To get married as cheaply and quickly as we can

[PuddleCheeks]

Me and DP have been together nearly 7 years and although we're engaged, having 2 DCs we never pushed to get married, with the expense etc
Any way... My mum has been ill for a while, she has a rare blood disorder she was born with called Diamond blackfan. She's been having tests recently and although its come back that its NOT lukemia she has a condition that is pre-lukemia MDS and its just a waiting game of when it will become Lukemia.
so me and DP want to get married asap while she's still well enough. does any one have advice on how to get married cheaply and Quickly?

Sorry if this post is in the wrong place.

We had 120 people all day, more in eve, and everything cost about 7k, could have been much cheaper if we had fewer people (about 5k went on food and drink).

Best ways to cut costs if you can:
Keep the day a bit shorter so you only pay for one big meal
Consider a Sunday/Friday etc
Use a venue where you can supply your own booze

Decide what's really important to you and forget about everything else. We didn't bother with cars, favours, seat covers, designer clothes, fancy save-the-dates, etc. We spent time and money on having the ceremony we wanted and great food and drink.

i just had a brain wave... (that doesnt happen very often ha ha) we could do a seaside theme! fish and chips for food, decorate shells as table decorations? or does it sound a bit tacky?
my brother had candles on the tables at his wedding and twice the table cloths caught fire ha ha

what about something like this?

Then simple wedding dress, cake and wedding rings, and of course the legal bits and your good to go.

£4k is a good budget - you just have to look at making the things important to you happen. No one looks at cars, seat covers, favours, table centerpieces, table cloths, place cards. And cakes, invitations, order of service, and a good number of other things get about a microseconds attention.

You can get a lovely dress from ebay, charity shops (there are some specialist wedding ones), or buy a non wedding one - you'll save mucho ££. Don't have bridesmaids, or agree they can wear a dress they have already.

And def look at halls, golf clubs and other non hotel venues - and a weekday will be much cheaper.

4K is a small amount if you want to do the traditional 'sit down' type of thing. However, we opted for a high tea (cucumber sandwiches, cava, scones and cream) for 100 and then followed that with a garden party (probably not ideal for the winter!) with bunting, lights, drinks stall, hot buffet for 200. Our total spend was just under £4K.

I had small bridesmaids and bought their dresses from Monsoon and bought my maid of honour's dress from Oasis. My dress was in the Sassi Holford sale and I managed to get a £3K dress for £700.

You can pick up designer weding dresses on sites like Pre-loved and Sell My Wedding Dress.

We kept the invites to simple one sided cards printed in black script and didn't bother with table flowers or favours.

Happy to help with more ideas, PM me.

Avoid a theme. You'll get hung up on (expensive) details that don't matter.

I organised my wedding in 3 months for no reason than we wanted too and we were living together and had dd, I got married on a friday was much better than a satuday which were fully booked in both registry offices for months

I went in and asked got a date and just went on from there people will get the day off if they want to come,
it was a good friday though so a lot of people had the weekend off so that helped,
I got a venue wasn't fancy but had a great menu only had about 20 during the day and a party at night,
it was hectic but fun I didnt go for a theme or any fancy table decorations or worry about favour boxes i made my own with my MIl she also did the invites if you know what you are wearing they will be able to do any alterations for you in time and also so will florists they will be able to manage try and get earlier on int he year you start getting places busy june onwards, good luck

the quickest you can get married is 6 weeks because you need to post your banns

OH my Mils friend made our cake and also did some table decorations

thankyou all for kind replies and ideas i will deffo be looking at getting married later in the day 4 oclock ish i hadnt thought about that!

i have to go and make some lunch for DD now, but will be back on here this evening :)

Thankyou ever so much though, your advice and ideas are really appreciated

You don't have to get married in your nearest Registry Office. My local one is hideous so we drove 30 mins up the road and got married in another one which was in a lovely old Georgian building.

Avoid a theme. You'll get hung up on (expensive) details that don't matter.

I this this is great advice I do think people get so stressy about details and themes

We spent about £2k, I think. Maybe a bit more.

If you can keep down the number of guests, that will help a lot - fewer people to feed, obviously, and you may have a choice of smaller, cheaper venues. We had 20 people and the (lovely) venue hire was only £150.

We also had the wedding at 12pm followed by lunch and drinks/cake in the afternoon, no evening party. People don't tend to drink so much in the afternoon as they would at an evening do, which keeps costs down!

I bought our wedding cake from M&S (decorated myself with flowers) and it tasted great. My dress was from Coast. We got a friend to do the photographs. Didn't have any favours, seat-covers etc (I had no idea such things existed tbh, so didn't miss them!)

Only reason I had favours was Mil insisted i had to have sugar almonds as it was tradition so she made them for us she was happy to do it, I probably wouldnt have bothered

My daughter and husband got married at St Mary's golf club, hotel and country club, at Pencoed and it was wonderful and reasonable. They had looked at quite a few venues but chose this one. She got her dress on a sale in a wedding dress shop (had been happy to have got a second hand one but saw this one), she and husband did the flowers having ordered and bought them at the big flower wholesalers...a friend baked the cake...it was a perfect day for everyone.
Have a lovely wedding when you do get married!

DH and I had a church wedding, we brought our date forward as my nanny was terminally ill and we organised the whole thing in 5 weeks at a cost of 3k. The vicar was amazing and helped us change everything.

Had 130 guests for whole thing. Got married at 4pm so only 1 big meal. Dress from eBay and Debenhams, local hall with hog roast, mate's band, friend made cake, dad did salad/buffet to go with hog roast and then cheese and biscuits later in evening. Mum decorated hall and helped with favours (also eBay). Friend took photos and his daughter did our hair. Grandad drove me to church - he loved that bit!! Only thing we paid "full" price for was suits for groom and ushers but even they gave a discount when they heard our situation.

As you can see it was very much achieved with family/friends helping out. I'm very independent normally and hardly ever accept offers of help but I said yes to everything. I ended up at the hall until 1pm setting up tables and chopping salad but I wouldn't change it for the world. And everyone loved it and felt proud of the things they'd helped us with. It was a lovely day celebrating our marriage but also the strength and love within our family. Was the best day of my life and I wouldn't change it for the world and especially not a "package" day offered by a hotel.

Hope that helps - feel free to PM me if you want more ideas.

Oops forgot to say, the local WI did flowers for a small donation. I feel like we got amazing value for money and cannot believe we did it all in 5 weeks. Plus I don't feel like we missed out on anything and still had everyone there all day.

One way to save money is to book the venue for a party rather than a reception - places still have a separate tariff for wedding stuff because they know people will pay it - look at the ridiculous premium for a badly made white dress...

Have it late in the day with buffet for all guests rather than sit down meal. You can still cut cake and do speeches

£4k should be plenty. What kind of time scale are you on?
Will you be having bridesmaids? You can get nice dresses on the high street.
Vistaprint is good for cheap invitations.
Marks and Sparks do nice cakes.
Don't bother with favours.
Lots of hotels do cheep deals, i.e. wedding+reception+evening do for £2012. Or do you have to have a church?

Where abouts in South Wales? PM me if you want any help googling things, i'm on maternity leave waiting for a baby to turn up and i'm bored

Also, if you know anyone who can get a trade card, try country baskets for flowers.
We did all our table decorations and bridesmaid bouquets using their silk flowers and you couldn't tell the difference. Worked out a lot cheaper

oh just thought though
4pm in winter is dark, so photos would need ot be inside (no prob if you have a backdrop somewhere inside)
or be dutch and go out BEFORE the wedding with your dh for an hour and get lot sof lovely pictures of yourselves together in daylight first

also, churches are not allowed to marry after dark in winter (old law to do with seeing who you are marrying!!) I think you said you didn't want a register office? or was that the other way round...

I woouldn't normally say go for a theme, but seaside with shells you collect yourself and fish and chips could make it fun and easy and cheaper.

Can do invites on computer and print them off

Steppe We had some amazing outdoor/dark photos taken, the photographer just used two flashes, one at the front and one at the back. But this may be an issue if you are only using a friend to do the photographs!!

Money saving expert have a board specifically for weddings. There's lots of advice and suggastions on there ,plus lots of 'photos of posters own weddings.

Can't see that anyone has posted it - groupon deal for £2.5k in Cardiff has to be used by end of year