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 avoid stress, as well as encouraging you to have fun during the wedding planning process!

What is a Dry Hire Wedding?

Firstly, what is a dry hire wedding, and how do you plan one? Dry hire means hiring out a blank canvas event venue that’s ready to dress up and customise without any additional add-ons included. Each dry hire venue is unique, so some elements may be included or offered, but in essence it’s a shell venue to be moulded for your event from scratch. 

Which wedding venue is better; Dry Hire Vs All Inclusive?

Dry hire wedding venues are often a more cost-effective, bespoke way to plan and execute your wedding. Whereas the benefit to an all-inclusive wedding venue is less planning and co-ordination. Although, you’re typically overpaying for limited, unexciting options. All-inclusive can include food, drinks, music and entertainment, decor, and photography. With a dry hire wedding, you’re able to customise each of these elements to your own taste and budget. While for some, wedding planning is a labour of love, we know it can be a stressful and time-consuming project. That’s why our clients come to us. We specialise in dry hire weddings, so when you work with The Wedding Arrangers, you don’t have to sacrifice your budget or convenience. To find out how we pull this off, read about our wedding planing fees.

Step 1: SET YOUR WEDDING 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, there’s 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 dry hire wedding 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 even a playlist?

• What other priorities are important to us as a couple, such as flowers, a great set of photographs, certain food styles?

• What other elements do we want that will make our day extra special?

London Dry Hire Wedding Venues tend to range from around £3,500 + VAT and upwards, some even reaching 10s of thousands in hiring fees alone. Remember to take into account 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 £20,000 and upwards depending on their requirements. We are not including ‘personal’ costs in this figure (dresses, suits, rings, hair & makeup etc.).

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. That’s the benefit of a dry hire wedding, it’s completely flexible if you preplan and set realistic expectations.

Find out more about how our Wedding Planner services can help you save money.

Step 2: FINDING THE RIGHT DRY HIRE WEDDING VENUE

Once you’ve got over the heart-attack of the cost, your next priority is to secure the perfect venue. The Wedding Arrangers can help you find your dream London wedding venue, or you can use an online London venue directory.

Remember to consider the basics when finding a London dry hire wedding venue:

• 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? For example, is it light and well ventilated for the summer months, or 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 to park it.

• Does the venue suit its purpose? If you have the budget for a nine piece funk and soul outfit with a full horn section, is there enough room for guests to dance?

If you’re torn between venue options after having made a shortlist, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with The Wedding Arrangers, our friendly team will be glad to discuss your ideas. Or, find a London dry hire wedding venue here.

Step 3: FOOD, MUSIC, BOOZE

The building blocks of all great parties are; 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 for a Dry Hire Venue

We are constantly surprised by the amount of couples who haven’t thought about the kind of food they would like to serve at their dry hire wedding. When we consider the costs of catering hire such as plates, cutlery, service, chefs and kitchen, on top of the dish costs itself, 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 canapés, followed by a Mexican feast for your sit down wedding 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?

If you speak to your wedding planner early about your food requirements, your menu will likely prove to be a springboard for so many other ideas, and help set a wedding theme.
Find out more about wedding food for a dry hire venue here.

Music for your Dry Hire 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 planning in a piece with personal significance as part of the ceremony. Plan the musical flow of your day with care, and work closely with your dry hire wedding planner to ensure this works throughout the event.

Find out more about wedding music for dry hire venues.

Your Dry Hire 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 dispensing of alcohol, and all of them will require that the bar closes in accordance to their license whether you have supplied the drinks or not.

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.

At The Wedding Arrangers we offer our 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.

Find out more about wedding bars for dry hire venues here.

Step 4: STYLING with 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’ own style, not some preconceived 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 and Instagram being the most common tools for this. You can even make your Pinterest boards secret so that your guests do not see your ideas ahead of the big day, and can choose to share these boards with your planner, florist, photographer and lighting team to use as points of reference. 

(Top tip - please personalise your board, i.e. ‘Tony & Freda’s Wedding’. You wouldn’t believe how many boards are shared with just the name “Wedding Ideas”, and we end up spending hours trying to work out whose ideas are who's!)

Dry Hire Wedding 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. Many florists work in different ways and have different design aesthetics. It's worth searching for florists that have a track record in your preferred style (architectural, whimsical, natural, kitsch, tropical, or anything else!). For many clients, simple and seasonal displays are exceptional the more simple they are, 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, as always, 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 set up. 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 needs 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 within your theme (think palms, figs, laurels, olive trees, beeches, and bamboo etc.), carefully placed trees and large shrubs can really add intrigue and texture to a room, to create impact. They can also be used to hang fairy lights or even to divide a large space between say dining area and dancing. Although, a word of warning, fully decorated and installed large Christmas trees are expensive. Beautiful, yes, but pricey!

Find out more about wedding flowers for your dry hire venue here.

Other Décor

The key decision on other décor will always be to hire or to buy. Etsy, Facebook marketplace, Amazon, eBay and even Ikea are all great resources for basics and essentials such as tea-lights, 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 dry hire wedding 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. This is another great chase to get creative and add a personal touch to your wedding! 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 and feel of your wedding venue.

Learn more about styling a dry hire wedding venue here.

Dry Hire Wedding Lighting

Most industrial style venues will require that you install event lighting. On a day-to-day basis, many 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. Dismantling 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 to help you set the mood in a dry hire space.

Step 5: 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 a variety of price points. Overall, we find that photographers generally price themselves fairly. London-based 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 when selecting a wedding 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 about 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.

• Dance floor photography is difficult, this is likely an area you should review to get a sense of their photography style.

• 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 with shots 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’.

Read more about arranging photographers for your dry hire wedding here.

Step 6: All the Wedding Admin

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 event 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 all require individual insurance policies and in some cases risk assessments. This is another instance where a wedding planner comes in handy, as they 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, and more, 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 wedding planner, they should cover the booking for this, or in some cases the catering team will take care of it. Leaving waste at venues can result in losing your deposit, so it’s not worth leaving to chance.

Step 7: GETTING STARTED

Thank you for taking the time to read through our dry hire wedding guide. We hope it has given you some tools and inspiration to get started with your wedding plans! There’s a lot to get done when planning and managing a dry hire wedding, so don’t feel like you need to struggle alone! The Wedding Arrangers team is always available for you if you have any questions, so please don’t hesitate to get in touch to discuss any aspect of your upcoming dry hire wedding.

Look out for more helpful dry hire wedding tips from the experts themselves on our wedding blog.

Good luck!

TWA x

All pictures on this website are from real weddings produced by The Wedding Arrangers. We do not feature styled shoots or stock images.