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.

Off the peg dress, speak to the church, they may well not charge you much at all if you are a regular churchgoer (ours didn't), then go to everywhere local that does weddings and find out their pricelist for weddings and if you can just have a sitdown meal (for example) if your wedding is in the late afternoon.

HoobleDooble did you misinterpret "you may now kiss the bride"?

if you go to the church regularly and you did say "our church" earlier , it will not be expensive unless you wnat bells etc, if possible think of getting married during the week

we got married in Edinburgh on a tuesday at 11am church cost nothing though we made donation for heating etc as minister was a close friend of mine for years, and went to a restaurant for long lunch cost £600 for 33 including all drinks

got my wedding dress made by a dressmaker for £500 ( cheaper than almost all wedding dresses in shops and it had sleeves which I wanted)

made my own cake, sister took photos on Carlton hill so wonderufl classical backdrop, I just had flowers for myself, DH and bridesmaids, in my opinion flowers in church waste of time and money and there may well be some still in displays from previous sunday

total cost £2500 including week self catering in south of france for honeymoon
arranged in 8 weeks ( except dress which was done earlier)

does your church have a church hall for hire and get in caterers, think good fish and chips; posh sausages ( choice of 3) and mash etc

£4000 is ample unless you want more than 60-70 guests

I posted above about hiring a local hall for the reception- but to add to this:

• yy to not bothering with favours, seat covers, fancy cars (agree with the suggestion about asking a friend with a nice car to drive you)
• do think about flowers though. If you have a non-hotel wedding then you will likely need to decorate the venue and IMO flowers look a lot classier than balloons. As the posters above Have suggested you can keep costs down by buying from wholesalers and asking around if family friends or local groups can do the arranging (WI is a fab idea, I bet they'd love to help). Flowers can also look beautiful in the photos and add colour if the weather is not so great. So, so glad we had lots of flowers!

I got married at 4pm on a Friday. I thought it was a perfect time of day as people aren't hanging around for hours. People could work in the morning if they needed and there was no-one who couldn't come because of work.

We didn't have favours. If I had to knock out some cost I would have cut out the flowers. We ended up having loads in the church as it needed a bit of TLC. Flowers are hellishly expensive and there are alternatives. I don't even see the need for the bridal bouquet. I just carried it up the aisle, it was in a few photos and then I put it down. Def recommend a buffet. Bought the booze on sale or return. I had one bridesmaid which meant she could jut choose whichever dress she wanted off the rack or have made, which cut down on costs. Don't worry about things like seat covers.

If you are organizing a wedding with a short lead time, you might want to think about friends who live far away or have other restrictions. One of my best friends gave only a month or so notice to her wedding which, for various reasons, meant I couldn't come. I'm still sad about it. You may want to give any such friends a bell and let them know what you're thinking of doing and the sort of time it's likely to be, even if u don't have date yet. Congrats!

Some of these have good packages available, just got to get your dress, cake, photographer etc:

www.castlehotelneath.co.uk/Weddings.aspx

www.bwgh.co.uk/grosvenor-stratford-upon-avon/all-inclusive-wedding-package.html

Have a look round at local places as most of them do wedding packages, eBay are fab for dresses; my mate just got hers for £20 and it's lovely! I would say £4,000 is plenty as I'm helping my friend arrange hers at the minute for under £500, for similar reasons to yours.

I had an amazing day on a super low budget, my Dad in last stages of cancer, like many above, lots of family favours, 1 brother drove me in his beetle, one brother made an amazing cake, all helped decorate the hall. I had a winter wedding got married at 2 had canapes then a big spicy chilly for the reception, loads of booze and later chip and Bacon cobs went round to soak up said booze. It never felt cheap, was a fantastic celebration, everyone had an amazing time.
Top tip don't mention 'wedding' when booking anything, I phoned the hairdressers and was told it was going to be £120 for wedding hair, phoned back next day for an 'up do' for a party it was £25. Re flowers I'm a florist and I would go for 1 really big fancy pedestal arrangement that you can take from the church to the reception. Have the bridesmaids hold one beautiful stem each ie large Calla Lily, for the tables hire tall vases with a couple of stems in or arrangement high on top. These will be less expensive but will give you a luxury look on a budget. I think you are better to choose one expensive flower than lots of cheap bits, it ends up much cheaper in the end. Also you can use flowers as thank-you pressies.

I had an amazing day on a super low budget, my Dad in last stages of cancer, like many above, lots of family favours, 1 brother drove me in his beetle, one brother made an amazing cake, all helped decorate the hall. I had a winter wedding got married at 2 had canapes then a big spicy chilly for the reception, loads of booze and later chip and Bacon cobs went round to soak up said booze. It never felt cheap, was a fantastic celebration, everyone had an amazing time.
Top tip don't mention 'wedding' when booking anything, I phoned the hairdressers and was told it was going to be £120 for wedding hair, phoned back next day for an 'up do' for a party it was £25. Re flowers I'm a florist and I would go for 1 really big fancy pedestal arrangement that you can take from the church to the reception. Have the bridesmaids hold one beautiful stem each ie large Calla Lily, for the tables hire tall vases with a couple of stems in or arrangement high on top. These will be less expensive but will give you a luxury look on a budget. I think you are better to choose one expensive flower than lots of cheap bits, it ends up much cheaper in the end. Also you can use flowers as thank-you pressies.

Look into booking a restaurant for the reception. You may be surprised how reasonable it is and the food options are likely to be quite a bit more special than the usual hotel chicken supreme.

The other benefit of a restaurant is that there is no need to splash out on chair covers and table cloths (yes, many venues round my way try to charge you for table cloths).

If you opt for a church wedding, the church flower arrangers will take care of the church flowers for a small contribution. Church weddings are pretty reasonable - it's the costs of choir and bells that can push it up, but you don't need to have them.

I got married in June and we had a budget of just under £1000. We went to the registry office and had a reception at home (put up 2 white gazebos, lots of balloons and flowers in garden!)

If we had had more money Id have loved to do it differently but I was surprised how well we did on a budget.

I got my 2 dd's bridesmaid dresses from next and ds and dh hired their suits, we ordered food from m+s for the reception and also the wedding cake (was plain white cheapest one and we decorated it with some flowers-it didnt look bad at all you would never have guessed how much it cost).

Def worth having a look at prices for restaurant like others have suggested. We didnt do that only because ds2 was only 8 weeks old and had been unwell so we preferred to have reception at home.

Good luck

I second not mentioning the word wedding unless you have to, it adds pounds to cost of everything, special wedding package means same goods at 2-3 times the price

I'm no wedding organiser and know jack about venues (I was very fortunate to get a highly discounted deal at Ashridge in Herts) and stuff.

However, despite my good fortune with the venue, we were still on a very tight budget and saved by doing as much as poss ourselves.

Think you should take a qualitative rather than quantitative approach wherever possible. Make food fun (I've always wanted to do a fearnley whittingstall style hog in the ground fire pit thing!) or if not fun, special. Everyone hates dry chicken and that red sauce you get as a wedding 'main'.

Try things like wildflower bouquets, handmade stationery, favours, room and table decorations.

This wedding deserves to be remembered so focus on quirky detail that is very personal to you and your family, maybe even create some new traditions at the same time. This will mean more to you and your guests than any pomp that money can buy.

Lots of my guests said ours was one of the best weddings they'd attended - and we didn't have a free bar or a disco.

Ooh, I just remembered a venue that is very lovely in that it offers a very personal touch. It's in Somerset though...

Google hunstile farm if near and keen in something a bit different :)

I agree ahardyfool create your own traditions! I threw my bouquet as I left the church then just me my husband and the driver sneaked off for a drink at the pub on our own before we got to the reception, when I got there my mum said you are supposed to be here to great your guests, I said really oh I was at the pub sorry.

where to in south wales are you.

We got married three months after engagement (would have been sooner but our priest was changing parishes). We spent 6k but could easily have done less. We invited more people than we needed to really.
-dress from Monsoon

• bridesmaids' dresses from Jaeger sale
• All suits bought from Ted Baker outlet
• reception (day and night) at a nice hotel. It was cheaper as it was October. If you get married later in the day you could just have one reception which would be loads cheaper.
• Two wedding cars
• The flowers were the most expensive bit

I spent less than £3000 on my wedding and I cut out nothing I really wanted.

Have a look at you local town hall, if you don't want a Register Office. If you want a church, have a look if they have a Church Hall next door. Not moving people makes the whole thing less stressful and means you aren't stressing about travel arrangements.

The thing is to decide which 'bits' will 'make' your wedding. For me it was venue, so that's where my money went - but the venue being striking (and not that expensive, see Town Hall comment) meant that I didn't need massive flowers or chair covers or whatever.

I did Rochdale Town Hall (£1300 all day exclusive, ceremony and reception) about £500 on food and another £200 on drinks. I had seventy people for my cold 'sit down' buffet at 4.30pm (3.30pm ceremony) and 110 for the evening 'pie and pea' supper.

I hired a DJ, put disposable cameras on tables and gave every set of guests a CD to put photo's on from their digital cameras.

My flowers were my bouquet, three single stem roses for my Bridesmaids and 5 buttonholes for Dh, best man, both Dad's and my brother (who gave me away). I bought silk copies for the ushers. £125.

My dress was made for me, and very non-traditional, I paid £70 for the fabric for that, plus that for bridesmaids dresses, also made.

Have a think about what's important to you and don't get sucked into wedding 'must haves' - they're just costly wastes of money. There's very little of the stationary you can't knock up on a computer, for example.

I got married for under £500.
We got married at Poole Guildhall which was so pretty, it was the most expensive thing about the wedding £200 for the big room.
My dress was on sale for £50 in TKmaxx and we had a bbq in MILs garden, Our cake was made by a family friend. About 20 people came and it was honestly lovely, stress free and nothing to worry about apart from the weather, which was really nice :)
My BIL spent loooooads on their wedding and I've never seen a more stressed person than his wife on the day!

I'm not sure where this is in relation to you but found it on Groupon.

I got married in a grey registry office building in south wales! Wonder if its the same one...

If it is, inside is okay :)

I used to work in a grey registry office in South Wales... They've moved to the next building over now though and it's ok.

Two words - cheese cake :) we had a tower of cheeses instead of a wedding cake as I can't eat cake and dh doesn't like it. Cost £80 from cheese wholesaler versus hundreds for a wedding cake. Formed part of the evening buffet and loads left! Win win every way.
Also, if I could do it again I would NOT have formal bridesmaids. The biggest stress was her dress! Just ask them to wear whatever they feel comfy in and maybe provide jewellery :)

Look for beauty students to do makeup etc - I recruited mine from the beauty counter at debenhams after disastrous salon trials (I was shopping for makeup to do it myself). She was a student and worked miracles :) all for £30 odd quid.

Food is where the cost really starts mounting up. For this reason we had small sit down dinner and invited most people to the evening part only. Look at hiring decorations from florists etc. use eBay and freecycle

Hope your day is beautiful

When I was little I was a bridesmaid for a very young couple getting married.

We went to the church, the reception was in the church hall. Grooms mother made the cake, others made cakes for the reception and ham salad. Bride's mother made our dresses. We had champagne (not me ). There was a photographer for a few formal photos.

The bride's mother was divorced and without much money which was a difficult position to be in at that time. It was normally the bride's family that paid.

Fun day, fun party, lots of nice people! They have been married nearly 40 years (I think)

OP, what size are you because I happen to have a brand new wedding dress in a dress box. A friend of mine was going to get married but it didn't happen and she asked me to sell it. It really is an absolutely beautiful dress.

My sister got married in the new newport one (used to be the mayors house?) that was nice actually, tidy building :)

(And we both had our receptions at restaurants)