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So me and the future Mrs.TheRealHoops are planning the big day but don’t have a squillion bucks.
Is there a way to tie the knot for sub £5k around Plimuff. It can’t be much more as I need a new bike. #Priorities
Ideas please.
Keep the invite list small, cater it yourself and be really really chilled out!
Registry office, small invite list, take them to a decent restaurant afterwards. We did that and it was about £700 total. We had a brilliant day and all the guests thought so too.
We got married in Canada outdoors and told everyone they were more than welcome but we would understand if they didn't want to spend that much.
Threw a bit of a party when we got back. Ten years ago and including the two week holiday/honeymoon in Canada, still came in under your budget.
When you book you venue for your meal don't tell them it's for a wedding until you've got a price.
Instead of a sit down meal we had a local street food vendor come to the venue (which was amenable to such things). Much cheaper and everyone loved it. Spotify instead of a DJ (though we had a live band too). Venue was a local gig venue / multi use space that was a lot cheaper than a 'proper' venue... All depends how you want to do it really.
There were 15 people at our wedding including me and Mrs.K. We had a great day, everyone loved it. Don't waste money on stuff for other people.
We did all of ours in a hotel on a deal. Didn't bother with table decorations, favours or pre paid drinks as no remembers them anyway. Didn't bother with a car and had a homemade cake. Found a photographer who was happy just to wander about all day taking pictures, only had about 10 posed/ group photos then had a little book made after. It was cheaper for my Mrs to get a dress made than altered too which was surprising!
Our actual, legal stuff, bare minimum wedding was £350 in the registry office. We rode there, got married in front of our 2 witnesses, in riding kit (took helmets off...) then Went for some food after.
Had a fake wedding(so family didn’t miss out and big party a couple of days later, which added to the cost somewhat, but that’s up to you how much you spend...
Cost of one of the key dates in your adult life = cost of high/mid end MTB
which one is crazy?
or both !?!
Keep away from the "industry" at all costs!
Ours in 2014:
Bespoke custom made Cocktail dress for the bride, and matching waistcoat and hanky for me to go with existing suit. Even a bespoke dress was cheaper than an off the peg meringue. £1400
Hired pub from an acquaintance for civil ceremony and evening do £700
Ram raided local supermarkets for flowers £200 for a van full
No photographer, Couple of friends brought SLRs and as long as you get the family pics for the parents, no one else cares and you save a fortune.
Two Hundred meters of fairy lights to decorate venue £200
Big posh lunch for 40 at pub, and hog on a spit, plus salads and trimmings for 140 in the evening. - We like food, splashed out a bit here £2000
Invited guests to bring a cake or pud in Bake-off style, looked great and £free. Pub did ice cream/cream/custard
We spent most of the budget on food and drinks, total all in was £6k. And as you can see, we could have gone cheaper, but did treat ourselves to some niceties.
Daughter of my mate got married a couple of months back. £35k.
No, that didn't include the honeymoon.
😐
Ours cost about £200. Registry office and then meal at our local (Sutton Hall in Macclesfield) and they were kind enough to cordon off a section of the building at no expense. Just close friends and immediate family in attendance. A very chilled day.
Mid-week weddings are cheaper for a start.
We got married on a Friday afternoon, means we only had to feed the the guests once. Got the local butcher to do a hog-roast and the local sports committee did the bar. Venue was Loweswater village hall, (£200 for 3 days hire) other nice village halls are available. A band and proper photographer were the other only big expenses.
As has been alluded to above you and your future wife need to decide on the approx scope of the wedding. They can be done cheaply but only when all concerned (including the parents of bridge / groom if applicable) are onboard with the concept. Only once that is decided can other suggestions be made....
Does your OH want to be married, or have a wedding? Coz you ain’t doing the latter on £5k
Anyway, slightly sexist post aside. £5k is a odd figure, it’s above what you need for a simple wedding, but a few grand short of the usual dreadful Hotel ‘resort’ type wedding.
I had a Hotel type wedding, never, ever, ever, ever again (kind of the point I know but anyway). Forget a wedding a moment, imagine waking into a little countyside hotel, tapping the bell and saying “good evening, I’d like to book every table in your restaurant - your other customers? Oh don’t worry, I’ll give you 6 months notice, oh yes I’d like the billy basic soup / chicken and veg / cheese cake menu, I know it would be £10-£15 a head usually, I’ll give you £70, is that okay? All my friends are going to come, they’ll book every room in your hotel at full price and probably put more than a few grand in the till at the very expensive bar - but don’t worry, it’ll buy them say a bottle of £6 Supermarket grade wine between say 4 of them, call it 10 bottles, sixty quid? Oh lord no, I’ll guve you £250 for them, that okay?”
You expect a ‘thank you’ but I’m fact they’ll say “four grand if you do it on a Friday”.
Its a mugs game, best wedding I’ve ever been to was a registrar job in the council building followed by a party in a community centre in Germany. I think it cost £500 or there abouts. Best party I’ve ever been to.
Do that.
Daughter of my mate got married a couple of months back. £35k.
No, that didn’t include the honeymoon.
Picked my folks up from one recently, just about anyone was invited, free bars in a huge marquee.... Don't want to get close to thinking about how that all added up!
Some crappy tricks though, the people handing out the wine opened everything (screw top) and chucked them which meant loads of bottles of wine were wasted
We had less than 30 at our hotel wedding. My mum (trained cook) made cake, wife's uncle (former baker) decorated it, mother in law and godmother did the flowers, godfather provided a retro wedding car, did have a photographer though, but still amazingly cheap compared to a lot of friends.
Spent a fortune on 3 weeks in the Rockies for our honeymoon though!
Village Hall, local mobile fish & Chip wagon, ice-cream van.
Sorted.
ice-cream van.
The ice cream van we asked wanted £500 (ish, that idea was shelved pretty early on....)
We got married in St Margaret's chapel in Edinburgh castle, there was just the 8 of us-both parents my bro and her sister. We all stayed at the Glasshouse hotel for 3 days and had the wedding meal at Ducks restaurant. Iirc it was ~ £4k. Basically spent all the money on the people closest to us and had a great time, wouldn't change a thing.
Honeymoon was a last minute few hundred quid package holiday to Corfu that was brilliant.
Wedding 1 - big old affair, loads of guests, cost as lot, her folks picked up most of the tab my folks chipped in a fair chunk too.
Wedding 2 - me, her, her folks, my folks, a registry office and a s****y lunch. Cost about £500 all in, and £400 of that was the lunch.
I still wince to this day some 12 years later, when I think about paying 500 pounds, yes 500 whole ****ing pounds that I'd grafted for on chair covers!
Best wedding I went to, they did the registrar day before with close family. Then hired pub day after with BBQ. My mate said it was super cheap, only a couple of thousand I think for pub, dj, food and drink. He married a Mexican, so her family brought over loads of Tequila!
OH is already planning ours... I have not even proposed yet! Although on cards in Cairngorms this Autumn.
+1 for not saying its for a wedding. My sister had a big pub meal but said it was for a family birthday. As otherwise they add on £s!
I am hoping for Horner Farm on Exmoor. Means I can ride first too.
Oh ****ing chair covers!!
We had A Proper Wedding, in a way, but costs were under control...
It was a Friday. And we hardly let anyone come! 15, including us. But we had a nice room, in a building across the road from the cathedral (good for photos!) and all close family and close friends were there.
Small size meant we had a private room off the (small, independent) hotel restaurant for the meal and all sat together on one table. There were speeches (short), flowers (some) and drunkenness (limited)
and a party in the pub for 100+ the next day. With live music and craic and a second outling for the dress, and more drunkenness without ruining the Special Day!
we spent 5000 or so including photos and some years later think it was about right.
we managed it. Andy K has some good tips. these in particular:
Keep away from the “industry” at all costs!
No photographer, Couple of friends brought SLRs and as long as you get the family pics for the parents, no one else cares and you save a fortune.
Two Hundred meters of fairy lights to decorate venue £200
Invited guests to bring a cake or pud in Bake-off style, looked great and £free. Pub did ice cream/cream/custard
also:
we went down fabricland and bought 2 massive rolls of fabric for £75. Cut half into squares for tablecloths, cut the remainder into long strips for hanging decoration type things
we had a hog roast so asked the guests to bring either a salad or a cake. It's great - everyone does their party piece so it's all really good. 4 years later I still have people telling me how good the food was.
Mrs Doris's mum did the flowers (not the bouquet) on her allotment
Get your friends involved! Our friends and family lent us bunting, made cakes, DJ'ed, hemmed our tablecloths, did the bride's hair and makeup, took our photos, lent us a 'wedding car' - and the best bit is, they all come up to you afterwards and thank you profusely for letting them be so involved in your special day 😉
We did the officials at the registry office for £50 the day before. then on the day we actually did vows and readings and got a family friend to lead the 'service' (non religious)
We spent about 1500 on booze for the guests, 1500 on venue, 700 on hog roast, and maybe 1000 on other stuff like hiring plates etc, fairy lights, fabric, a hotel room for the night afterwards, yak yak
That was for about 100 guests 🙂
**** chair covers!!
Too right! That’s where the money escapes! I didn’t know they were A Thing. Until a venue asked about them, when our plan was different/bigger.
take any small number and multiply by 100 or more... soon adds up
bin *all* that stuff, just brief the photographer to omit photos of chairs!
Wedding 2 – me, her, her folks, my folks, a registry office and a s****y lunch. Cost about £500 all in, and £400 of that was the lunch.
When/where was this? For the absolute bare minimum (we didn’t even exchange rings...) ours was £70 to reserve the date (up to a year in advance), £100 to give notice, then £150 for the actual day (a Thursday) No guests, smallest room possible etc
that was 2 weeks ago, in Leeds registry office.
Oh **** chair covers!!
ahahaha yes that pretty much became our mantra!
And don't - do not - ever - look in a wedding magazine or website. Cheerleaders for a bullshit industry.
My son got married recently. Thank god her folks paid. No idea how much but I reckon it must've been 20-30K, I think the cake alone was something silly like £400 & the photographer was 2k ffs!
Absolute stupidity.
When you book you venue for your meal don’t tell them it’s for a wedding until you’ve got a price.
This - for everything, cakes, music, taxis, the ****ing lot. Silly, silly money is expected the minute a wedding is mentioned.
I can see why cakes are so expensive. My sister made ours (she is really, really good, should seriously consider doing it for a living) Anyway, the blue flowers alone were 8hrs worth of work! The whole icing-flowers bouquet on it were so good everyone thought they were real.
Anyway, free cake, her mum's old wedding dress, a dress for the bridesmaid, local farm shop restaurant thing booked out for the whole (Friday, wife booked the wrong day!) evening for about 30 people, a photographer, all the legal stuff, some accomodation in the village for those too elderly/infirm/etc to join us camping in the field was about £2.5k. Evening entertainment was a huge campfire and several bottles of nice whiskey, which is a very pleasent way to spend the wee small hours with a load of people you haven't seen for ages.
..
The cost of the previous wedding I went to would have been easily enough to clear our mortgage. It was a nice party but I know which I'd rather.
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Also, what's with 'wedding lists'? Seems extraordinarily tacky to me. Luckily I've only ever been invited to one wedding where there was such a thing, which I ignored. We said no presents on our invites, but people still brought things,small items but they appear to be things they had put some thought, time and effort into, all lovely.
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Last wedding invitation I got was a text message, 'Married in secret last month, do in the village hall next Saturday, hog roast booked, bring a bottle' Sounds a lot more fun than most posh dos.
We got friends and family involved. Luckily we had a couple pro photographers as friends. Others chipped in for other activities, eg brother and friend did some DJing. Some family made cake. We bought the beer in the supermarket when it was on special (some nice ales and lagers) and a barrel from the local brewery. I'm not a fan of weddings in venues where the geusts need to pay a fortune for a choice of Carling or Tetley's so finding one where we could provide our own was key. Wife's parents still spent quite a few quid on catering, band, dress, etc as they wanted too. I suspect the total was still pretty high but we thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it.
We got lucky with the venue as it was used for the ceremony, daytime activities, evening do and allowed free camping.
Just don't get married. Carry on as you are for free. Spend the 5k on a great holiday.
If you do get married it'll cost you more to get out of the contract anyway so why do it?
We did ours for 55 people for just under £10k. Could have been chapear as about £3.5k was on the rings and photography, but those are the bits we kept. So take those off and it was about £6k. Only fed people once with a BBQ for which my brother (when he was a farmer, not now as a BBC news reader!) provided some of the meat, p20s suit from M&S, my dress in a sale, decoration largely all done by ourselves and family, cakes (selection) were £80 done by a friend of mums, we did have a car but we struck up a deal with a local company inducing mini van at the end of the night and the DJ could have saved us £200 but we ended up moving house v close to the date so saved having to come up with a play list. Church bit cost about £500. It was great fun and 5 years later people still talk about it .
We went for village hall, van load of proper pasties, land rover load of beer and cider from the local brewery, stack of Yorkshire curd tarts and a cake by a friend and another friend brought their ceilidh band. 100+ people, no idea to be honest. Well within your budget, but you may have to pass on the carbon wheels for now.
We both had a rather clouded view of the industry as I used to work for a marquee firm and my wife an event harpist so we were well aware of how it can escalate and ultimately, everyone is just happy for a big party.
Seat covers are expensive because they take friggin' ages. And never order gold chairs unless they are freshly painted.
it's a numbers game, the cost is directly proportional to the number of seats
Drove my (slightly hungover mate) down to the hotel from the chalets we were staying in for his wedding, the morning after, so he could pick up the tab for the meal and the ceremony itself... Her parents were picking up the tab for a lot, but after the £6k engagement ring (yes, really!!!) he had agreed to pick up the tab for the wedding meal and the ceremony... They'd insisted 140 of us in total came out to Tuscany for a week (we paid for our own flights and accomodation, but beyond that, everything else was covered pretty much), and the wedding meal was a paltry 7 courses with canapes before hand and coffee afterwards! A mere 100 euros per head (for 140 people! At least this was 2009 and 100 euros was £75 back then)... Then there was the £10k they charged for the venue hire for the day and the cost of the ceremony... He was VERY sober by the time he got back in the car having just written a cheque for more than £20k!!!
Don't get me wrong, everyone had a great time, but he conservatively estimated that the wedding cost more than £40k between himself and her parents... And that's before the 140 guests had paid for their own flights, accomodation, and any spending money for a week in Tuscany...
I was invited to the Stag Do, but had to politely decline sadly... Having known him since we were born pretty much, it did wrench a bit, but he did say to me (given I was between jobs at the time) not to worry about it as it would be a ridiculously drunken mess and huge excess from a load of guys that could afford it... They stayed 2 nights in 5star accomodation (£250 per person per night!), and had a day at the races (where some of them gambled many £thousands each...). For some people, their enjoyment is directly linked to being able to spend more than the next person when it comes to celebrations! Personally, I couldn't give a shit... But there we go...
My mate has it sorted. They are getting wed at Monkeyworld. The only alcohol allowed is for the toast and there will be a small buffet. Then they'll meet mates later at a pub.
It's as cheap or expensive as you want it to be.
We just went to Tuscany with my folks and her folks, my bro and his wife. Had a week in the Tuscan hills, a wedding in Lucca, and honeymoon in Amalfi.
When we came home we hired a village hall, did the catering ourselves, and had a party for friends and extended family.
Everyone happy.
I'm at that age where people are getting married, it's amazing to see how much people earn despite seeming to have a similar upbringing to myself.
Some of the weddings I've been to have been amazing and then I got married in the registry office and couldn't afford to invite anyone other than my family.
It's frustrating really even if I worked myself into an early grave I'd not make as much as they do, makes you wanna give up. I'm not talking first class oxbridge grades here either.
@tails are you sure they can afford it? A lot of people take out loans for posh s****y weddings!
I think we spent around £5k on the wedding. We had our wedding on a Friday. Church wedding followed by a nice meal in a pub with about 30 family and friends. Had a lovely day and was able to speak to everyone we wanted to.
Next day we booked out the same pub and had about 100 people come for a big party. We didn't pay for any booze but put on a buffet for the evening. We had a brilliant time and thin kwe are both glad we didn't spend more as we could afford to go to New York and then Greece for the honeymoon which were both fantastic. I would def say spend more on the honeymoon.
it’s amazing to see how much people earn despite seeming to have a similar upbringing to myself.
Don't be too sure. More likely it's all down to credit cards and loans.
Or bank of mum and dad, as was the case for me.
(we didn’t ask for a cent, was almost forced upon us...)