Budget weddingunder £1000... will it work

[byanymeans]

The plan is to elope with 2 witnesses 1st august 2013, then come back to have a family lunch on the Saturday and then a party in the evening. The budget as it stands is.

Elopement:
£67 legal
£43 ceremony
£30 deposit (paid)

£130 Dress (paid gift from Mum)
£35 Brides shoes (paid )
£100(max) grooms outfit (informal)

£- witnesses own clothes
£120(max) silver wedding rings

£130 B&B 2 nights
£50 petrol to travel to registry

Party on Saturday after:
£- flowers (to be grown at allotment)
£20 decorations DIY
£20 hand made invites

£30-40 home made soup for 20 close family for lunch
£70 for sweet cakes, home made breads and cheese broad for evening guests.
£50 for family friend to spin some vinyl.
£65 hall hire
£2.50 cherry pie (to cut instead of cake)

All in all £ 972.50 total (£190 paid already)

I know that includes no photographer, I'm working on that but is this budget do-able. I dont want to be asking for any money or gifts from family so need our celebration to be budget and fun not big white and full of debt.

[ViviPru]

Have you costed everything? (i.e. priced up the materials for hand-made invites / whether you'll get enough cakes/bread/cheese for £70 to feed the number of guests in the evening etc etc)

If so, and your costings are correct, then the budget is do-able.

If you're asking if it will work as a celebration, I don't see why not!

Only concern is that those close family who are attending the lunch too might need a bit more to eat than bread, cheese and cakes in the evening if they've only had soup for lunch. DP would be gnawing at the table legs. I'm not saying you ought to be responsible for sustaining them, but if this is your plan for food, then those spending the whole day with you might need to be made aware that there will be no hot meal (for want of a better term) that day so they can plan accordingly.

Also, have you thought about drinks for the evening?

[byanymeans]

Thank you very much ViviPru.

We have been talking about the food and have come to a similar conclusion that there maybe a need to re think food. I fact it may change to a BBQ style small gathering and scrap the evening party. Thank you very much for your input. I feel a little lost as I have no bridesmaids to talk these things though with and DP just 'wants me to be happy' which is not all that helpful when it comes a yes no question.

What ever we do will be bring a bottle as there is no room at all for drinks and we want it to be very informal ( no suits or speeches) just a celebration to mark the weekend.

On the plus side I now have a ring and DP is going to use his engagement ring so that has saved £83 from the budget. And that's the 4 big miles stones for me ticked off.

rings
shoes
dress
registry on the right date

[Wiggypigs]

For the music why not just pay for spotify and make your own playlist and play it straight off a laptop? Can then cancel spotify when wedding is done. My friends did this and it was awesome! They chose every song and the dance floor was packed all night.

[byanymeans]

We are old school, no laptop or i-player etc. most of our music is vinyl, allot of it is older then us and DP has been collecting particular ones just for the day. If our family friend plays it for us we don't need to worry about it get scratched by others 'trying to be helpful' when the record stops. Though money is tight £50 is going to be cheaper then replacing scratched disks or having to put it all on to MP3 and borrow a laptop. But thank you very much for the suggestion.