How Wedding Venue Pricing Works at Ashbury Lounge (and Why There's No Price List)

You want a number. Just one, so you can tell whether this venue is even in the running before you fall for it.

Then you look, and there isn't one. No price list anywhere on the site. And that's on purpose.

Three things decide your quote: your guest count, your menu and your bar.

Change any one of them and the number moves with it. A sit-down meal for your closest family and a canapé evening for a full guest list are two different days.

I'm Chantal, and Hash and I answer every enquiry here personally. There's no single figure I could put on this page that would be right for most of the people reading it.

Some UK venues run on a "minimum spend". You commit to spending a set amount, and the room comes free once you clear it.

Ashbury works differently.

There's a room hire fee, and it moves with what your day spends on food and drink together. That combined spend doesn't replace the hire fee. It sits alongside it and decides its size.

Think of it as a dial your own choices turn, rather than a fixed rent. How many guests you're feeding, what they're eating, what they're drinking … that's what sets it.

That's why the only honest answer is a quote built around your actual day. Send your guest count and what you'd like to eat and drink through the enquiry form, and your quote is built from there.

• Catering is in-house, from canapés through to a full sit-down meal
• There's no minimum group size for a sit-down meal
• The dance floor is fixed and permanent, never hired in for the day
• A DJ or a live band both work here, whichever suits you
• Ashbury only ever hosts one event at a time, so yours is the only event in the venue

In-house catering is the norm here. But if your day genuinely needs a specific outside caterer, for a cultural or religious requirement say, that's a conversation to have with us at enquiry. It's not a yes or a no anyone can give you on a page.

"Dry hire" usually means an empty room with no catering or bar tied to it. You bring in everything yourselves.

"Wet hire" ties the venue to its own catering and bar.

Ashbury sits in the wet-hire camp. Catering is in-house, and the hire fee moves with your combined food and drink spend, rather than being priced as a flat rental on an empty room.

Flip it round. Instead of three separate contracts for the room, the food and the bar, you deal with one supplier for all three. There's no separate caterer to book.

All drinks come through the bar too. So the number on your quote follows your own guest count and your own choices.

Not always.

Take a venue quoting a lower headline room-hire figure that needs you to bring your own caterer. Add catering, corkage and separate supplier fees on top, and it can end up costing more.

It's the cheap flight that stops being cheap once you've paid for the bags.

Compare two venues all in, never headline figure against headline figure. It's the only fair way to weigh them up.

National surveys put UK wedding costs across a wide range. That range tells you little about a day in Bournemouth.

A national average blends London prices with everywhere else, and it isn't built from Ashbury's own figures either. It's like an average shoe size: accurate on paper, a fit for almost nobody.

The more useful answer is the one that decides your quote: guest count, menu and bar.

There's no fixed rule. It comes down to what matters most to the two of you.

Some put the largest share into the room and the catering. Others spend more on photography or the dress and keep the venue side lean.

Either way, knowing what's included as standard (see above) makes that call easier to plan around.

The deposit amount is set at quote stage, for your booking. What I can give you here is the shape of the schedule.

Expect to book a year or more ahead, and the payments fall like this:

• A deposit on booking, to secure the date
• A further payment six months before the event
• The balance six weeks before the event

The deposit and cancellation terms are set out in your booking contract. Ask me to see them at enquiry, before you pay anything.

It's the part nobody wants to think about, which is exactly why it's worth sorting first.

Ask about cancellation and postponement terms at enquiry, before you book, so you've got them in writing.

If you're also working out the running order, how wedding day timings work at Ashbury covers the schedule, the ceremony slot and the evening music finish. There's more on weddings at Ashbury, everything else the venue hosts and the venue itself.

Send your date and guest count through the enquiry form and your quote is built around that day. Then come and see the room before you decide.