Of the 50 London venues listed on 5 Star Weddings, 22 publish a wedding price. The other 28 quote for each wedding. The 22 figures do not measure the same thing: 14 are priced per guest, 6 are venue hire fees and 2 are minimum spends. A per guest figure and a hire fee cannot be set side by side, so the useful question is what each one covers and what it leaves for another contract.
Per guest: a package or only the food
Per guest pricing is the most common form in London, and it covers two quite different things. In a package, the room, the drinks reception, the meal and often wine are bundled. In a menu price, only the food is counted.
Gray’s Inn, a historic hall, is a package. The recorded brochure figure is from £188 per guest including VAT, based on a minimum of 120 guests. It covers hire of the Hall, two Pension Rooms and the Benchers’ Library from 12pm to 12am, a one-hour prosecco reception, a three-course meal, half a bottle of house wine per guest and a menu tasting for the couple. At the minimum, 120 guests at £188 comes to £22,560. Hire of the Hall alone is recorded from £3,150 on weekdays (6pm to 11pm) and from £4,950 at weekends, which shows how much of the package is the meal and drink rather than the room.
The Chelsea Harbour Hotel shows how one venue’s tiers differ. Its three packages are £120, £180 and £258 per person including VAT, with a 12.5% service charge added. The first has a sparkling wine arrival and a three-course breakfast; the highest adds Champagne, six canapés, four courses and an evening fork buffet for day guests. For 100 guests, the lowest package is £12,000 and the highest £25,800, a gap of £13,800 before service. Weddings of 100 or more add a menu tasting and a suite for the couple.
The Goring is the other kind. Its £80 per guest is a three-course private dining set menu for spring and summer 2026, including VAT. Room hire, drinks and accommodation are not included, and an optional 15% service charge is added. Sixty guests at that rate is £4,800 for food alone. A couple comparing this with Gray’s Inn would be comparing a menu with a package, and the two numbers are not alike.
Venue hire: the room, with catering separate
Hire fees buy the space and usually leave food, drink and flowers to other suppliers, so the total depends on who is appointed.
Syon Park records hire from £16,000 including VAT for a low-season weekday, rising toward £29,000 for a Saturday in high summer. That is a difference of £13,000 for the date alone. Catering is priced separately through the estate’s approved suppliers, and the record marks exclusive use as partial, meaning only for some spaces, dates or packages.
The Wallace Collection, a museum, records £18,000 including VAT for exclusive out-of-hours use of the named spaces for an evening. It is dry hire, so catering, flowers, lighting and sound are charged separately. Adding a ceremony space costs £2,400 and extending from midnight to 1am costs £3,600, so a wedding with both is £24,000 in hire before any supplier is paid.
Trinity House on Tower Hill publishes the smallest hire fee in this group: a three-hour ceremony offer from £2,500 plus VAT on weekdays and £3,000 plus VAT at weekends. It covers use of the house, two waiters and all glassware, with no corkage on drinks the couple brings. The weekend premium is £500. Catering comes from the house’s preferred caterers, so a reception would be a second contract.
Minimum spend: a floor, not a fee
A minimum spend is an amount the party must spend with the venue, and it is not a charge in itself. It is closest to a hire fee that has been converted into food and drink.
The Greenhouses, a restaurant that takes up to 40 guests, records a minimum spend from £2,500 for ceremony and reception, with no room hire fee. A 12.5% discretionary service charge is added to the final bill and registrar fees are paid separately to the register office. Shangri-La The Shard, London records a minimum spend of £20,000 on food and beverage for up to 100 guests, published as a winter offer for dates from October 2026 to January 2027. When the minimum booking is met, it includes a night for the couple with breakfast. A minimum spend of £2,500 and one of £20,000 are not comparable: they sit at opposite ends of guest numbers and format.
Venues that do not publish a price
The 28 venues without a published price are not hiding a number so much as selling a combination. Questions that decide the quote are the same across most of them:
- Is the price a package or a hire fee? Ask what the room alone costs and what the meal alone costs.
- Is there a minimum spend or minimum number of guests, and does it change by day or season? The Gray’s Inn and Chelsea Harbour records show minimum numbers; Syon Park’s shows price moving with the date.
- Which suppliers are required? Preferred or approved caterers narrow the options and set part of the cost.
- What is added? Service charges, VAT treatment, ceremony supplements and time extensions appear as separate lines in the published records above.
- Is the whole venue hired, or only some rooms, on the date wanted?
Buildings differ in what they leave out. Halls, museums and palaces such as Syon Park and The Wallace Collection are hired without catering, while hotels such as Chelsea Harbour fold the meal and rooms into one figure. The London wedding guide sets out how the areas and venue types differ.
Next steps
For readers still exploring, the London wedding guide and the full list of London wedding venues cover the rest of the city.
For readers ready to ask, these are venue pages where an enquiry can be made: Gray’s Inn, The Chelsea Harbour Hotel, Syon Park and The Wallace Collection.
Figures are as published by each venue and recorded on 5 Star Weddings; 22 of the 50 London venues listed publish a wedding price.
Updated 23 October 2026
