Firstly, congratulations on your engagement!
If you’re thinking about hosting a unique London celebration in one of the city’s amazing ‘dry hire’ venues, this guide is here to set you on the right path. This step by step guide will help you save money and stress as well as encouraging you to have fun in the planning process.
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All images in this guide are from weddings produced by our planning partners, The Wedding Arrangers
OK - here we go!
SET YOUR BUDGET EARLY
Let’s deal with the big question straight away – how much should you budget for a London Dry Hire Wedding?
There really is no straight forward answer to this question. It’s like walking into an off-licence and asking “how much is wine?” We’d always encourage you to first answer the question “how much do we realistically want to spend?” and tailor the wedding to your budget, rather than the other way around. That said, there are some questions you may want to answer that will guide you to a budget figure:-
How many guests do we want to invite? This is not only about working out a cost per head on the food and drink, but about booking an adequately sized venue.
Do we expect to provide free drinks all night or are we happy with a cash bar element?
Do we want a live band or are we happy with a DJ or maybe a playlist?
What other priorities are important to us as a couple – flowers, a great set of photographs, certain food styles etc?
What other elements do we want that will make our day extra special?
London Dry Hire Venues tend to range from around £3,500 + VAT and upwards – some reaching 10s of thousands in hire fee alone. Remember that with the majority of dry hire venues you will need to supply all furnishings, lighting, staffing and kitchen set up.
Our general advice to couples looking for a dry hire wedding with around 100 guests is that they need to be considering reception budgets of around £25,000 and upwards depending on their requirements. We are not including ‘personal’ costs in this figure (dresses, suits, rings, hair & makeup etc)
If your budget will not stretch to a dry hire venue, then all is not lost! Here at Urban Weddings we also place couples in some extraordinary fully catered (or package) venues. We even have venues that are a ‘half way house’ that we refer to as wet hire. These venues are amazing - with beautiful interiors, lighting and furnishings ready to go and some fabulous menus and bar packages. Get in touch with the team today to find out more.
What is important to note is that it is not worth over stretching yourselves on your wedding budget. Please do not start your married life in debt that you can’t afford. Be realistic about how much you are comfortable spending from the outset and work to that figure.
FINDING THE RIGHT VENUE
Once you’ve got over the heart-attack of the cost, your next priority is to secure the perfect venue. Urban Weddings directory is a great place to start when searching out your ideal London wedding venue
Remember to consider the basics when venue hunting:-
If you’re planning to host a legal ceremony and reception in one venue, is the space licensed for ceremonies?
If you’re planning a sit down meal is the venue big enough for all of your guests?
Is the venue suited to your ideal wedding date – i.e light and airy for the summer months, cosy and romantic for the winter?
Does the venue fit your ‘must have’ lists – i.e for food trucks you’ll need a venue with adequate outside space?
Does the venue suit your ideal band? If you have the budget for a nine piece funk and soul outfit with a full horn section, is there really enough room in the dancing area?
If you’re torn between venue options after having made a shortlist please don’t hesitate to get in touch with Urban Weddings who will be glad to discuss your ideas.
FOOD, MUSIC, BOOZE
The building blocks of all great parties - fantastic food, amazing music and plenty of booze. Without these three fundamentals we won’t get very far, and funnily enough, along with the venue hire they’re likely to be the three biggest numbers on your budget sheet (especially if you’re planning a free bar and if you count sound design and stage lighting with your music)
Wedding Food
We are constantly surprised by couples who haven’t thought about the kind of food they would like to serve at their wedding. When we consider the costs of catering hire (plates and cutlery!), service, chefs and kitchen on top of the dish costs, this will be a major chunk of your spend.
A dry hire wedding is an opportunity to let your imagination run wild as you are not constrained by the limitations of a venue’s in house catering team. If you’d like Malaysian street food canapes followed by a Mexican feast for your sit down meal with dirty kebab rolls for an evening treat, then you shall have it! Spend some time considering the food that reflects your story - perhaps a favourite cuisine from your home area or a regular holiday destination. Which are your preferred restaurants? What dinner party food do you love to cook for your guests?
Speak to your wedding planner early about your food requirements - your menu will prove to be a springboard for so many other ideas.
Music at your Wedding
Whatever your personal tastes, choosing the right music across your wedding will go a long way to setting the right mood, kicking off your party and personalising your event. The possibilities are endless, from live music during your ceremony to reception drinks entertainment, a background soundtrack for your meal through to the all important first dance and party afterwards. Having a clear idea of the flow of the event will help you to pinpoint areas where musical entertainment will be key, for instance keeping guests amused if you have a long drinks reception, or a piece with personal significance as part of the ceremony. Plan the musical flow of your day with care and work closely with your planner to ensure this works throughout the event.
Your Wedding Bar
One of the most attractive aspects of a dry hire venue is the opportunity to supply your own drinks and if you’re planning to offer free drinks to your guests all night this could prove to be a big saving over London bar prices. Remember that in a dry hire venue you’ll also need to consider the hire of glassware, bar equipment, bartenders and in many cases an actual bar structure. The venues will all have rules about the dispense of alcohol and all of them will require that the bar closes in accordance to their license whether or not you have supplied the drinks.
Most dry hire venues will need to apply for a T.E.N (Temporary Events Notice) in order to allow a cash bar. This shouldn’t be an issue, but you’ll also need to consider that any bar company operating a cash bar will require a minimum spend to cover their operating costs.
Our bar partners, London Wedding Bars, offer clients a range of options from ‘bottomless bar’ packages, cash bar options (with or without a minimum spend) as well as providing the structures and hire equipment where clients want to provide their own drinks. If you’d like to explore these possibilities for your dry hire wedding, get in touch today.
STYLING – Florals, décor & lighting
Before we discuss styling your wedding in detail, it is important to note that all weddings are unique and should reflect the couples’ style, not some pre-conceived idea of what a wedding should look like. The best way to communicate your styling ideas is through reference visuals. You can build an online scrapbook - Pinterest being the most obvious tool for this. You can make your boards secret so that your guests do not see your ideas ahead of the big day, but you can choose to share these boards with your planner, florist, photographer and lighting team as points of reference. (Top tip - please put your actual names on the board, i.e Tony & Freda’s Wedding. You wouldn’t believe how many boards are shared with just the name “Wedding Ideas” - we spend hours trying to work out whose ideas are whose!)
Florals, Trees & Foliage
For some couples an impressive floral display is key to styling their wedding. Arches, hanging displays, stunning plinths, table arrangements and focal points can all enhance the look of a wedding and elevate the style. Florists work in different ways and have different ‘looks’. It’s worth pinpointing if your style is architectural, whimsical, natural, kitsch, tropical or whatever and searching out florists who have a track record of achieving this ‘look’. For many clients simple, seasonal displays are as much as they require, but there are others for whom flowers are a statement and pivotal to the feel of the event. If you’re working with a planner start the conversation early. Experienced wedding planners will have worked with lots of florists and will have recommendations. It is important to note that some floral displays take up a lot of installation time and require professionals to derig. This will inevitably have an impact on budget and may require extra hours at the venue for set up. A complicated floral set up combined with an early on site ceremony may increase venue hire costs if the team need very early access.
If you’re looking to soften the industrial edges of a warehouse style venue hiring in living trees can be a great value solution. Working with your theme (think palms, figs, laurels, olive trees, beeches, bamboo etc) and having a great impact, carefully placed trees and large shrubs can really add interest and texture to a room. They can also be used to hang fairy lights or even to divide a large space between say dining area and dancing. A word of warning - fully decorated and installed large Christmas trees are expensive. Beautiful, yes, but pricey.
Other Décor
The key decision on other décor will always be to hire or to buy. Etsy, Facebook marketplace, Amazon, E-Bay and even Ikea are all great resources for basics and essentials such as tealights, votives, electric candles, small decor items and fun accessories. (Another tip - if your venue allows naked flame it will almost always need to be in a glass holder that is 5cm higher than the flame, so take that into account when building your shopping list). Items to hire may include easels, vintage shelves, steps, barrels, lounge pieces, illuminated letters and neons. Your planner should work with you to ensure you are making the best decisions for your budget and your venue restrictions.
Printed table plans, menus, name cards and order of services are always a purchase item. Why not follow the theme of your invite with a recurring motif or colour scheme. Perhaps something that can be mirrored elsewhere in the set up such as in napkin colour or floral design?
Many of your styling ideas can be carried through thoughtful hire choices when selecting tablewares, glassware and even furnishings. Contrasting fine china with rustic tables for instance, or hand painted Moroccan platters with antique crystal glasses. Think carefully about the texture of your napkins (or even if fun paper napkins make more sense?!), the colours of your lighting (remember warm white and ice white are very different), the style of your seating and even the look of your cutlery. You’ll find that attention to detail has a large impact on the overall look of your room.
Lighting
Most industrial style venues will require that you install event lighting. On a day to day basis many of the spaces are lit with floodlights or fluorescents that are great for the cleaners but terrible for creating a romantic mood or a party atmosphere. The options for your event are endless, but again, so are the potential costs. As with much of your wedding, you’ll find that much of the budget here is directed to labour costs. Derigging a complex lighting set up at 3am is not cheap. However, when working in spaces that were not designed for weddings, manipulating the lighting is often the best way of transforming your venue. You’ll find a full blog post on wedding lighting here
WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHY
After all this work on planning and pulling off the perfect party it would be a huge shame to not capture it properly. But where do you start when choosing a wedding photographer? Like every other supplier and item at your wedding, photographers come in a huge range of styles and at many price points. Overall we find that photographers generally price themselves fairly. London photographers tend to start from around £2000 and very few of them are VAT registered. There are a handful that shoot below this price, and some offer limited hour packages, but this is a good figure to have in mind.
Here are our top tips on selecting a photographer:-
Does your photographer have experience shooting at your venue or at least in very similar style locations? If you’re hosting a London wedding you need to think cityscapes and the urban environment, not rolling countryside.
Think about the light - if you’re hosting a winter wedding you’ll need to see lots of strong work in low light from your photographer.
Dancefloor photography is difficult. As you explore photographic options you’ll see many different approaches to capturing the party - which suits you?
Don’t book a photographer on the basis of a few edited highlights on their website. Always ask to see at least three full galleries - ideally shot in different seasons and at different venues.
Consider a second shooter, even if for a short time. Some of the best shots from your wedding will be reactions to speeches, readings, the first dance etc - a second photographer can capture those whilst the main photographer concentrates on the ‘show’
EXTRAS – The boring stuff
There’s a fair amount of paperwork that goes along with running a wedding from risk assessments to insurance policies. All dry hire venues will require that you take out an events insurance policy that covers a minimum amount of public liability. This is different to wedding insurance (although some WI policies cover it) and you will need to ensure that your policy meets the venue requirements. Your suppliers will require individual insurance policies and in some cases risk assessments - your planner should be on top of gathering and checking those for you.
Your event will need a full running schedule and floor plan - again, most venues require this in advance of the event and of course they are pretty essential to all of your suppliers. Details such as delivery and collection times, contact numbers, soundchecks, parking restrictions, staff instructions etc will be included in a full schedule which your planner or coordinator should build then handle on the day.
Some venues require that all event waste is removed on the night of the event. If you’re working with a planner they should cover booking this or in some cases the catering team will take care of it. Leaving waste at venues can result in deposit loss so it’s not worth leaving to chance.
THANKYOU
Thankyou for taking the time to read our dry hire wedding guide. We hope it has given you some tools and inspiration to get started with your wedding plans. The Urban Weddings team are always available for you if you have any questions. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch to discuss any aspect of your dry hire wedding.
Look out for more exclusive wedding planning content to follow as well as regular updates from our blog.
Good luck!
UW x