£5k wedding

[BulletForMySandwich]

I'm turning to you lovely ladies here to help me plan my wedding
We're hoping to get married next June on a Saturday because we don't want people worrying about taking a day off work and also we don't want a lot of last minute cancellations!
So I was thinking
10am - ceremony at registry office - £268 (+£70 notice of marriage)
10:30 - ceremony finishes and we all have photos (about 50 guests at ceremony so all close family/friends) - £500 photographer
11:30-12 travelling to reception venue (local village/scout hall) - hoping to find a friend with a nice car?!
12:00 - BBQ cooked by caterers - £750

• also there would be a pay bar (mobile bar) pub prices but we would but a welcome drink for everyone - hoping to have about 80 at reception @ £1.50 each = £120

But what can I do for evening food?! I would say to everyone bring a plate but if most people will be at ceremony where will it all be stored or would they drop it off in the morning?
I think the hall will provide chairs and tables but I don't remember
I'm not worried about wedding favours - they just get forgotten anyway!
I'm going for an eBay dress so probably about £100-£150 but I want four bridesmaids, where can I get super cheap bridesmaid dresses?!
eeeek there's so much to think about!

[CollieEye]

I bought my wedding dress from Oxfam online. I was looking for something simple and got the almost perfect dress for £100. It cost an extra £50 to have it altered to fit, but it was approximately my size anyway.

Have a look at pre-loved website too. Lots of bridesmaids dresses there.

Are you sure that pub priced drinks will cost you £1.50 each?

[BulletForMySandwich]

Sorry they do a welcome drink of pimms/prosecco/Buck's Fizz for £1.50 each but you have to preorder and pay for them in advance, it's about £3.00 a pint type.

[eurochick]

That's a blooming long day!

[worldgonecrazy]

Do the wedding later in the day, and then go straight to an evening barbecue. It will save you a lot of money if you only have to provide one meal.

[BulletForMySandwich]

Okay if I rejig and had ceremony at 2:30 and BBQ at 5, would I still need snacks for later on? I've not been to a lot of weddings let alone organised one!

[addictedtosugar]

We got married at 3pm, food at 7pm, and no food after that.

I got my dress from Debenhams. There and Monsoon used to be worth a look. Don't know where now. Maybe also BHS? This is for propper weddign dresses btw, but mgiht also be worth looking for the bridemaids. Are they adults? What about a high st dress? Next do traditional kids flower girl dresses.

[GwenStacy]

I did a £5k wedding for 75 people!

We had a hog roast with salads and then in the evening had the rest of the meat with nice breads and cheese and the rest of the salads from dinner :) this cost us about £1200

My outfit came in at about £200 all in, but no bridesmaids! Our venue was £1000 for the whole weekend, and I spent £1200 on a photographer (which was well worth it in my opinion!)

For favours I spent about £100 on pic n mix and had it in fish bowls in the middle of the tables, and everyone had a small paper bag to fill.

I decorated the venue for about £50 and a lot of work on my part - I made 180m of bunting and had fairy lights strung up.

Flowers cost a lot more then you think as well!

[GwenStacy]

Oh, meant to say my dress was a lace halterneck one from Vivien of Holloway which was amazing for dancing!

[BulletForMySandwich]

I absolutely LOVE the pick and mix idea.
I don't like the idea of having a wedding how you're "supposed to" with all the champagne, posh overpriced crap food and chair covers and all that - I'm thinking quite plain, lots of borrowed fairy lights, maybe a few lanterns?!
We were going to get a bouncy castle for the kids but our DD will be 2, and our friends/family either have much older kids (14+) or younger babies so it just seems like it'll end up being used by adults (and losing our deposit!) The four bridesmaids are 20-25 and my DD will be a flower girl but with her dress I don't think I want her in a proper wedding dress, just a very pretty dress.
I have a friend who used to be a florist, I think she might do me some discount - I know she did a friends wedding recently and it was beautiful.

[GwenStacy]

Where are you? I literally have 60m of white fairy lights under my bed you're welcome to borrow!

[BulletForMySandwich]

I'm right by Heathrow gwen that's such a lovely offer!

[GwenStacy]

Ooh, I used to live in Northfields! I'm in NW London now, so if you want to borrow them, let me know :)

[Armadale]

The later timing idea is better, I think, but I would still be tempted to have a bit more food later, depending on what time you want it to wind down. Recent things I've seen at weddings that went down well were a mobile fish and chip van turning up at the venue, ditto a sort of posh burger van type thing that did only bacon sandwiches, and also a couple whose wedding cake was made out of big wheels of cheese (getting smaller towards the top, obviously) that they cut and served as an evening snack with french bread and bits of salad- the bride came to an arrangement with the caterer to provide 4 of the catering staff who'd done the main meal to return for 2 hours at night to lay it out, carve up and tidy away- think it only cost £50 from memory.

By far the nicest bridesmaid dresses I've seen recently were from Monsoon, the bride got the BM to pop to their local branch to try on so she knew sizes, then she bought all 4 as near to (but before) xmas as she could, full price.

She then found the same dresses in the Jan sale (it was a bit of a combined effort with MIL getting one in her local town, a BM finding another one etc) but it meant she could then return the full price ones for a refund (and got the dresses 50% off, with no fear of not being able to get hold of them, if that makes sense).

I don't think they were bridesmaid dresses specifically, I think they were evening wear, but really stunning and a bit less generic than many BM dresses I've seen recently.

[TheresLotsOfFarmyardAnimals]

£5k is so achievable, especially if you're only feeding once. I went to a great wedding in the summer, 4pm ceremony and a BBQ afterwards. Drinks reception, disco. No seating plans.

I got my dress in a sample sale - it was only £225 and it happened to fit so no alterations. I would be wary of buying an ebay number if it's from China. Better to go sample or second hand.

Bridesmaid dresses don't have to be from a wedding shop - just a nice maxi dress suits most shapes and can be dressed up.

Enjoy - I'd marry my DH again iin a flash if I got to plan another wedding.

[Armadale]

Ooh also meant to say that I did a church hall up for a christening for a friend and one thing that worked really well was tin cans, labels removed and rinsed, with heart motif punched out with a skewer and tea lights lit in it looked gorgeous (although was daytime). This sort of idea

A friend who went to the christening then pinched the idea for her wedding (was in a marquee in her parents garden) and she lit the path and all the way around the grounds with them at night (also hung some from trees using bits of wire to attach to the branches) she paid the paperboy and his mate £20 each to come out and do it at dusk, so none of the wedding party had to remember. It looked like some enchanted land, it was so beautiful.

[lettucelamp]

We did our wedding cheaply too, we've had so many compliments on it and people saying they want a wedding like ours too! We got our bridesmaids dresses from Topshop! They were really pretty

[Ragwort]

Collie - years ago I helped set up the Oxfam bridal sales, I am so pleased it is still going & that you bought a dress from there. .

OP - why do you need the event to go on until the evening, if you are having a lovely BBQ lunch I would suggest winding things up with cutting the cake and a glass of something sparkly at around 5pm ish?

That's similar to what we did - actually a lot more as we had a small lunch for immediate family followed by an afternoon tea reception and then everyone left around 6ish. My ILs hosted another party for their side of the family & their friends and did not even invite my parents.

[DontmindifIdo]

If I was you, I'd push everything later so you only have to do one proper meal, perhaps do a registery office wedding at 3pm, BBQ from 5pm, so 'tea' time, then in the evening, just put out cheese and biscuits and grapes, some nuts or other snacky foods at around 8:30 -9pm ish.

Feeding people only once (or only feeding people a meal once, snacky food for the evneing is fine if you've done a meal at 5-6ish) really lowers your costs!

[DontmindifIdo]

oh and another good idea I saw, I went to a wedding on a budget, so rather than have a cake, they asked 10 guests to provide 6 cupcakes each, in the end, lots more people made cakes and they had a big tower of variously decorated cupcakes, lots of different flavours etc, that was pudding and really worked well.

Have you thought about music/evening disco? You could put together a play list on an ipod if you can find someone who has the equipment (or can hire it, it shouldn't be too expensive) - another wedding I went to the bride and groom asked for everyone to give 2 disco suggestions for the playlist (they send a slip to be filled in with the invites), they didn't promise to play every ong, but would try to put one song from each couple on the playlist, proved really popular, however the bride did say she was told verbally by a few couples that they would be coming, but they couldn't do their formal RSVP yet as they were still arguing about what to put on the song list slip... (a few male guests treated this like their whole musical knowledge was being judged by this little bit of paper!)

[MsAspreyDiamonds]

Have the latest time slot for ur wedding service (4:30pm) then photos from 5pm onwards with drinks until dinner served at 7pm. My brother did this & it was so much cheaper because he had only one set of catering costs. He invited all 120 guests to the ceremony & curry buffet afterwards which easily served 150. The disco started at 9pm and the cake was an M&S chocolate ribbpn cake for £240, which was lovely.

If you start later, you can spend time getting ready & not stressing. There is also time to collect last minute essentials from the shops.

With your 10am start you will have a lot of drunk bored guests by the evening so a recipe for trouble.

[MsAspreyDiamonds]

www.moneysavingexpert.com/banking/Budget-planning

www.marksandspencer.com/White-Chocolate-Ribbons-Wedding-Cake/dp/B004VSVXU8

[Stripytop]

Do you have a friend/ relative who can do the photos for you? You could then spend that money on catering.