Dry Hire Wedding Venues and Catering - What Nobody Tells You Until You Have Booked

More couples than ever are booking dry hire venues. A barn, a field, a walled garden, a private house. You get the space and the freedom to fill it however you like, and you are not tied to an in-house caterer with a fixed menu.

I love dry hire. Most of the best weddings I have cooked at were in places with no kitchen, no staff and no rules. But I have also turned up to dry hire venues where nobody had thought about water, power, or where the bins go, and the couple found out on the morning of their wedding.

This is what your caterer needs from a dry hire venue, and the questions to ask before you pay the deposit.

What Dry Hire Actually Means

It varies wildly, which is the first problem. Some dry hire venues give you a fully fitted catering kitchen and just let you choose the caterer. Others hand you a key to a field. Ask specifically what is included, and get it in writing:

• Is there a kitchen or prep space? With a sink? With hot water?
• Is there mains power, and how much? A single 13 amp socket will not run a catering fridge and a coffee machine
• Is there mains water, or are we bringing it?
• Are there toilets, and who is responsible for them?
• What are the rules on open fire? Some venues say no, some say yes with conditions, some have never been asked
• What time can suppliers arrive, and what time must everything be gone?
• Where do the bins go, and who takes them away?

What a Fire Caterer Brings

Here is the honest answer to why dry hire suits us so well: we do not need a kitchen. We bring one.

On a typical dry hire wedding, the van arrives with the grills, the asado cross, prep tables, hand-washing stations, a chiller trailer, gazebos to cook under, and everything to serve from. The fire is the oven, the grill and the entertainment. What we need from the venue is a flat area of roughly six by six metres, a safe surface or permission to protect the ground, and somewhere to park.

What we cannot bring is water, toilets, and power for the things that are not ours. So those three go straight to the top of your venue questions.

The Questions to Ask the Venue About Fire

Open fire is the thing most likely to cause a problem with a dry hire venue, and it is almost always because nobody asked early enough. So ask early.

• Is open-fire cooking permitted? If the answer is no, ask whether it is a rule or an assumption. We have changed a lot of minds by explaining what we actually do, which is controlled cooking over embers in purpose-built equipment, not a bonfire
• Where can the fire go? Away from the marquee, away from trees, with clear access. We will do a site visit and mark it out
• Does the venue need to see insurance and risk assessments? They should, and we have them ready
• Are there neighbours? Smoke drifts. A quick word with the house over the hedge saves a phone call on the day

A dry hire venue with a good caterer is the freest kind of wedding there is. A dry hire venue with the wrong caterer is a couple standing in a field wondering where the plates are. The difference is entirely in the questions you ask before you book.
- Cai

Who Is Doing What?

The biggest risk with dry hire is not anything going wrong. It is something falling between two suppliers because everyone assumed someone else had it. Make one list with every item on it and one name against each:

• Tables and chairs
• Crockery, cutlery and glassware
• Linen
• Bar and drinks
• Ice and refrigeration for the bar
• Toilets
• Lighting and power
• Rubbish and recycling
• Clearing and cleaning the venue at the end

We are happy to take on tableware, front of house staff and the clearing of everything food-related, and we will tell you clearly what we are not doing. A caterer who is vague about this is a caterer who will surprise you.

Why It Is Worth It

For all the lists, dry hire is my favourite kind of wedding to cook. There is nobody telling us we have to serve at six sharp, no house rules about where the fire can be, and no menu that was designed for a hotel kitchen. The food is whatever you and I decide it should be, cooked where your guests can see it.

If you have booked a dry hire venue and are not sure what it needs, send me the venue details. I will tell you honestly whether it works for fire, and what to ask them next.