Weddings – Cheap and fun. Ideas? (done anything similar)?

A guy i used to work with got married in the registry office and then walked all the guests through town to pizza hut, where they had the all you can eat lunchtime buffet, and then went on to a pub afterwards.

Her family were unimpressed but they just wanted to be married and not spend a fortune, and thought it was perfect

Register office then hired upstairs in local pub in market place, big (quality) buffet and free bar for 12 hours. The Rutland Morris Men danced for us plus did the ceremonial lifting of the bride. Everyone very happy and all for less than £2k. BTW about 45 guests plus 12 dancers/musicians. With money saved, three honeymoons in NY, Botswana and Croyde.

A guy i used to work with got married in the registry office and then walked all the guests through town to pizza hut, where they had the all you can eat lunchtime buffet, and then went on to a pub afterwards.

Her family were unimpressed but they just wanted to be married and not spend a fortune, and thought it was perfect

I know (and worked with) countless people who have planned every detail of their wedding. Made expensive adjustments, countless phonecalls from the office for months – literally concentrating on ‘the wedding’ as their job and work comes secondary. All for it to end in divorce.

Ours cancelled as they realised it was a long trip for them, they put the price up at the last minute. (No drinking to excess on us if they wanted to go home after the do or a stay in a travelodge/premier inn). My daughter told them to get lost (possibly a little less politely). The bride and groom know some interesting people from being in the pub trade as some ‘characters’ were at the do.
The PA set up was a third of the price before the proposed increase.

As mentioned above, marquees can be flippin’ expensive. My father in law is a farmer so we could have a field for free, and it still worked out cheaper hiring the village hall than hiring a marquee & loos. Appreciate that the ambiance is different, and if a marquee fits your plans it’d be worth telling them you’re hiring it for a re-union, or a retirement party or anything – there’s often a significant surcharge just cos it’s a wedding (thieving sods)!

As for the booze side of it, we got a load of 20L boxes of Weston’s Cider and Perry (my local brew), and a few firkins of Skinners Ale (my OH’s local) – both direct from the makers. I expect most cider makers would be happy to deliver a couple of barrels if you’re buying in that kind of quantity…

Enjoy the day, sounds like a lot of fun!

ETA Village Hall with a skittle alley = good for giggles when the cider’s been flowing

Big youth hostel in the middle of nowhere – somewhere like blackton grange or langdon beck: big party, no neighbours, everyone gets pissed and crashes with no worries about taxis etc. – sleep it off and massive all day breakfast buffet before everyone goes home.

Yup we did a big marquee in the inlaws garden (by far the most expensive bit – top tip try your local scouts hut they have big marquees and welcome donations) , drinks on sale or return from a local place, buffet food catered by a friend, music by another friend who has all the gear, photos by a student we knew who needed the practice, called in all sorts of favours etc and as much of the rest as we could do ourselves. It was relatively inexpensive but lots of people went home very drunk and full after a very good party and it was worth every penny.

Right time to start planning…. 😀

I feel like offering a open-invite but I know thats daft 🙂

We did Registry Office with four friends then had a private lunch at a top hotel near by – half the price of the original quote my wife got as I got my Secretary to ring up and as for an equivalent ‘do’ but for a Business Meeting…

A couple of months later I built a bar in our garden (a bit like a tropical beach bar, including optics and the like) and employed a Barmaid for the night. Hog-roast fed everyone and we had more booze left than when we started as everyone brought too.

Second wedding for us both though, having both done the full ‘job’ when younger.

We had a church wedding followed by the reception at Loweswater village hall. The local sports committee did or bar- cheap and ask profits went back into local causes. We had a hog roast for our meal.

We did registry office, then back to ours. We’ve a cottage next to the canal, so put up a couple of gazebo’s and had a lot of food, ham joints, etc etc, cooked by parents, neighbours and friends. Beer was supplied by the local brewpub in boxes, wine was provided by everyone, and cider was a mix of Malvern Gold and Westons Boxes of Old Rosie.

see what bit I concentrated on…

Wedding day was the main event, but we had enough food and drink to repeat it the following day.

cost well under £1k.

My sister and her husband done this is was a great laugh. Had a leader board for who climbed the most. Just need a large tree to anchor the ropes
http://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/05/07/a2/db/plas-power-adventure.jpg

Bugger, just rote a story about weddings but internet failed CBA to write it again

but will if you are interested got married here.

Can I come? Will there be a stag do?

Used to put up marquees, not a cheap option, but easy to customise, some of the top end stuff I did you wouldn’t know was a marquee but would buy you a lot of top end carbon bikes before even considering food and booze.

Anyway, we got married in the local village hall, looking over the lake to the hills.
My family brought up Pasties, wifes family brought down Curd tarts from Bettys, got a load of drink from local brewery.

Can I come? Will there be a stag do?

Well yes. I like you drunk. Your a funny drunk. From your wedding you’ll note that us lot danced the floor of the village hall you hired. I bet we’d have carried on dancing until sunlight.

Stag doo? Too traditional for me. Its pressure, tradition and cost. I want the opposite of a behemoth event in total.

Maybe a stag doo ride/camp.

this weekend past I took photos at a friend’s wedding. After the registry office service we went to the local village hall and enjoyed ourselves. They;d asked my band to play but we couldn’t do it (Singer’s stag do, guitarist best man) so I sorted out a PA from the bassist and they ran a spotify playlist through the iPad.

gimme a shout and we might be able to talk dates 😀

Illegal rave in a wood always makes for a memorable venue

I can bring a 2 tier wedding cake. It won’t be very swish but it will taste good and all home made. Amount of marzipan is your choice, probably less that that on my daughters cake 2kg was used for that one. ( think I made about 3 kg of marzipan but not all of it went on the cake).

Hora – I can recommend my band The Castaways, we do weddings 🙂

you’ll be looking for a 70/30% split on Red and white wine (the white is drunk less because it doesn’t stay chilled). If you really want to do everything on a budget, get Toro Loco Red from Aldi (it’s a great wine for a ridiculously low price, and will match well with the hog roast!) and Pinot Grigio white – if you want rose then do 70/15/15 red/rose/white

This is a great idea for a wedding 🙂 good luck

if you want an uncomplicated stag do and have a specific thing in mind – organise it yourself / tell the best man exactly what to do

Will have a listen 🙂

Pumptrack. Every wedding needs a pumptrack!

Congratulations.

Congratulations.

I’ve not got my ‘ass in gear yet

did a lot of this last month.

top tip: ask all guests to bring a dish, possibly in lieu of wedding gifts. We ended up with the biggest buffet you’ve ever seen, and everyone makes a special effort to make something really nice because it’s a wedding. And then THEY thank YOU for allowing them to be involved! the big fools.

the big, overfilled, merry and very happy fools.

FTFY

This is going to be the bash of the decade 😀

“Could a wedding based in Gods own CountRy work?”

You make cheap enough lad and they’ll come from as far a way as Brighouse.

Eee I don’t want any foreigners there

we priced a wedding like this up being resonably economical – it was still going to cost £10k (for about 100 guests) even though we had free use of a dry level field. if you even mention “wedding” tent prices go up a fair bit.
The other thing to consider is the logistics of getting your guests home at the end of the evening…

In the end we ran away to Tahoe and got married for $500

We then had a couple of big dinner parties with catering that came to about £7-800 and were far more convivial than you normal wedding do 🙂

edhornby YGM. Any DJ recommendations?