Ben and Clare request your company at their wedding (as long as you stump up £150!)
WHEN they could not afford their dream wedding, Ben Farina and Clare Moran came up with an unorthodox solution.
Rather than settle for a cut-price celebration, they are asking their guests to chip in.
Friends and family have agreed to pay £150 each to attend, but Mr Farina, 33, believes they will get value for money.
The salesman has devised a ‘business model’ so the celebrations will be more like an all-inclusive holiday.
In return for their £150 – or £50 for a child – the 80 guests will be given a threenight stay at the venue on the edge of the Peak District in Derbyshire, and will not have to buy a wedding gift.
Mr Farina and Miss Moran, 37, who have been together for six years and have a three-year-old daughter Isabel, managed to hire Knockerdown Cottages, near Ashbourne, next June for a discounted price of £10,000 following a cancellation.
Mr Farina told the BBC: ‘People always pay a large amount of money to go to a wedding anyway, so why not have it paying towards the actual wedding rather than just to a business owner?
‘I sold it to them a bit like an all-inclusive holiday, so all the food and drinks will be incorporated in that cost.
‘The venue also has a spa, an indoor swimming pool, a games room, it’s very close to local amenities, there’s a lake, so it is like a little holiday resort.’
Defending the unorthodox arrangeand ments, Mr Farina said the idea has ‘gone down well’ with guests. A few invitations were declined, but not because of the £150 cost.
The couple, who had discussed but dismissed the idea of getting married abroad, will end up spending much less than the £30,000 which the latest Brides Magazine says is the average cost of a traditional wedding. He and Miss Moran, from Rotherham, have paid far more than £150 each to attend friends’ weddings, he said, including one in Greece which cost £550 for travel and hotels, plus £1,200 while they were there. Mr Farina devised his plan before proposing to Miss Moran, who has a 17-year-old daughter from an earlier relationship.
‘I knew her reaction would be, “We can’t afford to get married” – so I started showing her how we could,’ he said.
Miss Moran, a civil service contractor, said: ‘ I was very impressed. Ben is very savvy with money and I could see he had put a lot of thought into it.
‘I never thought we would be able to have a wedding like this. This is a brilliant way to do it and I can’t wait. As for gifts – we don’t need any.’
Mr Farina added: ‘What matters to us is that we’ll be able to celebrate our day with our friends
‘Better things to spend it on’
family. We bought a house last year and we have two kids to support. Spending a fortune on just one day didn’t feel right to us.
‘We’re not having a honeymoon. We have better things to spend our money on and we don’t want to get into debt.’
They are putting in £ 2,000, including £500 for Miss Moran’s dress and £100 for suits – to be bought in an online clearance sale – for the groom and best man.
Mr Farina’s mother is paying £750 for a hog roast for the wedding reception, his father is contributing £500 and his mother’s partner, who is a chef, will cook a roast for everyone on the Sunday.