Spring Weddings: What The Season Is Actually Good For

The season people book for the wrong reason

Spring gets chosen for the photographs, blossom, long light, everything green. Those are real, and they are not the reason to book it. The reason to book spring is that it is the last stretch of the year where you have any negotiating power at all.

What spring actually gives you

Availability. Venues that are gone eighteen months ahead for a July Saturday will often have April and early May dates inside a year. Same for photographers, and same for us.

Price. A good number of venues run a lower season rate up to the end of April. It is worth asking directly rather than reading the brochure, because the discount is often not advertised.

Guests turn up. Spring does not compete with the summer holidays. You are not asking people to choose between your wedding and a fortnight booked in January, which is a bigger factor on final numbers than most couples expect.

What it costs you

The weather, and there is no honest way around it. April in the East Midlands does what it likes. You can have twenty degrees and blossom or you can have horizontal rain, and you will not know which until about four days out.

That is not an argument against spring. It is an argument for planning the day so it does not depend on the answer.

What that means for the food

The safest structure is one that works either way.

• A cold buffet does not care. It arrives on covered platters, goes on a table, and moves indoors without anything being lost. Buffets start at £5.50 a head, and the evening buffet is priced on evening numbers rather than the whole day.
• A hog roast from £7.25 a head is the better party when the weather holds, and it needs a plan when it does not, somewhere covered for the cooking and somewhere for fifty people to stand that is not the lawn. Fifty-guest minimum, about 3m by 5m of flat ground, 25% deposit to hold the date.
• Canapés work particularly well in spring because the drinks reception is the part most likely to be outdoors, and they are the course that survives being carried about.

If you want the outdoor version, book the marquee before you book the caterer. It is the longer lead time of the two and it is the thing that decides whether the rest is possible.

Booking it

Spring dates go later than summer ones, but “later” still means the year before for anything on a Saturday. If you are looking at April or May, the order to sort things in is venue, then whether outside catering is permitted, then numbers, then us.

We need the date, the venue, roughly how many for the day and how many for the evening and the dietary requirements with numbers against each. Every buffet is 30% vegetarian as standard, with vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free and halal portions prepared separately and labelled.

Final numbers seven days before, and you can move them freely until then.

The other seasons

Autumn is the closest comparison and it has a genuine case of its own, three reasons to choose autumn covers it. Between the two, spring buys you availability and autumn buys you better odds on the weather.