The NESSENTIALS

To recap, Mike and I chose to postpone our wedding to not compromise on what we felt this celebration should be, which required us to find a new venue. Thanks to our industrious bridesmaids we had a long-list that Mike and I refined into a short-list, and we viewed Core Clapton first. But you can’t make a decision just after one venue visit, right?

So we arranged to visit Greenwich Yacht Club. The club itself is currently only open to members, offering “affordable sailing for all”. Hiring out the venue is of course possible for any member of the public. They particularly recommend the venue for conferences, celebrations, and obviously weddings.

I mentioned that some venues the bridesmaids shared were already on my radar, which was also the case for Greenwich Yacht Club, but delightfully their wedding brochure has been consistent since we first discovered them, with a dry hire cost of price of £4,000 + VAT (usually 20%), and offering drinks packages at various rates per person.

Of course there is a vast difference between dry hire and hire with staff, recommended caterers and drinks packages. Dry hire truly means doing everything yourself, and it may require those who adopt this approach to do research to ensure you won’t miss any details. Core Clapton would be £500 cheaper than Greenwich Yacht Club on those same terms.

A visit can change your mind on pure costs, however: it was very easy for Mike and I to travel to the venue, getting off at North Greenwich on the London Underground, and walking 15 minutes to our destination. The Emirates Airline is also conveniently located, though it is not included in monthly or annual passes from Transport for London.

The venue helpfully comes with a lot of decorations already in place, such as these drapes that soften the lighting for photography. In the entrance area there is also an artistic installation hanging from the ceiling, which was wrapped with floral arrangements when we visited.

As mentioned before, we had some questions prepared in advance, as well as those that were venue-dependent – the decorations were one, for instance, and we were happy to learn they were included, as was the furniture we saw. We also inquired about any limitations to using the designated bar space and any staffing requirements on this, and what neighbours were like about events taking place (there’s a residential area nearby).

One of the difficulties of the venue was that it has an outdoor patio, but this space will be undergoing a change while the club remains closed to the public. We had the hiring manager describe this to us, and we were referred to photos from past events to help us imagine what it would look like, but of course there are no guarantees.

We were able to take this information, as well as what we knew about Core Clapton, and knew we had to make a decision – after all we had asked Core Clapton for a week’s time. Mike and I pride ourselves, generally speaking, to be pragmatic people, and we based our decision on the following bullet points:

• after making plans for a wedding with a venue in mind last year, it is emotionally exhausting to go through the process again, so anything that makes it easier is a bonus
• we have another year to save for this event, so an increased price was tolerable (though understandably we have our limits)
• we researched what the costs are to even out the differences between the venues (mainly furniture and decoration, and staffing)

With that in mind, my mind was made up, and Mike wasn’t far behind me in the decision-making process: our new venue will be the Greenwich Yacht Club, and we’ve paid our deposit (on credit card, as part-payment still provides protection) to secure our dream date.

In my next post I will be taking a break from the recent, and sharing my wedding dress journey. Do you have any specific questions you want me to answer? Comment below and I’ll make sure to include those points.