Wedding for 50 for £5k?!

[WeddingBabe]

NC for this .

Starting to tentatively think about booking our wedding for 18 months - 2 years time and really we don’t want to spend more than £10K on the whole thing. With that in mind I’ve allocated £5k for the “venue” and food/drinks for guests - were thinking about 50.

Does this sound doable?

Things I’d like:

Preferably spring/summer although not fussed if it’s a weekday
Preferably somewhere with nice grounds/places for photos
I would like guests to be well fed and watered - hog roast is not an option as they give me the heebie jeebies!
We are Manchester based but could consider a venue up to an hour away.

My main concern here is budget as I’ve read the average wedding costs £25k?!

Does anyone have any advice or venue suggestions?

Easily done! We spent 6k and for 50 day people and adding up to 120 for evening reception and that was adding additional things we didn't need to cover

I'd say easily doable. I am not far away in Yorkshire and have looked at a lot of wedding packages (hello, date number three!) You'll defo find something.

My wedding cost less than £3k, including a sit down meal for 40 & 80 guests at the evening reception. The sit down meal was £8 a head & £4 a head for the evening buffet. Sometimes spending more doesn't mean you get a better reception, my brother got married 8 weeks before I did & spent £40 a head on the sit down meal & £10 a head on the evening reception, the sit down meal had tiny portions & the food ran out at the evening buffet. We had massive portions & had to send people home with doggy bags because there was so much food. My brother's reception was at a hotel, mine was at a local country club where the lady we dealt with did all the food herself, the menu for the sit down meal was identical. Look for a venue that does what you want but doesn't charge the earth for the privilege of using it & consider not getting married on a Saturday because you can end up paying a premium.

My friend spent way less than that and she had the most memorable amazing wedding. She had a non traditional dress, friends gifted her things for the wedding such as a cake. Instead of flowers which are super expensive she had sweets as centrepieces which doubled up as favours so that was cool. Most importantly the marriage is very successful.
I spent much more than that, maybe £10k. Some things were worthwhile. My dress definitely wasn't and a £100 dress would have been just as good and saved £1000. I'd have done my own hair. We spent money on a free bar and transport back to hotels for our guests and I don't regret that at all!

it depends on what you are envisioning -
the dress - thats the thing that might cost. venue you can be creative - ask the council where has a license to do a wedding - have it in a field - on a beach, working mans club. who need a DJ these days - i mean really thing about it. a buffet ...somone you know will do that for you in a heart beat - its just butties on a platter. so you need to shell out on a fancy pants car - just one...yours. bridesmaid dresses from debenhams - at the mo they are giving them away practically. you will have a local baker that will do a very nice cake for a good price - buy your own bride and groom cake topper. so then you have to think about the photographer ...i think staged photographs suck shit, i personally would much rather have true representations of the day. i'd ask everyone to take pictures and upload them somewhere centrally - facebook, photobucket, dropbox etc. you can blow up the best ones at tesco, vistaprint or photobox cheaply. it genuinely is as costly as you want it to be

As you are very sensibly putting a cap on the day - what are you spending the other £5K on ?
As I think the hospitality is the best thing to spend money on.

However, yes, of course you can do a lovely wedding for 50 for £10k