wines before deciding. Given the 15% back from O'Brien's, on a wine that was already reduced from €22 to €15, and the decent value we got from Fíon, our 78 bottles of very tasty (perhaps too tasty *hic*) wine came to less than €700.

[honeyec]

Trying to work out budgeting for wine requirements. Herself has heard you need to get a half bottle per guest. Seems a bit on the low side IMO. Just wondering what people who've been down this road would have done? I'm thinking a 70/30 split percentage wise between white/red (depending on menu) and for a bottle each per guest.

We allowed 2/3s of a bottle per guest and had loads left over. 70:30 split in favour of white is also what we went with, and it was bang on.

[TheBear]

Trying to work out budgeting for wine requirements. Herself has heard you need to get a half bottle per guest. Seems a bit on the low side IMO. Just wondering what people who've been down this road would have done? I'm thinking a 70/30 split percentage wise between white/red (depending on menu) and for a bottle each per guest.

We allowed 2/3s of a bottle per guest and had loads left over. 70:30 split in favour of white is also what we went with, and it was bang on.

We had equal amounts of white and red, and got more white back, so our lot drank more red. We did have some rosé too, but that wouldn't have skewed the numbers too much (only six bottles bought, two returned).

[TerenureJim]

Thanks gang, great help coming in here (will put that lad Franc out of business yet). Next challenge is corkage, most places we're looking at seem to be looking for €10-12 per bottle of plonk and €15-20 per bottle of fiz. This seems pretty steep as could possibly be looking at €2K for corkage and that's a whole lot of money in terms of the budget without much value to it IMO. Just seems like corkage is a hell of a kick inthe teeth. How did most people fair in getting corkage reduced if you don't mind me asking?

[Peg Leg]

Not location related but does anyone know of a shop that sells spats aka wingtips? I would not risk getting them online as I am hobbit footed

What are these?

[honeyec]

Thanks gang, great help coming in here (will put that lad Franc out of business yet). Next challenge is corkage, most places we're looking at seem to be looking for €10-12 per bottle of plonk and €15-20 per bottle of fiz. This seems pretty steep as could possibly be looking at €2K for corkage and that's a whole lot of money in terms of the budget without much value to it IMO. Just seems like corkage is a hell of a kick inthe teeth. How did most people fair in getting corkage reduced if you don't mind me asking?

In our case it worked out cheaper to just order from their winelist rather than sourcing externally and paying the corkage.

[TerenureJim]

Not location related but does anyone know of a shop that sells spats aka wingtips? I would not risk getting them online as I am hobbit footed

What are these?

A somewhat two tone dress shoe:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... tators.jpg

Thinking the old tux & converse mix for myself. The sporting shoe nature of converse could be require as if herself turned up to the ceremony to see me wearing them on the day I'm sure I'd have to run for my life!

[TheBear]

Thanks gang, great help coming in here (will put that lad Franc out of business yet). Next challenge is corkage, most places we're looking at seem to be looking for €10-12 per bottle of plonk and €15-20 per bottle of fiz. This seems pretty steep as could possibly be looking at €2K for corkage and that's a whole lot of money in terms of the budget without much value to it IMO. Just seems like corkage is a hell of a kick inthe teeth. How did most people fair in getting corkage reduced if you don't mind me asking?

I didn't pay corkage at all. The wedding package included a half bottle of wine per person, and I knew that I'd be able to get decent wine at a reasonable price, so I asked them to keep their wine, allow us to bring in our own, waive any corkage fees and change the dinner options that they offered. Basically, instead of three courses, chicken and fish, and half a bottle of crappy wine, we got four courses, steak and chicken, no corkage.

Depending on the size of the gathering and the time of the year, the hotel may be willing to waive it, or reduce it. Only one hotel refused to negotiate with us on price, so we promptly told them to sod off. My brother was told he had to pay corkage, and he said that he'd just cancel the booking if they insisted on it. Getting the price of the booking, plus the price of drink later in the evening, is more important than the corkage. However, if the hotel are confident that they would get a replacement booking, this tactic isn't likely to work.

[honeyec]

Not location related but does anyone know of a shop that sells spats aka wingtips? I would not risk getting them online as I am hobbit footed

What are these?

A somewhat two tone dress shoe:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... tators.jpg

Thinking the old tux & converse mix for myself. The sporting shoe nature of converse could be require as if herself turned up to the ceremony to see me wearing them on the day I'm sure I'd have to run for my life!

Just to be pedantic, cause that's just how I roll, a spat is actually something else altogether - it's a white cover to go over a plain shoe, originally as a protective cover, but then just for fashion.

Wingtips (also known as Oxfords) aren't necessarily two-tone, either.

So there you go!

[Muriel]

Spats are what Poirot wears

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spats_(footwear)

[TheBear]

Spats are what Dave Cahill wears

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spats_(footwear)

Fixed that.

[ceemec]

Thanks gang, great help coming in here (will put that lad Franc out of business yet). Next challenge is corkage, most places we're looking at seem to be looking for €10-12 per bottle of plonk and €15-20 per bottle of fiz. This seems pretty steep as could possibly be looking at €2K for corkage and that's a whole lot of money in terms of the budget without much value to it IMO. Just seems like corkage is a hell of a kick inthe teeth. How did most people fair in getting corkage reduced if you don't mind me asking?

Corkage is a major bugbear of mine, TJ and I'm very wary of it. We've been to a couple of hotels that made a big show of doing us a favour by reducing it to €12 which I find ridiculous. I can't stomach the idea of paying well over €1k for them just to pour wine. But, from what I've seen and from talking with others and doing online research, hotels have their protocols for corkage and aren't hugely flexible on it. Once they do their initial reduction that appears to be it.

We're currently down to two hotels. The first is doing no corkage. The second has 3-4 pours of wine included in the dinner package (and we negotiated a lower price for the dinner) so we're happy enough with that at the moment. I'm in two minds with the no corkage place though where it has been suggested to us that we can just put the bottles on the table and people can pour for themselves instead of waiting for the staff doing their rounds. Sounds fine but don't want people plastered by 7pm. We'll probably go with the other hotel (not just based on the wine). I'm thinking a 50/50 split for the red/white or 60/40 in favour of red.

I think there will be plenty to go around though, as others have said.

[Peg Leg]

Thanks gang, great help coming in here (will put that lad Franc out of business yet). Next challenge is corkage, most places we're looking at seem to be looking for €10-12 per bottle of plonk and €15-20 per bottle of fiz. This seems pretty steep as could possibly be looking at €2K for corkage and that's a whole lot of money in terms of the budget without much value to it IMO. Just seems like corkage is a hell of a kick inthe teeth. How did most people fair in getting corkage reduced if you don't mind me asking?

Corkage is a major bugbear of mine, TJ and I'm very wary of it. We've been to a couple of hotels that made a big show of doing us a favour by reducing it to €12 which I find ridiculous. I can't stomach the idea of paying well over €1k for them just to pour wine. But, from what I've seen and from talking with others and doing online research, hotels have their protocols for corkage and aren't hugely flexible on it. Once they do their initial reduction that appears to be it.

We're currently down to two hotels. The first is doing no corkage. The second has 3-4 pours of wine included in the dinner package (and we negotiated a lower price for the dinner) so we're happy enough with that at the moment. I'm in two minds with the no corkage place though where it has been suggested to us that we can just put the bottles on the table and people can pour for themselves instead of waiting for the staff doing their rounds. Sounds fine but don't want people plastered by 7pm. We'll probably go with the other hotel (not just based on the wine). I'm thinking a 50/50 split for the red/white or 60/40 in favour of red.

I think there will be plenty to go around though, as others have said.

This is a disaster, I was at a wedding where wholesale bartering ensued and the masses were walking around exchanging bottles of wine for differing shades!

[domhnallj]

This is a disaster, I was at a wedding where wholesale bartering ensued and the masses were walking around exchanging bottles of wine for differing shades!

Although enjoying the thread I usually avoid weddings so I am a bit confused as to why this is a disaster. People are up and down all the time to the bar if they don't drink the wine. As far as I can see it helps people from different tables mix. If it is a problem just give a polite request not to be bartering the wine.