Wedding Cost Per Head

Fox1978

Hi,

We're planning to get married in Sept this year. Our Plan A is a restaurant that we know in Paris located on an island. We've been there before and it's beautiful. We were over there in November and had a meeting with the restaurant who quoted us a price of €138 per head. This included a champage reception, 10 canapes per head, the meal and 1/4 bottle of red and a 1/3 bottle of white per head.

To us, €138 seemed very high, especially talking to other people who we know have got married in Ireland or abroad. We told the restaurant we had thought more about €100 a head and they said they could work with making it cheaper (i.e. instead of champagne reception, have a wine reception - have a choice of 5 canapes instead of 10 and so on) but saying that the thought of limiting us Irish to a 1/4 bottle of red each sounds very limiting! We hadn't even gotten into other elements so as the late bar, staying open past midnight, etc.

Be very grateful if anyone has opinions/advice on this. Do you agree it sounds ridiculously expensive? We are trying to steer away from an Irish hotel-type wedding as we've been to so many in the past year that we're trying to do something different. If anyone has suggestions for places in Ireland that are a bit different from the norm and also what we reasonably should be budgeting for, we'd both be very grateful! Finally, sorry for such a long post!

implausible

Sounds v expensive! Your typical Irish wedding per head (meal, wine, afters) can go from €50 to €100, probably more in Dublin.

Have you looked into hiring a venue e.g a castle, for a weekend and getting caterers in?

titta76

What do you get for €100??

titta76

Whats included in the menu? I will be paying as much in a wedding abroad, but I have free bar, 20 different canapes, fish or vegetarian dish, sorbet, meat or vegetarian dish, dessert, wine and drinks included.... You have to consider as well that unless that you own a property abroad you are paying for a hotel the days before, your h2b cannot stay with you the night before and your guest will have to pay the plane tickets and the hotel, unless you are able to speak the language you are going to pay for a wedding coordinator... :rolleyes:

Fox1978

Thanks for the replies. I don't know what we'll be getting for the 100 but I've e-mailed them today to break down what we get for that and also a price for what we want (before, they told us what we could get rather than us telling them what we wanted!) so will see what they come back. Sure, it's a nice place but €138 a head?! Surely Paris is in a recession too!

RE castles, country homes, etc, yes am going to look into that too. Thanks. Any recommendations of places is most welcome. Anyone know anything about Bellinter House, Meath; The Village at Lyons, Kildare or Lisnavagh House, Co Carlow?

TY:)

DotOrg

Fox1978 wrote: »

RE castles, country homes, etc, yes am going to look into that too. Thanks. Any recommendations of places is most welcome. Anyone know anything about Bellinter House, Meath; The Village at Lyons, Kildare or Lisnavagh House, Co Carlow?

TY:)

although we've not photographed a wedding there, my other half did visit Bellinter house and came back saying it would be a fantastic location for a wedding. Here's some of her thoughts about the house that she wrote about:

http://designindublin.com/2008/05/bellinter-house-part-1.html
http://designindublin.com/2008/05/bellinter-house-part-2.html
http://designindublin.com/2008/05/bellinter-house-part-3.html

Fox1978

DotOrg wrote: »

although we've not photographed a wedding there, my other half did visit Bellinter house and came back saying it would be a fantastic location for a wedding. Here's some of her thoughts about the house that she wrote about:

http://designindublin.com/2008/05/bellinter-house-part-1.html
http://designindublin.com/2008/05/bellinter-house-part-2.html
http://designindublin.com/2008/05/bellinter-house-part-3.html

Hey, that's great, thanks for that. We've contacted them and hope to go visit Bellinter House later this week.