Talk to me if you had a low budget wedding

[Hotpatootietimewarp]

Hi

Me and my partner are planning to get married next year, I've looked into my local church which is £200 with minister included (she's lovely) and was then thinking about hiring the village hall

What I wanted to know was if you had something like this what did you do for caterers and how did you decorate the hall?

[CakeAndChocolate]

I haven't done it myself, but I've been to a few weddings like this. One of the best was where lots of guests were asked to bring a dish (make sure you get a decent spread of mains, sides and deserts by asking people to do a certain course (and specify if veggie/meat/fish etc)).
Decorations were balloons, bunting and wild flowers in jam jars. Drinks supplied by a trip across the channel, crockery either from the village hall, hire companies, or you can get some great mis matched vintage looking stuff from charity shops.
Hope you have a great day OP.

[SpidersFromMars]

We're aiming for a relatively low budget winter do. Our local church is more expensive - around £500 - but I think the C of E set the fees nationally at £415, so the local church isn't getting much in comparison.
We're only having around 50 people, so we looked at hall hire and separate caterers/DIY buffet but it didn't seem to be much cheaper, so instead we're planning on reserving a room at the local pub, who do lovely food, and will charge around £20 a meal, with champagne etc, and with no charge for the room. They've also got tables & chairs, tablecloths, etc and some nice decorations they'll set up for us.

[Scoopmuckdizzy]

We had a low budget wedding.

For food we had a picnic style buffet (quiches, pasta salads etc) that my aunt mostly organised.

We had a lot of bunting - mostly bought from eBay. Lots of jars with supermarket flowers arranged in them.

[Scoopmuckdizzy]

We also had loads of fairy lights and candles for when it got dark.

[CakeAndChocolate]

Scoop that looks so pretty. Love the plates.

[Hotpatootietimewarp]

That does look lovely, thinking about hiring a ceilidh band as well

[TornNotTorn]

Our was very cheap last summer, but absolutely lovely. Our church was £600ish, and we hired a hall with a fab outside space. We had a six month engagement and spent literally every sunday morning trawling boot sales for pretty vintage crockery, cutlery and big platters and it all looked beautiful and mismatched when we set the tables. We had about 90 people, across 8 tables. I bought cheap cotton tablecloths from eBay and chair covers from a local lady selling off stock from her hire business (chairs were super ugly or we wouldn't have bothered!). We bought a job lot of bunting from a lady who'd just had her own wedding, for £15, and filled table centrepieces were jam jars filled with flowers and cake stands filled with cupcakes. For catering, we bit the bullet and decided that if we wanted to stick to budget but also make sure everyone was fed well, we'd have to do it ourselves, do opted for a large buffet. We spent the day before cooking huge joints of meat and preparing salads, etc. People were happy to help with this. We bought sandwich platters from sainsburys, which were really very good, and we also hired glasses from there, which were free iirc, you just pay for any broken ones. The evening before the wedding we had friends and family all come to the hall to help prepare everything and is was so so lovely to have everyone there and involved. We were married on a ridiculously hot day, and we paid a friends mum to be at the hall while we were at the church and set the food out on tables, prepare welcome drinks etc. Our budget for food was £500 which for 90 people was great compared to the quotes we had, and there was stacks left over. £200 for a cheesy disco, and lots of outside toys and beautiful lanterns on the outside tables bought from the boot sale, and it was an awesome day, I wouldnt change a single thing. The benefit of doing it all yourself and buying it too is that you can recoup the cost- we sold everything afterwards as a huge wedding job lot for far more than we paid for it :)

[TornNotTorn]

It's also possible to do great things in a tiny budget for your wedding clothes. I got a last season Pronovias sample dress from our local oxfam wedding boutique for £200. dh's three piece suit cost him £25 from cancer research!

[AlbusPercival]

We did ours on a budget.

After the ceremony we have sausage rolls made by MIL - her speciality

For the meal we had fish and chips delivered by our local, piping hot and cost less than £500 for 80 people.

[GlowWine]

My personal budget wedding was small-scale and not in church: register office and meal with close family only, then cake (I made it) and champagne reception for about 40 friends at home. So I can't really help there.
But what I wanted to say is that I have been to some lovely church weddings where the reception/meal was in the adjacent hall. The food buffet was organised by close friends and the congregation, and as I was travelling from afar i did not get roped in . It was lovely and personal and I can't recall the decorations so this is definitely an area where you can make some economies.

[gillyweed]

We had a lowish budget wedding; registry office then victorian community centre.

I made all the decorations; bunting from old clothes/left over material from projects. Signage from really old book pages (each page was 1 letter of a word). Flowers, 2 friends bought them all as a present and we arranged them in jam jars of all sizes I had been collecting for months. Some LED fairy lights, I bought some festoon lights (bit expensive but I will defo use again and I couldn't find anywhere that hired them). Chequred paper tablecloths. It looked amazing when it all came together, very low key, vintage and romantic.

We provided most alcohol but asked on the invite for people to bring a bottle (we didn't ask for gifts), if anyone offered we asked for desserts to be made.

I organised everything seperatly, fridges, drinks, canapés, main food, desserts, corckery, glasses, etc. In retrospect it would have cost a similar amount to have got 1 company to do it all and less stress! We mainly used Costco and a guy to do hog roast and all the trimmings. I paid 2 people to tidy/clean and lay things out throughout the day (they werenter great at this...).

We did away with anything WE deemed unnecessary and 'wedding industry' (chair ties, wedding cake, fancy cars, rings (!), first dances etc.) This saved loads!

I think with low numbers it would be fine and easy, however we had over 100 and it took a crazy amount of planning and organising, but maybe that added towards the spirit of the event as literally all our guests played some role!

[Hotpatootietimewarp]

It's going to be about 50 during the day and 120 at night (OH has a big family and a lot of friends!). Will need to see if the hall will hold that many but it is fairly big with and adjacent kitchen/dining area type thing. It has a license for alcohol but doesn't keep any on premises so I thought about asking people to being a bottle.

Do you have to get married at a certain time in the church or are they flexible? I thought if we could do it around lunch time by time photos and things are done and we get to the hall then a hog roast would do both day and night

[TornNotTorn]

I understand you have to be married in hours of daylight in a church, something archaic about being able to see who you're marrying! We married at 4, so we only had to feed people once!

[Hotpatootietimewarp]

Ah good that's my idea get married later in the day so we only have to do it once! Haha so you can see who you're marrying think it's a by late for that

[TornNotTorn]

I think 4 worked really well as a time to marry, especially if you are doing a lot yourself. We ended up going to the hall in the morning to finish off the last little bits. I think having dc around makes things a bit more manic (we had three to wrangle). My sil came to do my hair at 1, by the time I'd finished faffing with my makeup and was laced into my dress, we didn't have an awful lot of time to spare. It also gives people chance to have a proper meal before they come so they're not stood around hungry. I thought it was just about right, the day didn't drag and everyone had a good time.

[GemmaB78]

Your plans sound really similar to ours. We are going very low-key, with a breakfast picnic in a beautiful local park, an afternoon ceremony and a party in the village hall, which we are doing the catering for. Skipping over the channel to stock up on alcohol, and having a ceilidh band in the evening. We are making as much as possible - decorations, my dress, etc.

[Busybuzzybumblebee]

We have a small budget and are having our reception in our local social club, costing 200 pounds, they have a fully stocked bar and are providing the bar staff, have a local cater doing a buffet for 400 and we'll have around 100 guests. Have a friend doing photography. Lots of Balloons for decoration to fill up the space but cheaply

[CharlieSierra]

gillyweed how did doing away with a 'first dance' save money?

[sizeofalentil]

We had a budget of £5k for wedding of 115 people, 200 extra evening guests, outfits, 3 nights in a fancy hotel, food and drink etc.

Not a shoe-string budget but quite small for what we wanted.

We did it by hiring a non-wedding venue, serving afternoon tea and pie and mash and diy-ing everything. Everything we bought we made sure we had use for after eg. All the plates wine glasses etc will be used for a wedding hire company a friend is setting up, centre prices and venue decorations were herb plants we needed for the garden. Biggest 'waste' of money was my £300 monsoon dress because I can't wear it again :(

If you take out all the stuff we bought for the wedding but was also meant for our house/garden, husbands suit that he needed for work, our mini-honeymoon it was closer to £3k. If you took out our expensive parts (bells at the church, band,expensive but brilliant photographer, hair and make up) it was about £1.5k.

In general I found that churches were cheaper than registry offices and town halls were the cheapest reception venues. You can save 75% if you buy tissue paper and make your own pom-poms - but it'll make your hands hurt!

We bulk bought alcohol from supermarkets when they had deals on and used stuff we already had around the house to decorate.