Dry Hire Venue Inspiration - Trinity Buoy Wharf Wedding

If you’re planning your wedding, your first consideration has most likely been the venue. Finding somewhere that can host all of your guests, facilitate all of your ideas as well as reflect your taste can be a challenge. One way of making your wedding day truly unique and true to you as a couple is to use a dry-hire venue: a blank canvas that gives you the freedom to make a space your own. In this blog post, I share with you my advice on how best to approach a dry-hire venue and my experience working in them as a bespoke wedding florist. I do this by sharing one of my favourite weddings held last summer as a case study - Maya & Stephen’s Trinity Buoy Wharf wedding.

To Dry Hire or not to Dry Hire

Be under no illusion that a dry hire venue will save you much money; and for the pennies one may save you, it may not be worth the stress likely caused. As much as they are desirable for their custom-ability, they require an inordinate amount of organisation and logistics, by comparison to a furnished venue.

When making that comparison between dry hire and those that aren’t, really consider the pros and cons and be fully aware that going dry hire just quite simply will be a lot more work. Wedding planning stress should not be underestimated – pick your battles and work out what is important to you both.

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When a Wedding Planner is Key

When hiring a dry hire space my first and top suggestion is to employ a wedding planner. There will almost certainly be questions and costs that you won’t think to enquire about that will be integral to a smooth flow of your day and the avoidance of surprise bills later on in your planning.

Your venue will likely come with a dedicated venue manager, but this person won’t offer the same hands-on support and best intentions for creating your dream day. They will have regular suppliers that they like to work with, however credible these may be, this won’t result in a bespoke outcome, the very reason you might have gone down the route of dry hire.

A good wedding planner will listen to your wishes and requirements and work closely with specially selected suppliers, doing all the back and forth, cross-comparisons and budgeting so that you don’t have to. Beyond the admin, they are invested in designing a unique celebration that is representative of you. They don’t want to run out what they have done before for the sake of convenience.

Choosing The Right Suppliers For Your Dry Hire Venue

Should a wedding planner not be a priority for you or within budget, then I have a handful of crucial recommendations:

• Carefully choose suppliers that you can trust and whose work you love. With a dry hire space, your suppliers’ advice and input will be invaluable. Listen to their ideas on how they can maximise impact. This could mean sacrificing some ideas and small details you had in mind, but with a large dry hire space, it’s important to maximise impact in fewer areas as opposed to scattering lots of ideas and spreading your budget too thinly.

• Budget more than you expect, especially for decor.

• Don’t be too hasty to choose the least expensive quote from comparative suppliers – it won’t necessarily mean you are getting the same for less.

Of course, as someone who works with London wedding flowers, I am biased, but I guarantee, without all the paraphernalia that a furnished venue comes with, a dry hire venue requires a lot to make it feel atmospheric.

Trinity Buoy Wharf Wedding - Case Study For A Dry Hire Venue

Anne of HILDE is someone that I have had the pleasure to work with a number of times. She put me forward as an option to the wedding couple, Maya and Stephen, who chose me for their wedding flowers at Trinity Buoy Wharf last summer.

As an interior designer, Maya had a focus on having an aesthetically beautiful wedding day. She chose a dry-hire venue so that she could make it her own, working with suppliers she could put her trust in to transform the space.

Maya and Stephen wanted to bring their Indian and Italian cultures together and so decided on hues of warm oranges, gold and yellows to transform the four vast white walls that make up Trinity Buoy Wharf into a warm atmospheric setting.

Anne provided me with a dreamy palette and source of inspiration from hers and Maya’s design choices. I love striking a balance between potentially conflicting elements: I knew I would need to create impact in such a space but wanted to ensure a sense of softness and romance that reflected this understated couple.

Ochre was chosen as the lead colour for the floral arrangements: combo roses and vanda orchids formed the base of the arrangements, softened by delicate white sweet peas and creamy beige peppercorns. In using our signature grouped and sculptured style we created a harmony between the luxury Art Deco influence and the soft earthy aesthetic created for the day.

Some of my favourite weddings have been held at dry-hire venues. So much energy, thought and attention to detail have gone into these and have certainly paid off. If you are considering a dry-hire venue, we would love to hear from you. Send us your brief and we will arrange a consultation to discuss your ideas.

You can read more about this beautiful Trinity Buoy Wharf wedding celebration at Harpers Bazaar.

For more London wedding flower inspiration, have a look at Aimee & Simon’s botanical-inspired wedding at The Barbican Conservatory or Chris & Skyla’s Guildhall wedding, mixing fresh and dried blooms and grasses.

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