If you had a seriously low cost wedding, come and tell me how!

[LittleLongDog]

How on earth do people manage to get married? The costs just spiral!

Has anyone managed to throw together a lovely wedding day on an incredibly low budget?

And if so, how did you do it?

But I don’t want to invite everyone to celebrate and make them suffer through an awful party! And we can’t just have a ceremony or elope without upsetting people who want more.

I think the key is to provide a lot of food. In my experience, people are perfectly prepared to buy their own drink. You can make food yourself. I've been to reasonably fancy weddings that have not had a DJ, just speakers and their IPOD. They have been brilliant. I actually have never had a DJ I liked so no need to spend £400 on one. I've been to church hall after parties with a playlist and homemade food and had a blast!

No dress, no cake, no food and no guests except the two witnesses we took to the registry office!

You need to figure out what's most important to you (number of people, venue, catering, cake, flowers etc) and then allocate budget accordingly.

I think mine is very similar to those already described, it was 16 years ago: low key, immediate family (12 including us) came to register office ceremony (not a particularly grand venue, but we took nice pictures in the park attached to it), walked to nice restaurant, my parents paid, I'm guessing it would have been about £500. Then taxi home for a reception for ~40 friends with bubbly (parents brought a crate) and a 2-tier chocolate cake I had made myself (I'm no cake decorator!)
Dress was a non-white summer dress and jacket from Debenhams (and I wore it again as guest to my sister's wedding) £90
Husband had to buy a new suit, it came from BHS (no idea of cost, would guess £45)
Rings plain 9kt gold bands from highstreet jeweller £70. I wear mine all the time and don't have to worry about it.
Photos we did ourselves and gave the kids some disposable cameras.
Flowers: I had a posy and we got some buttonholes for groom and witnesses local florist £50

So if we had paid for the food and drink (cava, prosecco) ourselves it would still scrape in under 1K

We had a lovely relaxed day of celebration, quite low key but everybody enjoyed themselves and yes, some friends had come a long way and stayed in a hotel overnight. And both our parents and siblings also travelled far and stayed overnight. You can do it, make it fit your resources, and don't listen to others who say that you must do X or have Y. I have several friends who did it as register office followed by celebration in the pub! And that was the right thing for them.

Dress £80 Amazon from China (mum altered it)

Suit, shoes, tie, waistcoat £100 M&S

All bouquets artificial from Amazon £20

Register office, venue (local social club with halls) - hot buffet and prosecco - all for about £500 around 50 people)

Decorations bought online and done ourselves

Cake and (can't remember the name for the gifts you give out..?!) Done by mother in law

Photography done by father in law

Music done via laptop set up to venues speakers.

All in all we made it for under £1000

It can be done, I just had to remember I was getting married for myself, not to show off to other people about how nice we can make it. It really was a lovely day.

As long as people are fed and watered and there's good people around, the details don't matter too much.

Walked to the registry office, but we are lucky that it’s in a very beautiful stately home within walking distance, just us and two witnesses, one of whom was our son. Little son held the rings.

Wore my jeans and a nice jumper. Laughed and cried throughout the ceremony, it was magical, it still gives me shivers to think about it. Went in the tearoom after for coffee/ fancy hot chocolate (this was little don’s favourite bit), nice waitress took photos for us, then we walked home to open cards.

Had lunch at a favourite local restaurant with witnesses and other son.

Total cost including giving notice, fees and lunch = £300. It was so lovely.

We hired a pub and spent £2300 on food for 70, mum bought wedding dress, MIL bought suits and we paid £500 for registry office

Cakes made by guests
No photographer
Car was a friend
Make up and hair by friends

I fully understand the point a PP made about inexpensive weddings generally needing a lot of goodwill from your friends and relations but surely that is a good thing?

I’m not sure you did get my point *JamesTalbot”
I’m sure OPs friends and family have plenty of “goodwill” JamesTalbot

What they don’t have, as OP herself has said are: cake making skills, photography skills, time or abilities for arts and crafts, vintage or fancy cars, houses with large gardens, etc etc.

But lots op people have given good advice anyway,

I’m sure your day will be wonderful OP. My favourite wedding was registry office and then a lovely walk to a fab Chinese restaurant.

About £275 a year ago.
Licence and wedding cost, we went for absolute cheapest where we just have 2 witnesses was £140
Copy of certificate - £12
Four lunches - £100
Cake - £25
Wore clothes we already had. A lot of the costs on this thread are very out of date. It would have cost is £152 for a marriage with no celebration at all.

No you're quite right BlockedandDeleted

I didn't get your point.

Will you accept an apology?

Our wedding was probably under 1k. Here's what we did:

• church service followed by tea and food (buffet) in the church hall. Hall is about £15 per hour to hire, but we're church members so got it free. Bought a ton of cheap see-through-ish fabric and draped it around, with paper hearts on top so you could see them from underneath. Got caterers to do the food and church friends to serve it. If you could enlist people to make sandwiches and heat up sausage rolls, you could do similar very cheaply (we catered for about 100).

• wedding dress was the main expense, but I found a shop that did end-of-line dresses and only paid £250 or so. Could have sold it on afterwards and recouped a good bit of the money (donated it to a charity shop - worthwhile you looking there for dresses as they get quite a few).

• suits we were lucky as my dad works in the shop that hires them out, so that was free!

• bridesmaid - only had my sister, we got her dress from Coast, I think, so approx £65 rather than hundreds, and she can wear it again. We then got matching fabric to decorate the church hall a bit and for flower girl's dress.

• flower girl - plain white dress, tied some matching fabric around it.

• flowers - shopped around, only asked for 1 big arrangement and a bouquet, so that was way cheaper than getting centre pieces etc for tables. Did minimalist flowers in small cases for the tables - friend got them from a neighbour's garden, I think (with permission)

• cars - I wanted to put ribbons on my 10-year-old Ford Fiesta, but my dad loves vintage cars and wanted a ride in one, so we did hire one - only did the journey from home to church in it, though, so a lot cheaper than hiring for the day

• photos - because we only needed him for an hour, the photographs able to fit in another wedding nearby that day, so only charged us £150. He was also a friend of a friend, so maybe cheaper for that reason too.

• videos - BIL did one, dad's friend did another. Was able to edit them together into something decent enough.

• cake - didn't have an official one. Friend's 12 year old wanted us to have one, so made one and brought it!

• didn't ask for wedding presents, so some people helped out on the day as their gift. I found especially that the likes of friends of my parents who knew me as a child were very good, and we're happy to make buns in exchange for getting a good nosey at the wedding!

Really, all you need is the ceremony, after that you can go as cheap or expensive as you want!

Sometimes you can get lucky with a cheap photographer if it's mutually beneficial e.g someone starting out trying to build a portfolio or a photography student etc. might be worth having a little browse on Instagram?

Cakes... especially if you're not having many guests, the supermarkets do some really lovely sort of plain white cakes that you could add your own decorations to... or if you have a bit more of a budget for this, they also do tiered 'celebration cakes' which are a lot cheaper than anything with the word wedding attached to it!

Dress: not sure where you are in the country, but a couple of the more mainstream charity shops have specific bridal stores that have some really lovely dresses & suits in, I got mine for less than 100£ from one and got it altered & it was like new!

Makeup/hair etc. If you want/need it: YouTube tutorials!

Food: not sure how many guests etc. But you could steer away from having sort of traditional wedding food/so much food and do something like an afternoon tea celebration or something instead? I've also had friends who have had a picnic in one of the big parks as their wedding celebration (this was really lovely but would obvs be dependent on the weather!)

hired a dress, hired suit, meal at dm's buffet style

Didn't ask for wedding presents, so some people helped out on the day as their gift. I found especially that the likes of friends of my parents who knew me as a child were very good, and we're happy to make buns in exchange for getting a good nosey at the wedding

That's what we did as well. Didn't ask for presents but many people gave of their time and expertise.

Bagpiper - free. Cousin in the Scots guards.
Transport for groom, best man and ushers, then back for bridesmaids and DM. - free. Friend worked for a car hire company and offered to drive rather than buy a present.
Cake - free. Wedding present from colleagues in the bakery trade.
Car for me and DF to church and then for me and DH to reception- cost of booking a hackney cab.
Make up and hair- done for free by my sister.
Stag and hen dos- night out for each of us in our home town.

Married in my parish church - free, voluntary donation
Church flowers - made a donation and asked the regular florist to consider my colour scheme when doing the usual arrangements for the weekend services.
Dress - £140 in the sale
Veil - plain veil in the sail which I hand embellished myself
DH wore a suit, shirt, tie etc he already had.
Cash bar - but we bought each guest a drink and when we got married a cash bar was normal
Local sports club for reception - not fancy but looked nice once we’d covered it with appropriately coloured balloons.
The only thing we spent £££s on was a professional photographer - at the end of the day you want to look back on good photos.

Our whole wedding, cost split between us and my parents, came to well under £2000 (including four nights U.K. hotel honeymoon).

This was 38 years ago though. A “friend” got married for the first time a few weeks before me... her parents were still paying it off when she left her SECOND husband and they didn’t contribute to her third wedding.

relative took the photos

Buffet was a gift
Venue was free (outdoors)
Dress asos £50
Flowers from side of road florist £10

Ours cost around 1800 and we had registry office and pub reception and a paid DJ, we budgeted every month to pay for the event and it worked out well, our rings even were on sale so dh got a 80% off platinum ring and my wedding ring and engagement came to £250 with discounts

My aunt did all the photographs and presented us with a wonderful album afterwards

Everyone enjoyed the event and that's what matters

No way would I have spent thousands on it but each to their own

Only had 7 guests. MIL did the cake, BIL took photos. Meal out, job done.

Best wedding I was ever at was in a farm yard, huge bonfire, string lights, baked potatoes, sausages, coleslaw, wine and dancing to iPod tunes. It was so fun and unexpected. Had it rained we would have been in the barn with a few lights up and bales of straw to sit on.

I think if cost is a problem then throw out all the expected and formulaic aspects of a weeding and rethink the whole thing. Local park, cool picnic etc. Good luck and congrats.

Have your wedding at the end of the afternoon so that you only have to cater for the evening meal, and make it clear on the invitation that it'll be a light buffet, so people can have a decent lunch beforehand.

We didn't bother with flowers because they cost a fortune.

Also no bridesmaids/best man etc. That was another massive saving.

We made our own buttonholes just for immediate family.

Food costs a lot so we supplemented a simple catered buffet with:

• bulk boxes of nice crisps
• cheese
• continental platters from morrisons
• French bread that we cut into rounds on the day.

We also cut the cake before doing the group photos so that everyone could have cake and a cuppa/soft drink whilst we did the photos. There was plenty of cake left over to serve as pudding too.

We asked someone who makes cakes at home to make ours, it did cost a bit but we got just what we wanted and each layer was a different flavour.

We also made it a bring your own drinks, but we had a off licence and 2 local shops right by our venue.

I just didn't bother having a wedding. Cost about £120 for the legal stuff, £50 for the registry office, £20 for the cab in the morning (as it was rush hour, pissing it down, and I had two kids under 3).

Weddings are bollocks, no one cares if you have one or not.

We had two holidays that year instead.

We had a vintage (1940s) dress sourced online.
Invitations from local printers.
Flowers from wholesalers, we put individual large flowers in ikea vases and one formal arrangement from florist.
No formal photographer, mostly didn't want one.
Decorated own cars.
Had afternoon tea for 70.
Then 20 in a small bistro in evening, a place just starting evening meals that we liked.
It wasn't the flashiest wedding ever, should have paid for live music during wedding I think.
But very happy overall.
The naturally stunning setting of the NT property we used helped a lot.
But it was very cheap that year and got much more expensive the year after.
Although we managed to persuade them to provide us with the afternoon tea rather than the caterers. The caterers sent us two quotes, one for afternoon tea one for a sit down meal, they were the same price!
Avoid paying for anything specially wedding.

Mine cost about 200 quid all in three years ago, including the legal stuff, register office. Only guests were our children and parents. It was lovely. Bought a dress second hand. DH had a suit already. Didn’t have flowers. Parents bought us a bottle of champagne.