Low cost wedding Kent/Essex

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DP & I have decided to get married and I’ve started looking at wedding venues. I can’t believe the price of some of the (beautiful) venues I’ve looked at, most are £10,000 - £15,000 for the venue alone.

We both have large families and for parents, siblings and DNieces/DNephews alone we’re at about 40!

If you had a lower budget wedding, how did you do it?

I’m thinking along the lines of:

•Midweek in Winter/January
•Open field or tepee in the summer
•Registry office wedding with party afterwards for extended guests
•Ideally external catering, I’d rather have canapés, cold cut buffet, warm baguettes, perhaps a pizza van or fish and chip van? These seem to be around £15ph which is reasonable.

Ideally I’d like to keep it under £4k, not including my wedding dress. Does this sound doable? Any ideas please for Kent/Essex?

Thank you!

Also happy to do my own hair/makeup, shop secondhand for dress & accessories. Wouldn’t mind decorating my own supermarket cake & would have enough hands to help set up any DIY decorations.

I’d like a florist for bouquets and maybe one centrepiece? I know photographers are, quite rightly, expensive. Not worried about a videographer or content creator as I’ve seen on TikTok

Either go for a tiny legal ceremony (about £50 plus notices fees and certificates) then have a celebrant ceremony at a venue you like - which won't need to be licensed for weddings - or go for what are called community venues in Essex. So places like Merrymead House in Brentwood. You might still find guest numbers are too small though.
Weekday ceremonies are definitely cheaper and venues like Friern Manor offer some good deals for less popular dates and times.

Church or registry office followed by a party in a venue that doesn’t have a wedding licence eg we used the upstairs of a pub, 70 guests total

For flowers i got mine from a local farm with hot houses, so reasonable (£60) and 2 miles away, the church flowers were down by a friend, circa £80

I hadn’t heard of Friern Manor, it’s such a beautiful venue and a lot more reasonable. I’ve downloaded the brochure to take a look, thank you.

That’s really good! I’d love to have a go at the bouquets. I’m no good at flower arranging but could possibly learn.

I’d be quite happy to elope to be honest or a small registry office ceremony but DP would rather have everybody there for the actual ceremony. I’ve suggested a registry office then a non official type vow thing