So it looks like im finally tying the knot in August or September next year. Im planning on a max budget of about GBP10k…now i havent a scooby what these things cost, so does this sound sufficient (it’ll have to be!)?
It’ll be a Church job, roughly 50 people (family and close friends), the usual Reception/food after and a night do with say another 30-40 friends…thinking of maybe a Marquee hire for the Reception and evening do. The budget has to include her dress (purchase), my suit (hire) – what is the routine for Bridesmaids dresses, are they hired or bought, or Best man suit? A photographer as well.

Honeymoon is not included in the budget, we have other arrangements for that.

What sort of budgets have you lot worked to?

£15k+.. at least Go see fiancées parents.

Your soul.

For what you describe that could be a bit skinny.

However, if £10K is what you can afford it’s what you should spend and alter the day rather than put yourself in unreasonable debt. If going the traditional wedding route you are going to have to develop some serious heels to dig in to keep the two of you within budget. The big thing to remember is (and is easy to forget) is what you are panning is getting married rather than a wedding. A wedding last just the day whilst a marriage will hopefully last a little longer.

Cloudnine….lets just say that the fiancees parents arent an option.

Convert, i hope so to…mind we’ve been together for 17 years already so thats not really a worry!

It will cost loads, more than you think. Tradition is that bridesmaids dresses and best man/ushers suits are paid for by you. You also need flowers, food, band and/or DJ, shoes, and a whole host of other things that you will forget until you have to pay for them.

It is most certainly doable on the budget you have but as Convert says, you will need to dig your heels in on a lot of things and not buy into the “dream day” crap that empties your wallet.

It costs what you want it too.

Our wedding was around 6-8k. It was a church wedding with reception in the local village hall for 110 people. Buffet food at about £15 a head. Bought normal dresses for brides maids, friends made the the wifes dress and the cake. But we had a hired car photographer etc. The best weddings are the budget ones as yhey cotend to concentrate on whats important to the couple, not ‘How nice the flowers are’.

Friends have had the ‘full works’ costing 20, 30 or 40k + but for me they kind of missed the important part where you Actually get married – the cost goes on what is essentialy just a party afterwards.

I suppose what im trying to say is you’ll be fine with your budget just spend the money on whats important to you as a couple and you’ll really enjoy it.

.lets just say that the fiancees parents arent an option

Arrange for her to be adopted then tap up the new parents

We had been together for 11 before actually getting married but it’s still too easy to get too caught up in ‘tradition’ for which read ‘pleasing other people’ and ‘unnecessary handing over of cash’. We went very left field (licensed a cabin at the side of the loch for the day, small marquee/tent just in case it rained, bbq and bonfire & fireworks). I hope we had a day that was memorable and enjoyable for all and was very personal to us – about £7K I think.

Others will have done it for £50 and a bag of chips whilst some will have spunked £25K+.

We got married in march, church wedding, 80 people for the day, additional 50 for the night, excluding honeymoon, it cost us just over £15k. We could have cut cost out of it, but at that price our photographer was a close friend we had really good rate with, the flowers were done at trade by the maid of honour, so there was potential for it to be more.

Keep an eye on costs, it’s easy for it to snowball. Guideline prices i’d say based on my experience, The church is about £600, dress + adjustments & extras £1.5k, venue & food £6k, flowers £500, photographer £1k, that’s £9k before you include cars, suits, bridge maid dresses, shoes, hair, make up, DJ, cake etc etc etc.

Mine was less than £350 all in.
Dress was £100 (1992 prices).
Hire of room / bar in local Club was free.
Sandwiches / snacks / desserts around £75 – all on a ,long table, help yourself.
Cake was £50ish. Disco was £75ish
Wedding ceremony was around £40.

And yes, it was great.
You dont need to spend thousands to have a good time. Think what £10k would help you with – I’d sooner have a new kitchen with 10 years of use than one day of indulgence.

Weddings in this country are a joke, go abroad.

Two of my friends on very average salaries managed to spend £50,000 on theirs which they are still paying off and is still compromising their married life.

You can have a lovely wedding in Bora Bora for 5k, you get virtually nothing for that here!

Go abroad!

Avoid Franck

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKFtRedJxTw[/video]

Mine was actually about £8k and i got married in a castle.. http://manorbiercastle.co.uk/

Did it different as i invited all my friends and family to the actual wedding with a party in the grounds afterwards for a few hours then had a more intimate much smaller dinner/evening do with about 30 people.

Jesus reading this I’m glad I consider it all a load of pseudo religous mumbo jumbo. Honestly, why do you bother, what difference does it make?

I don’t think you can say you had a more memorable wedding than someone who spent twice what you did. Plus going abroad is IMHO an opt out which denies your friends from joining the party.

Flowers might not be important to you but to the ladies they make the church and venue much more special. So what I am saying is that you get what you pay for until you start adding in fripperies that don’t really matter.

My idea to save money is to have the ceremony at 4pm on a Saturday and then go straight to the venue for a meal and party. You can hire a marquee or hall and everyone comes rather than 1st and 2nd tier guests. Can work really well.

You need to save on the hundreds of small things. My wedding cost roughly £8000 (I think, it was paid for by a variety of people). The more stuff you do yourself the more genuinely personal and memorable it will be and if you dont have two left hands it will look just as good.

Invitations – make them yourself and save hundreds. Use fancy card from the craft shop etc. It’ll cost you the time of designing it and a few nights together in front of the telly sticking them together.

Favours, place cards and table decorations – the same, do it yourself. I spent the morning of my wedding blowing up balloons and decorating the reception venue with my brother whilst my wife got ready.

Luckily my wife didnt want a white dress and ended up in a red bridesmaid dress. This saved hundreds and was a bit of a talking point!

I didnae pay for everybodys kilt hire. Maybe this was very cheap of me.

Photographer. Loads of average photogs charge thousands and are average. Search around and find an up and coming chap and save a few bob and get great photos. (my brother for example http://www.jamesrobertsonphotography.co.uk/?p=45)
But if you choose wrong it will be big regret time!

There’s loads more you can do – pick your own wine and pay a corkage and get decent value wine rather than expensive venue wine, we spent loads on the celeidh band and just had a cd of our favourite tracks to dance to after, it worked surprisingly well. Cake was modest, if you have a talented friend then you could save much money here. Most of the stuff you can do to save money is fun and you can do it with your partner.

Anyway, save on the small stuff. Pay the big money on the essentials. The essentials are clothes, venue, cars, food, music, photographer, the rest can be saved on.

Oh and i got married in a castle!

ours cost about £8000. depends how much crap and tat you want with it all.

10k is what we spent excluding honeymoon.The biggest outlay is the venue and food so shop around for them.
Also be aware that budget for the bride’s and bridesmaids dresses may stretch a bit when you fiance gets caught up in the mood.

Sir, its really up to you. Cut the cloth according to you and your partners finances. If you have 10k stick to it costing 10k. It basically can cost you what YOU both want. You could do it for a few hundred or a few hundred thousands.

I married a Greek last year and we were happy to have a little wedding, small resataurant, but her mum and dad wanted the big fat greek wedding and we ended up in a 5* hotel with 200 guests. it was fab to be honest and thankfully we didnt have to pay for it as it is his only daughter.

As Cilla would say, the choice is all yours chuck.

What’s an extra £5k when you’ve given up the rest of your life anyway.

Is it Christmas yet? Bah Humbug!

You could do a perfectly nice registry office do and a good buffet for not much at all or you could spend £100k +

We spent around £6k (well the MiL did) but happened to know a florist, a cake maker, bands, DJ’s, photography etc so got an awful lot of things at mates rates.

Would have probably been around £10k for what we did otherwise…

I recommend avoiding the “wedding factory” type places. They are geared up to rob you of every penny they can.

We got married on a beach (free)in Scotland. It was a humanist wedding (rules vary between Scotland and England about legality of this). I’m not sure if a humanist wedding in England is legally recognised.

We then had reception, drinks and food in a nearby pub/restaurant place. They do amazing food and good beers so we knew the standards would be good but they’d only done a few weddings before and didn’t screw us on cost. We had no seating plan and only 80% of the required seats – ace! Makes it more social. My wife had to ask for a chair.

Then we moved on to the local village hall (£120 including clean up). The pub put on a bar and did bacon rolls and cake at the break.

Everything included it cost us £7,000.

* Photographer was a friend
* Borrowed rich friend’s cars
* Dress was a £150 “bridesmaid’s dress” – looked stunning!
* Band were a bunch of mates
* Bridesmaid’s made their own dresses together.
* My family made the cake (they are bakers after all)
* We made all the decorations for the tables and the hall.
* Our friends helped with so much – this is a huge benefit because everyone feels part of it. A nice metaphor for your reltionship and life.

GOOD LUCK! You’ll need it.

Dress £350
Bridesmaid dresses £180
My suit £160 (which I still use – why on earth do people hire stuff?)
Shirt and tie for father of bride and best man £60
Church £0 (my own)
Reception (we had wedding at 3.30pm, I’m not paying for everyone’s dinner!) £350 for 70 people. Everyone who went said it was one of the best receptions they had been too – we asked for BBQ chicken, pizza, sausage on stick, jelly and ice cream – everyone loved it!
Band – friends of ours – free
Bar – everyone paid for own drinks.
Car – friend – free
Rings -mine £70 (cheapest ti one I could find), hers £20.
Cake – £50. Made it ourselves from a customized MandS cake – 3 tier!
Photographer – £100. Only thing I wish we’d spent more on as photos ended up being poor. Should have gone with someone else who was recommended who was £300.

Around £1k 10 years ago and so many great memories. And no money owed afterwards too!

Married in a castle too. Brilliant day, we took the approach of just having immediate families there, loved every second of it.

Mrs O’s wedding car was £5 – but he did clean it especially.

The wedding industry survives on the myth that everything connected to the wedding must be bespoke and ‘special’, even stuff that nobody gives a whatnot about.

TBH, it entirely depends on the attitude of your other half. If she’s after the full princess experience, then yes, it will cost you a packet. If she’s more realistic and doesn’t want to hand over vast sums of your money on planners, flowers and embroidered place names at the reception, then your budget should be more than enough.

£10k is plenty. We had a budget of about £15k and £5k of that went on the honeymoon, as we felt like treating ourselves.

Many of our guests have commented on how nice the wedding was, how relaxed it was and how it seemed like we had put a lot of thought into it because our personalities came through in it.
I think that’s the key; have a think about what you want. Don’t just follow the magazines/wedding fayre/shop ideas about what your wedding ‘should’ be.

can you get friends to help with certain bits like invites/table layouts etc?
We did something that worked really and had lots of people talking during the evening; we put £500 behind the bar, but then gave all the bar staff coins for tossing. The guests had to order their drinks, then call heads or tails. If they won, they got their drinks on the tab and if they lost they had to pay for them. It was a real talking point and made the money go a lot further.

Many of our guests have commented on how nice the wedding was, how relaxed it was

This was the key thing for us. If my wife had spent months in the run-in and on the day fretting about tiny details, rather than just having a great time with friends, the day would not have gone well at all.

We had a church wedding and reception for 120 people which cost only a little more than that. Money saving tips we used:

Choose a reception that lets you BYO. We got all the wine and champagne from France.
Find a family member or friend with a nice car and use that for the bride
Family friend did the photography
Made our own cake
Hired the suits
Invitations bought off ebay

We spent £4.5k 14 years ago. My sister spent £40k 10 years ago. We both had a good time and the memories are the same. Choice is yours, but we couldnt contemplate spending money we didnt have or have to ask for.

for 10k you’ll be pushing it for what you want….

Buy the flowers yourself from a fruit and veg market. we did this, I went at 5am, still cost a lot of money, 300 quid or so, my mum and sister did the arrangements.

our friend DJ’d for a hundred quid, my wifes dad plays in a and, so they played, just had to slip the other band member 100 quid

we got a good deal on the photgrapher, as my wifes friend did a photography coure with him, it was still 600 quid.

we did the invites ourselves.

we spent 15k, for a nice hotel wedding, 3 course meal for 60 people, party for 100 or so in the evening.

biggest costs were dress (about a grand) her ring (700 quid) and meal was about 4k :-/ brilliant day though, we had a blast

If parents / friends / professionals get involved you will be way over budget.
Be brutal about who you want to invite
Keep it simple and intimate – they are by far the best and most fun weddings.
My step son got married in a Tee-pee in a lavendar field in Hitchen. I is what they wanted … so great

And the people who don’t like you wedding shouldn’t have been invited !!

Scary sums here a lot of £7k to £10k. Making me scared of when/if my daughter gets married. Might have to go into hiding…..

Don’t let people milk you. Don’t tell anyone you’re organising a wedding, tell them it’s a party.

It depends on how obsessed you and your fiance(e) are with all the trimmings. The trimmings are all total bollocks invented to steal your cash.

All you need for a wedding is a room, an official, family, friends, food and booze. Nothing else. That should make it good. If not, get some better friends and leave the family out 🙂

£10k far better spend on a massive post-wedding holiday I reckon (don’t call it a honeymoon otherwise you’ll be doing a load of soppy shit that costs 10x more than a proper holiday)

Ours was maybe 5 grand. We had some nice stuff, we had some stuff bought for us. We had a late weeding so we only had a late meal and no evening do. 20 people but at a really nice place.

It’s really mental how much you can spend on a wedding. If you’re set on spending £10k and you’re fine with that, it’s do able, you just have to make sure you don’t get carried away with the little things. If people say to spend more because it should be the happiest day of your life, they’re talking sh1t, as long as you’re marrying the person you want and the people you want are there you’ll both love it.

The little things that cost the money at our wedding I hardly remember, if at all.

We got married in August, here’s a breakdown of our costs:

Honeymoon £4,492.80
Rings £2,182.00
Drinks (free bar) £1,985.12
Food (65 people) £3,993.00
Accomodation £1,220.00
Band £725.00
Barn hire £2,535.00
Photographer £630.00
Clothes £1,460.00
Hair + Makeup £390.00
Flowers £162.60
Guitarist £170.00
Registrar £390.00
Misc £800.00

SUM £21,135.52

The wife bought the flowers from a wholesaler an did the arrangements herself, she also did all the decorations, invites, menus etc. I did the lighting for the band. The PA came with the Venue which we got half price for a late booking on a Friday. We did a free bar, alcohol bought through a local independent wine merchant. Photographer was a work colleague.

£900 all in for us 18 months ago. 8)
It was a registry office, but that included the cost of the dress, hire of the Local village hall for 50 guests, dress, food, Bar and drinks, music, evening buffet, everything… If I look back I have no idea how we managed it. We prepped it all ourselves, just the two of us. The family mucked in to clear up at the end of the day, but we had planned to do it all ourselves…

We were knackered at the end of a fantastic day, but if we hadnt done it that way we would still be saving for the day now.

And sitting outside on the hall steps, looking up at the stars once everyone had gone, and we were waiting for a mate to drive us back in his Taxi ( i did say we did the whole thing for under a grand!) was just perfect!

we were skint mind, if we had 10 grand to spare we could, and would have upgraded!

5k all in including the honeymoon back in 2005.
50 people in a farm-hotel venue. Everything we wanted and none of the trimmings we didn’t want. Great day with family and friends!

Write a list, allocate a budget and stick to it.
That’s it.

It was a bit of hard work in the run-up as we weren’t that organised. I made the cake and did some other bits and pieces in the run-up as I took some time off work. My best man had also flown in from Australia, and I had promised him a week of climbing before the wedding, which we also did 🙂 .

Anyway – all worked fine and everyone had a great time!

Rule #1 – do not mention the word WEDDING when booking a place – use “family function” instead

Ours was about £15k, inc. the honeymoon.