Receptions

You’ve all heard the horror stories about exhorbitant reception costs. It is true, the largest chunk of your wedding budget will be spent on the wedding reception. There are many ways to have a fabulous reception without spending the equivalent of a downpayment on a house.

When people think of wedding receptions, they generally think of function centres or wedding reception centres.  There are some distinct benefits to holding your reception at a wedding reception venue.  The venue will be accustomed to hosting weddings; the staff, tables, chairs, linens, meal, drinks (both alcoholic and non-alcoholic) and room hire will generally all be included in the one price, some venues will also include candelabras or similar decorations at no extra cost. If you want to save money on a reception at a function centre, see if you can have a package which includes the wedding cake and DJ.

Meals

Serve the wedding cake as dessert. There are many different forms of wedding cake not just fruit cake with marzipan and white icing. These days the choices include traditional looking cakes with flavours that range from mud cake to carrot cake, banana cake to vanilla. There are also cupcake trees and croquembouche and anything else your imagination can conjure up. Any of these cakes will make a great dessert and save serious dollars off your reception budget.     

Alcohol

A lot of receptions include alcohol which can be a very big chunk of the reception budget.

Your first step to saving money on alcohol at your reception is to serve red and white wine, beer and soft drink/water only during the meal at your reception.  Save the champagne for the toasts.

Serving spirits and cocktails will completely blow your budget.

Consider the drinking habits of your guests when deciding which alcohol package best suits your needs. With the prominence of random breath testing units and wanting to keep your guests safe, unless your guests are staying at the reception venue, you can assume that approximately 40% of your guests will be driving, so will only have a couple of drinks all night maximum. 

As a general rule:

A light drinker will have 2 glasses of alcohol during the night;

A medium drinker will have 4 glasses of alcohol during the night; 

A heavy drinker will consume 6 glasses of alcohol during the night. 

Weigh up the cost of alcohol on a consumption basis. It may be cheaper to pay for a package which includes alcohol on a consumption basis rather than unlimited drinks.

Go through your guest list and work out roughly how many drinks each person will have. You may need your parents input with calculating this for some guests.   

A great alternative is a restaurant. Some restaurants have a separate area set aside especially for functions.  Other restaurants will close the entire restaurant for your wedding. They have the same benefits as reception venues with the added bonus in most cases, of a greater selection of food choices.     

If you are on a real razor wire budget, but yearn for an incredible view from your reception venue, consider a surf club. Yes, you read that right. A surf club. Most surf clubs can be hired for under $1,000 and you can find some very good caterers for $30 a head which includes seafood! You won’t have to worry about chairs or tables as the surf club will have them already. Apart from the food, you will need to pay for waitresses and the chef. You can hire draping, chair covers and linens from an events decoration company and make the space look wonderful.

© Sydney Fairytale Weddings on a budget