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 swanky 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…)

Boom!

FIFY.

I took me Bird on Holibobz, proposed and had a simple ceremony near Porto Cervo whilst I was at a World Champs Sailing Event.

We didnt want to spend too much so we cut the following

Wedding dress. Wife didnt want one so bought a dress she did like for £200 instead

Invitations, seating plans etc. Designed our own and had them printed on line, way cheaper than wedding stationary.

Drinks. We got 2 barels from a local brewery and paid £50 corkage to the venue

Table decs, Ikea Carafes with flowers from friends garden they were happy to let us have

No bridesmaids and favours

Avoid all the extras the veunes try to persuade you to add on. They cost a fortune for nothing. A classic example was chair covers, Only £5 each!!!!! We asked why their chairs were so bad they needed covers so they did them for free 🙂

Avoid all the extras the veunes try to persuade you to add on.

‘oh, sir would like his guests to choose what food they’d like from a menu (2 meat, one veg option)? £10 a head extra please’

<span style=”display: inline !important; float: none; background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: ‘Open Sans’; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 22.4px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;”>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.</span>

People are on maximum show off mode at these kind of events so not necessarily indicative of their normal lifestyle.

At the end of the day it’s about what you want and how big a family you have. If you have a big family and are relatively close then there will be an expectation from the wider family to be involved…not necessarily you spend a lot on them, but that will inevitably bump up the cost.

I got married 12 years ago and we did it relatively cheaply at the time for the usual format standard wedding and that still came in at £14k. Luckily we went thirds with our parents. If they were not able to contribute we would have been into credit card/loan territory.

Registry office and a meal for about a dozen family and close friends. Despite misgivings I really enjoyed it, and the special-ness was not a function of the budget.

mine was expensive. The full church malarky, lot of people (inc those I’d never seen before, and haven’t seen since), pukka reception, toastmaster, line up, custom made dress worn once etc

We didn’t pay. The in-laws did

My brother got married in the Registrar office. Their kids were there, as were my parents. Nothing else.

I know which one I’m hoping my daughter (and son!) will do

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.

Took us on a bit of a journey there didn’t you 😉

Things I’ve learned over the years:

By and large NO ONE in the UK will tell you what they really earn, NO ONE. People might give you a nudge and a wink, bit of flash here, but mostly you’ll never really know.

You might be surprised how much circumstances can affect people’s lifestyle much more than their income.

A Uni degree, even from Oxbridge isn’t a guarantee of riches, it doesn’t hurt, I know a lot of people who have that background are quite wealthy, but then again, they were before they went too.

As a former finance underwriter, I know how many people have zero idea how much they actually have, or worse spend. I met people who spent hundreds a month more than they earned, and had done so for as long as records went back – 6 years.

Mostly though, it can be a measure of desire ‘afford’ is a pretty flexible term. Some people live for that idea that it’s their special day, we saved pretty much every spare penny we had for 18 months (against my better judgement) and still ended up £1000 in debt at the end of it. I would have preferred the registry office with a couple of witnesses and go to the pub and a lovely holiday with my lovely new bike. In fact given my way I would have prioritized the Holiday and Bike and then only been able to afford the cheap wedding.

When I hear about ‘Average People on the Street’ dropping £30k on a wedding I can only think they’re heading for a massive anti-climax, I know that’s how I felt the day after ours, all those months of stress, planning, saving (and saving) agonising over this and that and then, boom it’s over, you moment in the spotlight gone forever, your friends and family might remark about it on the way home “it was okay that” “yeah, not bad, I think I preferred Tom and Barbara’s last year” “Yeah, the food was better” and if you heard them you might scream “OH the food was better was it, I paid £200 to wine and dine you pair of shits” but you know deep down, that’s exactly how you feel at other peoples weddings.

The real killer at weddings is numbers, if you’re inviting people you don’t really know, then you’re just showing off, or feeding your ego when that guy you worked with 6 years ago comes to shake your hand and say how great you are, or your second cousin your partner has never met, nor will again finds their way into every photo.

Frankly it’s a mugs game, I never wanted to get married, but I love my wife and it was important to her, so I agreed, almost, happily. I applaud anyone who does it for £500 or whatever, after all, you say the words, sign the paper and you’re done, the rest is garnish.

When I hear about ‘Average People on the Street’ dropping £30k on a wedding I can only think they’re heading for a massive anti-climax

I just had a massive hangover after ours…..

By and large NO ONE in the UK will tell you what they really earn, NO ONE.

Unfact.

Get married in the winter and haggle.

We saved a fortune on our wedding by originally booking it for November (winter weddings are normally cheaper) and also the fact it was 2013 which meant a lot of couples didn’t want to get married that year due to it being deemed unlucky.

I then managed to change the date to the last summer day available (August) and kept the same winter price, the venue were also doing a deal of £2013 off for summer weddings that year, which I also cheekily managed to get them to apply, making our deal more than 50% cheaper than it should have been for a wedding at the venue that time of year.

This was at a nice, normally expensive venue in Ascot/Sunningdale with 5 hotel rooms included and another 20 at reduced rate for guests, all catering and sole use of the venue, plus breakfast the next day

With a total of 50 day guests and another 60 evening the lot came in at under 5.5k

Also saved a fortune on the cake by buying cupcakes from waitrosse (they do/did them to order £1 each) and using a £10 cake from sainsburys on top

Mother in-law paid for the dress which saved us another load

Oh and ask for cash as gifts, we discovered people are mega generous at weddings, we ended up with over 5k as gifts which pretty much paid for the venue.

Good Luck

What’s wrong with the classic wedding? Las Vegas drive through venue, dressed as Elvis and a big ole Cadillac to arrive in? if the family wants to be there…Skype. Cheap as chips and good riding not far from town

(not married by the way)

I work on posh weddings periodically. Did one not so long back – the dinner was held in a marquee in the grounds of a Historic Royal Palace. The rental period to cover the marquee build and strike  was 2 weeks. I was on site doing lighting (stage, dancefloor and ambient stuff) for 6 days straight managing a crew of 10 guys with 3 artic trailers worth of kit. Separate subcontractors doing sound, rigging, aircon, power (all from brought in generators). Dining tables were all custom built (and skipped afterwards). Florals were stunning – it was like walking into a forest – trucks and trucks and trucks of the stuff – again, landfill the following day. Waiting staff numbers were into 3 figures. The menu was printed into chocolate coins the size of a side plate in case the guests got peckish between courses.

Then there was the rental cost of the state rooms in the place for the pre-dinner drinks, plus more lighting (another 6 guys as it was a rush build after the venue closed to the public), back ground music, more flowers, drinks, more waiting staff.

The guests were in the marquee for maybe 4 hours, tops…

I genuinely have no idea how much it cost. Easily 7 figures, probably 8….

Who was getting married?

No idea (not UK based), and we were all NDAed up the wazoo and back so I couldn’t tell you anyway.

Whilst I like the technical aspects of my job, the combination of sheer excess and massive waste doesn’t half get to you after a while…

If your OH is reading “your wedding”, you’re screwed.

Best way to keep cost down is to organise it yourself. Avoid “the industry” AT ALL COSTS.

Guests, stick to family and actual friends, we were just under 50 all in. Enough to make the place busy but not so many as to bankrupt us. And all of them we knew well.

Afternoon ceremony, no brainer – feed everyone once, properly at tea time, none of this wedding breakfast cobblers.

Catering, got someone local who did events, chatted to them a couple of times and told them what we wanted (loads of courses, but each one quite small, not just a starter/main/desert – sneaky thing was, nobody got to choose, but between the courses every diet preference present ended up with at least a few things they were happy with), they did a bang up job, they also did the cutlery and tablecloths and tables all that stuff and brought a few serving staff.

Band, booked them off t’interweb ourselves. They were great.

Venue, found a local stately home that here just starting to doing weddings – blind luck – so as one of their ‘test cases’ we weren’t at full cost, they sorted the registrar. Otherwise we were looking at registry plus somewhere with an ‘event hall’ afterward, and in that case the word “wedding” was not to be mentioned to them, ever. Venue did the bar at normal sort of bar costs.

Photographer, local guy, again just found someone willing to wander around all day, only a couple of times with posed photos.

Flowers and cake, local independents again.

£5k all in, half of that on food, not including The Dress (no idea, in-laws covered it!)

You’ll note a continuing theme with “local independent” suppliers going on.

I won’t disagree that organising it yourself can be stressful.

As said avoid “the industry”, lots of very vey nice village halls in very very nice places at very cheap prices.

We used a nice new EU funded village hall close to where my wife grew up. I think it cost us £75 but it had to be clean by the next evening for a yoga class.

Large lanterns and 200m fairy lights under £100 the lot from Aliexpress, these were re-sold on ebay after.

Luckily friendly with a very good caterer who did a great price, and provided staff for bar.

Music was spotify and a very good live band (only expensive bit).

Cars were my dads sports car to drive me to / us from, and we borrowed a couple of range rovers from friends and friends bosses to drive the bridesmaids.

Bar I ran myself (license from council £30) and was priced to guests at cost- one trip to Bargain Booze to fill up a pick up truck (and a call to a local brewery for a keg).

Bargain Booze did sale or return on all the booze(!), some did go back. Wine merchant did sale or return on table wine and free glasses.

All you need for a good party is good people. good music and good cheap booze.

Haven’t read all the posts before this but it can be done for a lot less than 5K.

I got married 6 years ago and we were very relaxed about our wedding, we’d been together for 19 years previous. Ceremony was at Leeds registry office and the do was at East Keswick village hall, although they have since put their prices up. We had a barbecue (catered) and then pie and peas for supper. But our was 4.5K all in including my suit and my wifes dress, kids outfits, a DJ ( I forgot to book a band!).

It even included all drinks for about 80 people, via bringing shed loads of wine and cheap plonk back from France and buying booze from supermarkets when it was on offer. We had shit loads left over as well!!

We paid the caterers to get a couple of people to run a bar and collect glasses, but there was no money changing hands so it didn’t need a licence.

Great day.

Been reading this with interest as we’re planning on getting married soon. Now i’m pretty convinced that 4pm at the registry office & straight to a nice pub for beers & a meal is the thing to do. Cba with bands & dancing and the hassle of putting on ‘a wonderful day’. Ceremony, booze, food, booze i think will do.

if you think this bit is expensive just you wait until the divorce part…

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Been reading this with interest as we’re planning on getting married soon. Now i’m pretty convinced that 4pm at the registry office & straight to a nice pub for beers & a meal is the thing to do. Cba with bands & dancing and the hassle of putting on ‘a wonderful day’. Ceremony, booze, food, booze i think will do.

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TBH it’s worth doing something memorable, although I guess you’ll always remember getting married, but my advice, if you’ve got a few grand to spare, spend it on something you want rather than ‘doing the done thing’ and getting humped by the ‘Wedding Mafia’ (as the industry is known in Business Circles).

Given free reign I’d have done the above and sodded off to Australia for 3 weeks or something.

Oh and ask for cash as gifts,

Oof.

Is there a way to tie the knot for sub £5k around Plimuff.

wedding licence is what £100.  All a wedding is a contract.  Do it cheaply and spend the money on something an actually worth while.

DO NOT tell any supplier that its a wedding, price automatically 2x-3x for that magic word. Book catering for a birthday party and get the cake somewhere else etc etc.

When I got married, the approach we took was to spend money on things that really mattered. Anything we could make or supply ourselves to a reasonable standard, we did. Invites, seating plans, table decorations, cake, dress, bouquet, photographer, helium ballons, all either hand-done by us or friends.

When you’ve been handing out money hand over fist for a year it’s really easy to get into the mindset of “oh, it’s only another £50,” especially as you’re getting close to the big day and a bit panicky. This is deadly, don’t do it. Eg, we thought about favours late in the day and were looking at various nicknacks for a couple of quid each – then realised, £3 for 50 guests is £150! We ended up getting some little hessian drawstring baggies for a few pence each and a big sack of sweets to fill them. Made our own gift tags, they went down a storm.

Others have said this but it’s worth repeating again – some venues will take the piss, and the volume of urine extraction varies quite widely. Get itemised quotes for everything. One place we looked at had a wedding planner with a big checklist going through what we did and didn’t want. One item was “fairy lights.” We thought, oh, that sounds nice, and asked for details. She said, “oh, these” and pointed to lights wrapped around beams in the ceiling. For the privilege not of giving us fairy lights or even putting up fairy lights, but for simply not taking them down after Christmas they wanted an extra £150. GTF. See also, seat covers – I want a venue with chairs that aren’t so crap that they need covering, thanks.

we thought about favours late in the day and were looking at various nicknacks for a couple of quid each – then realised, £3 for 50 guests is £150! We ended up getting some little hessian drawstring baggies for a few pence each and a big sack of sweets to fill them.

Or don’t bother at all… (that’s not a dig Cougar).

Does anyone really care about ‘favours’? The kids play with them, I spent 2 evenings filling bags like Cougar, I’d say 90% got swept into the bin a few hours after they were put out.

Or don’t bother at all… (that’s not a dig Cougar).

True.  If we hadn’t come up with a way to do it for a bit of time and a few quid we wouldn’t have bothered.

We had a thought early on of having disposable cameras on tables so that guests could take their own photos and hand them back at the end of the night.  We thought it’d be a nice idea, but the cost of the cameras plus developing was eye-watering and in 2015 who doesn’t have a camera-phone in their pocket anyway?  So we sacked it off as a bad idea.

We’re getting married next year, it’s going to be a big wedding (200ish guests) but very DIY so hopefully won’t cost too much.

Our plan is to hire a village hall (found one near the sea) with outdoor space, and put up marquees – got a 12m by 6m for £150 off ebay. Village Halls tend to have large kitchens/men’s & women’s toilets/tables/chairs etc so have the basics you need, and cost about £80 a day!

Buy any equipment you need second hand off ebay/FB/car boots etc – fridges/freezers/marquees/food warmers/led lights etc – you can then get your money back afterwards.

France / supermarket offers for the booze. Keep it cool in containers full of icy water. Food can be made in bulk in advance, and frozen, then defrosted the day before and either warmed up or cooked fresh on the day. We’re hiring a few people to work a few hours on a BBQ and in the kitchen for us (we’re not doing a sit down meal, it’s a casual food & drink all day type affair) as well as restocking buffet/drinks etc.

Silent disco is cheap for entertainment (cheaper than a DJ/band etc) and won’t upset any neighbours. I’m making the main bar and any decorations from wood got for free from a local skip hire place.

Friends are kindly doing our photography for us.

Basically, think of what you want from the day, then work out if there’s a way you can do it yourself cheaper (in advance, so you’re not stressing on the day) – Cooking/preparing the food yourself in advance and freezing it is way cheaper than caterers, plus you can have a lot more variety.

My budget wasn’t helped by the ex deciding AFTER we’d put a deposit on a venue that it just wasn’t right.

Wish we’d got married in a registry office then had a cheap party (with the people I’d wanted to invite but she didn’t want there on the day..) for a grand followed by a more expensive honeymoon.

It is an industry, you should be putting the money away for your life together not some expensive party you feel you’ve got to have. It doesn’t have to be super pricey to have loads of people.

£6k wasn’t a huge amount compared to some, and was funded by our parents, but at the end of the day there was a lot of superfluous crap that we could have avoided paying for if she was capable of acting like an adult/if she had wanted to be married rather than have a wedding. (Oh and planning the wedding was the beginning of the end of our relationship.).

Good luck!

We bought charity pin badges for our favours.

WTF are favours?

I’ve been to some very expensive weddings and I don’t like them. Ostentatious BS. And knowing that someone is either spending their life savings or getting themselves into debt because of their vanity makes me sad and has changed my view of some of the couples.

Conversly, once of the easiest, most relaxed weddings was of a friend who is loaded (lawyer). Church, then a walk through the Englisch Garten in Munich to the venue. Only real downside was the venue had Paulaner beer, but the wine was good.

WTF are favours?

Little token gifts for each guest.

By and large NO ONE in the UK will tell you what they really earn, NO ONE

9k I earned last year

I hear Plimuff is cheap for muff to ply but bills start adding up if wanting a fancier doo like with special requests of cake and photographers.

ooopps wrong thread 😬

🤣

Keep the cost down by not inviting anyone on the “We really should invite great aunt Nelly” list. Or anyone your family thinks you should invite. Sod em, it’s your day.

We had a couple of potentially tricky family pressure points to deal with (we weren’t paying) that we handled by dishing out evening only invites. Best one was a 2nd cousin who (directly) applied a bit of pressure for her invite. She was somewhat taken aback when I reminded her that I wasn’t invited to any of her wedding at all some 15 years previously and indeed had picked up my folks and my sister from her evening party and driven them home (so I was at least 17 and was in the area at the time).

Revenge is a dish best served cold.

Anyway, it turned out she wasn’t willing to fly half way around the world for an evening only invite 😀

Another £10 saved…

Over the years I have observed that the length of the marriage is inversely proportionate to the amount spent on the wedding.

If only I had known this when I was a lad. My wedding cost 10 shillings and sixpence.