....in thinking the cost of weddings is becoming beyond todays young people

[concernedrose]

DS is planning on getting married next year. He and fiance both have good jobs but are paying off student loans, and pay £850 a month in rent for a tiny one bedroomed flat. They also are trying to save for a mortgage. So imagine their (and our) horror at the price of weddings. It seems that to be able to do everything for under £10,000 is virtually impossible in the area we live in. And they have accepted they wont be able to have a honeymoon immediatly after the wedding. This seems a vast sum of money to me, but even calling in favours from friends and relatives, (ie cake making, invitation making, flower arranging) it looks like this is what it is going to cost. Oh well, anyone for beans on toast!!!

AnEventfulEvening sounds bloody amazing!

Curryeater the wedding I went to in a church hall last year had a free bar with lots of ales and wines on a help yourself until it's gone basis. Lots of people took their own booze too. It was ace for me because I wasn't drinking and could take really nice soft drinks instead of being palmed off with £3 for a watery coke or bottle of mineral water hotel drinks :)

I had quite a fancy wedding and did it all for under 10k! We had our ceremony at a beautiful register office, laid on transport for our guests, laid on a generous amount of free alcohol, had great food with generous portions and I had a designer dress. I know that that is still quite a lot, but it was a Central London wedding and it was quite fancy. We have friends who spent 30k and I must say that our Wedding was better (in my unbiased opinion ).

We cut costs in the following ways;

-Cheap invitations - spending lots of money on these is a total waste as they just go in the bin.

-Only had 40 very close family and friends to the day (does anybody really have 100 plus 'close' family members and friends?)

-Shopped around for everything. We had a bog standard coach rather than a fancy red London bus or anything expenisve like that.

• I didn't decorate the venue with flowers, instead I used the venues own candelabras and provide my own tealight holders etc. Looked beautiful, classy and cost so much less than flowers would have.

• I got my dress as a sample so it was less than half price yet in perfect condition.

-We chose a venue that didn't charge for hire and had a reasonable per head cost for the meal with wine.

-Instead of a DJ we compiled the music ourselves, we edited it all together so it was seamless with no pauses between tracks. We then hired our own PA system and lights etc for cheap. We had music that all of our guests loved with no cheesy rubbish chosen by a DJ that doesn't know us.

-No favours as nobody ever wants these.

I agree it looks like the hope is some cost will be covered. Perhaps you can show your DS this thread so he can see for himself that the wedding malarky is commercially driven.

DP and I have been together 26 years. If we ever decide to get married, I think it'll be a small and essentially fun wedding! I'm not paying for the pretty extras.

You don't have to spend that kind of money if you don't want to.

We got married in 2011 it cost us 9k - of which 2k was honeymoon and 1k my dress.

We had most stuff too - cake, 5 bridesmaids and a page boy, groomsmen and groom in hired suits, fancy invitations, hired cars (VW beetle and camper, they were awesome!) hotel with sit down meal - hog roast option - for 50, wine on tables and pimms/ale for toasts, all 10 hotel rooms, make-up and flowers - we had the flowers in the church then SIL moved them to the venue, had the pew ends in little buckets which could then be used in centre of tables, cunning. - and cake.

We saved money on photographer - friend did it and the car people took some too which were wonderful and included in price. Wedding photographers take the piss IME. Entertainment DSis's fiance's family have wonderful string quartet and SIL's ex lent us all his disco equipment and she did music.

We could easily have cut the cost in half by having cheaper honeymoon and clothes and still had the hotel...

That's in Oxford.

I mentioned cake twice there didn't I? I am a fan of cake

YABVU and you know it.

You can do a wedding on a shoestring.

I have to say that I would reiterate the "don't tell them it's a wedding" line. When we were arranging ours we picked a hotel with a restuarant that we ate at regularly so we knew the food quality was good and also that the prices were reasonable - about £17 per head for a 3 course meal. When I asked about having my wedding there the starting price was £25 per head for a buffet ! I pointed out that I had eaten there many times and had a set 3 course meal for less than £20. I asked why I couldn't just do that. I was told there were "special" deals for wedding. Plus we would have had to buy their wine which started at £10 a bottle for the house stuff.

So instead we went to a lovely pub ( 1/4 mile form hotel)with a function room by a canal - lovely views and an old bridge for photos. It cost £17 per head for 3 courses plus coffee and mints. Everyone had a choice of 3 starters, mains and desserts. We decorated the room ourself the day before. My SIL bought the wine as a wedding present and we paid corkage to the pub. There were bottles leftover which we gave to the waiting staff as thank you presents.

It was a wonderful day and came in at about £4k for 50 people ( excluding h/moon) - we spent the most money on the rings and the photos - ie the things that last.

And the colours for everything were ivory and gold so our "favours" were Ferrero Rochers on the tables - went down a storm with the guests, especially the kids.

(Hitches up Grumpy Old Woman Knickers!).
Young people today want everything, and they want it now. It seems that very few of them are willing to compromise in so many areas of life.

It isn't expensive to get married, it's expensive to put on a big event full of showy touches and extravagance.
I got married in 1983 (I'm vintage me...) and it cost us £250. That was a church wedding and included a dress given to me by a friend. We paid for the service, a hall, one car and food. My friends and I did the catering, bridesmaids and mothers were ferried about by friends. The disco was provided by an amateur mate. Obviously you've got inflation to take into account, but no way would it cost £10k to do similar now.
Our honeymoon was a lovely 3 day break in a small hotel in the UK.
We went back to our newly purchased house, where the dining table was garden furniture and we had a black and white telly donated by someone's Nan who had upgraded to colour. I think the only new furniture in the house was our bed.

Young people can't afford to buy a house these days... no of course they can't. I religiously saved 1/3 of my salary from the time I started work at 17 until buying the house 5 years later - more if I could, and my husband had done the same. We didn't expect to move out into our "own" places until we could afford to. I lived at home with mum and dad, paying for my keep and saving for the day.

Young people today... pah!

Hey Autumn it can be quite controversial and difficult to cut out family if you have a large family. We had 120 to the day and a further 80 guests in the evening. That was a restricted list, if we'd have had everyone we wanted it would have been more like 350 people - we were both when we sat down to do our guest list!I have a huge family - 60 of the day guests were close family - grandparents, aunts, uncles, first cousins, children and partners. My mum is one of 8 and I have quite a few rellies on dad's side too. Poor DH had one table of relatives and there were 5 tables of my relatives, but we couldn't have done it any other way!! So yup, some poor buggers like us do have over 100 'close' family and friends

Ah Princesschick see DH and I both come from very large families too. My Mum is also one of 8, and my DH's family are Irish so lots of them too. However, a lot of my family I only hear about through being connected on Facebook but I rarely see.

We took a particularly hardline approach as I knew that if I couldn't have the things that I wanted just in order to be able to invite more people that I would resent it.

I didn't invite any cousins to the day at all only the evening. We didn't invite any children either (all of the children we could have invited would have been ones we didn't know anyway). We also didn't invite anybody that we don't see or speak to regularly regardless of whether they were related or not. I know not everybody can do this though and it does help if you don't have the type of family who would get upset and put pressure on.

schoolgovernor, you can't get a job at 17 now, at least, not a paid one. You have to get into debt to the ponzi scheme that is now "education". Also you can't buy a house without at least 20% deposit, which is over 32k on average.

Looking up what a 17 year old might be earning in this day and age I found:

"The minimum wage for a 17 year old is £3.57. You will generally be lucky to get much more then that because at 17 you will not have the qualifications or experience for most of the better paid jobs."

That's about £7.7k per year. So on saving a third, even "religiously", this would mean about 13 years. Of course by then the houses will be even more expensive.
the 17 year old will be 30 and starting to worry about all those hysterical (pun intended) Daily Mail articles about declining fertility after 30...

When will old farts realise they are not better than young people, just lucked out when Thatcher sold off the council houses for peanuts?

(disclaimer: I am an old fart and regularly tut at genuinely sloppy or lazy behaviour by people of all ages and reserve the right to do so)

DP has said we're not getting married until we've bought a house or we will never afford a house (currently in a flat) and I've said no DCs until we are married. So by the time we get round to ttc, I'll be 60

Tough innit Autumn!. You are a much braver lady than me . All sorts of reasons as to why we couldn't do that. Soo glad the politics of our wedding are well and truly buried in 2010. Our blanket approach did mean that we didn't have too many complaints...but there were some about not inviting Mrs Miggins who is friends with Nan's cousin's neighbour or that second cousins partner an baby etc etc So you can't please all the people all of the time! It was fab tho and I'd love to do it all over again if I could.

concernedrose btw, all of the weddings I described above were in nice parts of Sussex...so I would imagine that the costs are not dissimilar to Surrey? And if they are, Sussex isn't far from you, so they should maybe broaden their search? I would just say to your DS and DIL that they should consider another kind of venue. Unless of course DIL has her heart set on something in which case she probably won't want to hear alternative suggestions. Are her parents contributing too? Could you tell them how much you are prepared to spend and that after that there is no more and then let them decide what they want to do? This is what our parents did and it worked really well.

have told them we will contribute £2000, and i will do all stationary etc, her family will contribute about the same. They are more than happy with that, and always assumed they would be paying the majority, if not all. It is not that we are mean, we could pay for the whole wedding if we chose to, its just that we feel any money going in their direction in the future would be best spent towards the mortgage. I do agree with what people say about difficulties with the guest list. They both have a very wide circle of friends, both from uni days, and even from school days, and it is very difficult knowing where to draw the line, so it is just close family and best friends at wedding breakfast, and relatives and friends with whom they have frequent contact at evening do. What do people think about inviting people they know are very unlikely to come. We have a number of very frail elderly relatives who live in the north. We dont see them very often, but they always send christmas cards and gifts of money, and we send cards/flowers to them. We feel we should invite them, as they have always expressed an intrest in DCs lives, but dont expect them to come due to journey. We would obviously send them wedding cakes/phots etc after the event.

I'm afraid to get a dream wedding they would need to spend a lot more than 10k. I'm one of those mythical people who spent 25k!! Well, tbh, my parents did as they're very traditional and saw it as them 'sending me off in style'. To be fair, although our wedding was amazing, it wast ott. We had a church service, followed by champagne reception followed by buffet dinner in a marquee in my parents garden and band
Afterwards for 120 people. My dress cost £350, the photographer was well under a grand, we didn't do favours. The expense was the v
Nice food and service and free bar I think. We did have quite nice wine too. No chair covers, local lady made an amazing
Cake for £300. I did go ott on 2 things - I wanted
A string
Quartet which cost around &400 and I wanted lots of
Lilies as a friend who would have been bridesmaid but
Had sadly passed away loved them and I wanted lots of
Them as a memorial if her on the day.

Yes a wedding can be done on the cheap and it's the vows that
Matter. Btw - a c of e vicar has the discretion to wave church fees if
The couple are struggling
Financially.

We economised on everything we could. I made all the dresses, MIL made the chaps' waistcoats (for less each than hiring), a friend of Mum's did flowers. Veil was my very first ebay purchase! I learned to ice cakes and did a three-tier one; that gave me a new hobby and saved several hundred quid while I was at it. All the invitations we did ourselves, ditto orders of service. We honeymooned in the UK. We found a venue which was (then) part of the local HE college and got three huge rooms for less than a third of the going rate for surrounding single-room hotel venues. Catering was theirs, but good value and we even got them to give guests a meal choice! We did splash out more on some things - mostly the things we'd have or use again after the date, like photos, rings.

There are websites out there to help couples get married for less - Google is your friend. This is the one I found useful.

concernedrose I don't think that's mean at all. Everyone has their different budgets / priorities. For example, DH's Nan & Grandad gave us a small cheque for our wedding but said that when we found a house they would give us a larger amount then. It was important that we put their money into bricks and mortar rather than a massive party.

Your DH and DiL just have to think what's important for them and not to be upset if they can't have a massive wedding. Otherwise they'll have to save. But a wedding for £10k is easily achievable. And everyone loves their wedding day - huge or small. If you don't love your own wedding, either something went catastrophically wrong that was out of your hands or you've married the wrong person!!

As for elderly relatives, we sent invitations to DH's Grandma and Grandad even though we knew they couldn't come so they felt included. Only problem was our invitation was seen as a 'ticket' and Grandad asked if he could send it to his brother as he couldn't come. MiL had to explain that this wasn't really appropriate! We visited G&G after the wedding and took favours, some photos and a video of the event and then went out for a nice lunch. Maybe your DS could do something similar after the wedding if they are close family? Otherwise, just send some photos. I guess it really depends how 'close' your relatives are. As you can see above I have a massive family but we stuck to this rule:

• Mums, Dads, Brothers and Sisters
• Grandparents
• Uncles and Aunts

-Cousins and partners and children

• Any other relatives that we are particularly close to

Anyone else either didn't make the list or was invited to the evening.

Concernedrose

Is there a reason why you can't rent a village hall, or the back room of a nice local hostelry. Do you not have any one within the family who can organise the catering, get some one in to cater at the venue etc. Why can the couple not wed in the register office. Can you and the brides mother organise the catering or get someone in to do a huge barbecue, hog roast or something and then you can go to the wholesalers and buy the 'trimmings' etc or is ther a reason why they/you all feel that a sit down 'in venue' event is necessary.

The money being spent on the wedding would be much better used towards a house deposit.

We didn't take any guests tbh. If you want a lot of guests, the Icehotel isn't the place to go. Its really only geared up for intimate weddings anyway - the church is tiny - about 25 tops. Which in someways, tends to make it easier in justifying.

There were three weddings the day we married; us who didn't have any guests and another couple who only had parents and the third with about 10 people total at most.

We did go for the most basic package available and took photos ourselves (we bought a new camera and tripod instead) but we did upgrade our accommodation. Together with an adventure sports activity it was about £2800 for everything for 4 nights (Activity was expensive but incredibly memorable). Of course its also your honeymoon too and not everyone adds that into the cost of the wedding. But it was a few years ago now.

The chalet was 4 bed and there were bigger ones available, so if you had people with you, you can save on accommodation. Which is either a good thing or a bad thing! It is worth making the point that there isn't really anywhere to 'escape' to either, so once you are there you are stuck with who ever you are there with. We were so relieved we hadn't invited my MIL and put up with her moaning once we realised this! She's have driven us both crackers!

I can see it being easy to add lots of extras on too. But to the credit of the Icehotel there really wasn't any pressure to do so at all and it would be very easy of them to do so. All things considered, the word 'wedding' didn't add a great deal to the package which I do think was a rarity (Ceremony, paper work and organisation and Ice Church hire was £700 which I was impressed at)

It was right for us, but I can definitely appreciate its not the right choice for everyone. We wanted a stress-free wedding without family hassles. Thats what we got. Everything was done for us. We didn't even bother to check what time the wedding actually was until the day!

"Also, what is the POINT of wedding favours? No one wants bloody sugared almonds!"

I agree. They didn't have "wedding favours" in my day. Is this a recent thing?