With the average wedding venue costing thousands, many couples have started using their own local village hall in the heart of their community.

Type ‘village hall weddings’ into your search engine and instantly the most beautiful village halls vie for your attention. Beautiful Victorian buildings with oak beams and leaded windows are enhanced by subtle lighting and swags of honeysuckle and roses. As we all know, most village halls do not look like this! Most were built from ugly yellow brick in the 80’s with dodgy (usually orange) polyester curtains and notice boards advertising Zumba and mums and tots groups. How do you go from this, to the wedding venue of your dreams? In this article I will show you lots of ideas on how to disguise ugly features and make the most out of your village hall venue.

Village hall weddings are a fantastic idea. You save a fair amount of money as they are reasonably priced and lots of them have bars so what else do you need? Just kidding! There’s usually plenty of parking and disabled access should you need it. The down side is that most village halls are a bit dated and remind me of school for some reason. However, that can easily be turned into a positive because with a bit of creativity it really does make the perfect wedding venue without the £££!

Where to start with your village hall wedding?

Village hall weddings often lend themselves to a vintage or ‘country’ look. We’re talking bunting and vintage floral tea cups. The centrepieces on these tables are supposed to capture the look of hot air balloons. The bride in the above picture chose to disguise the ugly windows by buying cheap garden arches and placing the legs in pots full of gravel. She then covered them in voile and wrapped Ivy and batter powered fairy lights up the arches. It looked great, especially at the evening reception when the lights were lowered.

What you need to create this look…

• Lots of lovely vintage china
• Crisp white tablecloths
• White chair covers with soft pastel pink and grey sashes
• Pink laser cut favour boxes
• Pretty bunting
• The centrepieces

For the arches

• Garden arch
• Pots
• Gravel
• voile
• Fairy lights
• Ivy

Lots of table-ware etc are things that are provided by caterers

If the walls are ugly 80’s yellow brick then why not think about hiring a company that does tenting? They cover the walls with voile for an amazing soft look that really transforms a venue. This bride chose to hang the beautiful bunting quite low across the room to distract the eye from an ugly ceiling and it really worked!

That’s pretty much it! Obviously you can have what ever colours you like but transforming this village hall into a perfect wedding venue really didn’t cost that much at all!

Saying all that, you don’t have to go for the vintage look if you don’t want to!

This look couldn’t be more different but it was actually held at the same village hall!

This bride decided to go with having the walls tented and I think it looks great!

All you need to do to achieve this look is to swap out the pastel colours on the table runners and chair sashes and change the centrepieces to glass bowls with red roses.

Your imagination is your only limitation!