How Much to Charge for Marquee & Event Hire in 2026

What a marquee hire quote needs to include

Cover these nine things and the quote reads as a properly scoped job, not a day-rate guess:

1. 1The structure, named precisely — size in metres (e.g. 6m x 12m), pole, frame or clearspan, and whether it's a single span or linked bays — not just "marquee".
2. 2The full hire window — delivery/build day, the event day, and collection/strike day — since most marquees go up the day before and come down the day after, not just on the event date itself.
3. 3What's structural vs optional, priced as separate lines: flooring, lining and draping, lighting, heating, and a generator if the site has no mains access.
4. 4Ground condition and access — site survey findings, how pegs or weights will anchor the structure (grass, hardstanding, decking all need different anchoring), and any long-carry or restricted-access surcharge.
5. 5Your public liability insurance cover level, stated plainly — most venues check this before confirming a booking, and some ask for it in writing.
6. 6A structural engineer's sign-off where the job calls for one — anything outside the manufacturer's standard configuration (large clearspan, linked structures, hung rigging).
7. 7Wind and weather contingency — your plan if conditions exceed the structure's rating on the day, and who makes that call.
8. 8Your booking deposit, balance due date, and a separate refundable damage deposit — kept apart from each other and from the taxable hire total.
9. 9Delivery, erection and collection labour, priced honestly rather than folded invisibly into the headline structure price.

Typical UK marquee hire prices in 2026

Pricing scales with guest count and structure size. These are a fair starting point for a full package — structure, basic flooring, lining and lighting:

• 40–50 guests, one marquee (roughly 6m x 9m to 6m x 12m): £3,000–£6,000.
• 80–100 guests, a larger single span or linked double marquee: £5,000–£10,000.
• 120+ guests, linked marquees or a large clearspan structure: £8,000–£15,000+.
• Pole marquees generally come in cheaper than frame or clearspan structures of the same footprint — clearspan's unobstructed middle (no centre poles) costs more but is what most couples and corporate planners actually picture.
• Midweek and off-peak (outside May–September) bookings commonly run 15–20% below peak Saturday rates for the same structure.

What's usually extra, priced separately

A bare structure quote almost never matches what the client pictures. Flooring and a carpet or matting overlay, fabric lining and draping, and basic ambient lighting are standard extras most hirers end up wanting — price them as named lines, not a vague "styling package". A generator (roughly £100–£250 depending on load, if the site has no mains access), portable toilets (from around £100 per unit), furniture hire (tables and chairs from roughly £500 upward for a full set), and on-site crew for the day (from around £100+ per person) are all genuinely separate costs worth quoting as their own lines rather than absorbing into a single headline figure.

The safety and insurance paperwork venues check first

Industry guidance for temporary demountable structures — The Purple Guide's chapter on the subject, and standards like BS 7837 — is clear on the basics: structures must be appropriately secured to the ground and matched to their wind rating and the forecast for the event, wind speed should be monitored on site with an anemometer during the event, and larger structures should be erected by trained staff who provide a signed handover inspection report confirming the structure is safe before anyone walks in. Erecting and striking a marquee is working-at-height work in its own right — the HSE's "Working at Height" guidance (INDG401) is the reference point most reputable hire firms train their crews against.

On insurance, most venues ask to see proof of your public liability cover before they'll confirm a booking — stating your cover level on the quote itself, rather than waiting to be asked, is a quiet signal that you're the established supplier, not the cheapest one. None of this is legal advice — for anything outside a manufacturer's standard configuration (a large clearspan, linked structures, hung lighting rigs), a structural engineer's sign-off is the safer and increasingly expected default, and the specific venue or council's own requirements should always be checked directly.

A worked example

A 6m x 12m clearspan marquee for a Saturday wedding in October, seating around 70 guests, with flooring, lining, lighting, heating and a generator (no mains access on site):

Assumes a level grass site surveyed in advance, ground-anchored pegging (no hardstanding surcharge), and ground-floor delivery access for the van. £2,028 (50%) booking deposit due to secure the date, balance due four weeks before the event. A separate £300 refundable damage deposit is collected on delivery and returned within five working days of a clean post-event inspection — kept apart from the VAT-able total above.

Quoting mistakes marquee and event hire businesses make

• Quoting off a photo, not a site visit. A client's phone snap of "the lawn out back" doesn't show the slope, the buried drain six inches under the only flat patch, or the gate that's 30cm too narrow for your delivery van. A short site visit (or a client-supplied measured sketch, at minimum) before you quote avoids a change order — or a refused structure — on the morning of the job.
• Pricing the structure and forgetting the "invisible" extras. Flooring, lining, lighting and heating rarely come with the base hire, but clients often assume they do because they never see a bare marquee frame in real life. List them as separate lines with their own prices, not folded silently into a single "marquee hire" figure the client has no way to question.
• No weather contingency built into the quote. A forecast gust above the structure's rating, standing water on the site the night before, or a last-minute ground condition change are all real possibilities with an outdoor structure. State who decides whether to proceed, downgrade the layout, or reschedule — and what that costs — rather than leaving it as an unspoken assumption that surfaces as an argument on the day.
• Underpricing back-to-back weekend turnarounds. Striking Saturday's wedding marquee and rebuilding a different one somewhere else by Friday evening is real labour and real van time, not a gap in the diary. Busy season crews that don't price turnaround time properly end up working flat out for a day rate that doesn't cover the hours actually worked.
• Absorbing damage costs instead of charging a deposit for them. Without a separate damage deposit, a torn lining or a scorched patch of grass comes straight off your margin, every time. A deposit, returned promptly on a clean job, costs you nothing and protects every job that isn't.

The fastest way to do all of this

Pricing a marquee properly means itemising a structure, four or five genuinely separate extras, labour, two different deposits and VAT — by hand, for every enquiry, during the exact months you're busiest actually building the things.

This is what QuoteRocket is for. Describe the job in plain English — "6m x 12m clearspan, 3-day hire, flooring, lining, lighting, heaters, generator, Saturday wedding" — and it turns that into a branded, itemised PDF quote in under a minute. Your customer accepts it with one tap on their phone, and an accepted quote becomes an invoice in one click, with your booking deposit, damage deposit and balance tracked automatically instead of living across three different spreadsheets.

Whichever way you produce the quote, the principle holds: name the structure and the extras separately, state your insurance and any structural sign-off plainly, keep the damage deposit apart from the booking deposit, and price the labour of getting it up and down instead of folding it invisibly into a single day rate.

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