Venues That Allow Catering

by Lisa Johnson
(Scotland)

I have a very limited budget for my wedding as my partner has a large family. I would consider all of your tips for hiring fridges and catering the wedding myself with the help of family & friends. I will contact my local catering college for waiting staff and also look into using local caters. The venue is the issue though; how could I find local venues which will allow me to provide my own food and drink?

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Answer:

If the venue is just for your reception, then you have plenty of options. Village halls, town halls, arts centres, community centres and sports clubs all have venue facilities including kitchens and often don't insist that you use their caterers.

You will however need to check with the individual venues themselves, but those listed above are more than likely to allow you do your own thing.

For local venues, the best thing to do would be to search on Google. Use the following search term: "own catering" Belfast, "self catering wedding venue" Belfast and "self catering venue" Belfast. Obviously you'll need to change Belfast to where you live and keep the quotation marks in the place I've put them.

For Belfast though, this bought up several wedding venues (not village halls!) that allowed you to use their space and do your own catering – some of them were even idyllic castles!

I hope that helps.