....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!!!

[RichManPoorManBeggarmanThief]

hotel/ licensed venues are always expensive because the alcohol is priced at retail and the food is at a huge mark up

Can you find a hall where you can arrange your own catering (Hog roast maybe) and bring your own alcohol? You could probably have all 80 people all day for that.

[concernedrose]

wedding to be in surrey, hence expensive venue and catering, and this was one of the cheaper ones!!!! and we have cut back on everything we possibly can. Maybe we are unknowingly being sucked into the clutches of the wedding industry. We are fortunate in that it is affordable, it is just that it seems a huge amount of money. Guess it is all about priorities.

[Bogeyface]

www.oatlandsparkhotel.com/index.php?page=48&PHPSESSID=e5c8217feed067d800f26df4713a6682

[Bogeyface]

This one is £6.5k for a meal, drinks and bacon buttie for all 80!

www.gattonmanor.co.uk/SUMMERWeddinginabox.html

[Bogeyface]

My BM flowers would have been £35 per bouquet, so I bought 4 ready made white rose artificial posies from Dunhelm for £4.99 each and you really couldnt tell the difference, they looked lovely and girls still have them in their dressing up box!

[CaseyShraeger]

It would be cheaper to marry in the register office then move on for the reception. Cheaper again to go for an afternoon wedding so that you only need one lot of food -- you could make that a buffet and skip a sit down dinner entirely.

We DIYed my sister's wedding by hiring the village hall and doing a buffet ourselves -- five or six close family friends/family groups brought along a few dishes each and we bought some other stuff from supermarkets, brought over wine from France when there was a cheap Channel-crossing deal, bought a little bit more wine from Tesco so that we could take advantage of their free glass hire, and hired a friend of a friend's university student son and his friends to be wait staff for the day (not much waiting needed as it was a help-yourself buffet, but they kept clean glasses flowing, kept on top of the washing-up and made sure wine bottles were replenished). Our uncle made the cake, my sister's godmother made her dress and friends did the flowers.

Granted, my (now ex-) BIL turned out to be a git, but it was a lovely wedding.

[Bogeyface]

Oh and favours. We bought a pin, testicular cancer and breast cancer, for each guest so the charity got a donation and the guests got something that they could actually wear rather than almonds or chocolates or whatever that would get forgotten when they went home. I learned that lesson after my sisters wedding!

Does it show that this is my pet subject?! :o

[Bogeyface]

Flowers were these, but white

www.dunelm-mill.com/shop/pink-vintage-rose-bundle-240415

but I love these!

www.dunelm-mill.com/shop/spring-tulip-bouquet-204157

[Thumbwitch]

I got married in Surrey too..

[OhTheConfusion]

Barnett Hill offer a package deal. I have never been... but DH and I are invited to a wedding there in March and I know the couple are sticking to a tight budget.

[Catchingmockingbirds]

I think it goes beyond anyone's means nowadays. Weddings are a bloody fortune!

[OhTheConfusion]

Also, Surrey has many pretty village halls... cheap to hire, bring in caterers or do it yourself and you would still be cheaper providing alcohol than hotel prices.

I did this for DH's last BIG BIRTHDAY. I used lots of fabric bunting with seasonal flowers in teapots and tealights in jam jars, mismatch crockery and glass hire (free from sainsburys). I hired a hog roast (it came with a whole hog and a baked potato per/head plus baps) I made up a selection of salds, homemade roast veg tart and had a 'dessert table' containing DH's favourites with the birthday cake in the center. I provided roughly 1 bottle of wine per head (all less than £5 in supermarket half price deals) and had a barrel of ale gifted from a friend who owns a brewery , there were also endless soft drinks.

I managed to feed (and intoxicate) 52 adults and 15 children for £800.
Granted I made the bunting and it took a good few man hours to do but it was fab!

[INeedThatForkOff]

YANBU in the sense that if you're having a sit down meal at a hotel, that's what it will cost; however a slightly less exclusive sort of place could be cheaper. Also, of course, plenty of people hire a hall, have a hog roast, ask guests to bring their own booze and can do it much cheaper.

FWIW, 3 years ago, £12k got us the banns; church and organist; sit down meal for 120 (only drinks though were on arrival ad a glass of wine with meal which felt mean); evening party with DJ and buffet for 150; photographer; suit hire; rings ... and I think that's it.

There was no separate room hire charge and my mum paid for my dress (not hugely expensive), grew flowers, made the (lovely) cake and made the bridesmaid dresses (just my two teenage sisters), thus saving us ££££s. We did pay for linen chair covers to make the venue more 'wedding' a.d though they were effective, that was a corner we could have cut.

Still no honeymoon, but we do now have two DCs

[Ericaequites]

A wedding is just two people who wish to commit to each other until death do they part, and some legal paperwork, along with friends and family. It doesn't need to get expensive. I had a nice wedding two years ago in a hotel in the States for forty with a full meal, nice cake and open bar for under the equivalent of £ 5000. It helped that neither my husband or I have many friends, and I made my own dress.

[Bogeyface]

Getting married is cheap.

But a wedding is, especially these days, a luxury. And £10k is ridiculous.

[Mimishimi]

Would they consider a registry wedding and an afternoon tea in a friend or family member's garden.

[MrsHoarder]

We got married less than three years ago for considerably less than £10k. We married in DH's family church, and were up North. I wasn't all that fussed about a "big" wedding, but my Dad really wanted me to have one and insisted offered to pay. Also to reduce the cost the following were DIY/from friends as gifts:

• Bride & bridesmaid dresses
  
• Cake
  
• Photographs
  
• Table decorations and favours
  
• DJ
  Our flowers cost £80 (bride, bridesmaid and buttonholes) and we asked for the church to be done in our preferred colours that week.

[ComposHat]

Getting married in June, there's no way we'll be spunking anything like 10grand on it. Couldn't even if we wanted to.

People witter on about their 'special day' but most summers I go to two or three weddings held in hotels/stately homes and you know what? They all blend into one another. Same food, same readings, same clothes and same rituals. They are a blur of bland excess.

We are having a registry office wedding in late afternoon and then having a buffet in the basement of a local cafe for six quid a head. We are buying our clothes from a high street shops, then having an Ipod disco. No cars, no photographers, no sit down meal, no decorations on the tables, no make up and hair artists, all unnecessary faff to make someone else money.

It should be fun and less hassle/stress than the whole meringue dress in a country house sham.

[BananaPie]

Registry office is around £100.

Sit down meal for 30 in function room of restaurant should be doable to a high standard, including wine for £50 a head which works out at £1500.

Hiring out a bar / part of a bar for evening drinks for 80 - maybe 2k? You may be able to negotiate a minimum spend deal in which case you could put the minimum spend behind the bar / use it to buy everyone a glass of fizz, and people can buy their own drinks after that.

[wibblyjelly]

You can do weddings really cheap. We went to the registry office, friend did hair/makeup and cake. Wedding dress was £70 in an online sale. We did food, hired a hall with a bar (didn't put any money behind it, but did give everyone a glass of cheap fizz for toasts) We took a laptop to the hall to do our own music, and we decorated it ourselves. Did it all for under 2k, and that was 8 months ago.

[BratinghamPalace]

For my big day we decided before on exactly how much we would spend and stuck to it. We had a great day. We got buskers to play outside the church, they then lead the way to a small art gallery that we had hired with one huge long table, lots of candles and a few shiny things. It was beautiful, different and a lot less expensive that the traditional fare but seemed much more expensive!! Was thrilled. You would be surprised what you can come up with without loosing any festive glamour.

[exoticfruits]

I think that you can have a perfectly nice one if you go for an alternative, BratinghamPalace's one sounds lovely..

[YorkshireDeb]

I'm not married yet but of all the weddings I've been to over the years the best was definitely the cheapest. All you need is a bit of imagination & time - rather than having exactly what everyone else has - that's what makes it expensive and boring and unmemorable. X

[ilovechips]

Is it compulsory to have expensive weddings in Surrey then? ;)

I'm in Hampshire and got married last year for less than £1k - we hired a bus to take 25 guests plus us to the register office, then for a wonderful meal at a restaurant on the beach, non wedding food we allowed people to select pretty much what they liked - then back to our house for drinks and music and a buffet. Flowers we made ourselves using bouquets from the supermarket, and they looked wonderful - took our own photographs and I made the cake. My dress was second hand and so was my bridesmaid's, and we did our own hair and makeup. Everyone commented on what a fabulous day it was.

By contrast we went to a formal hotel wedding, approx £20k, a couple of months later with standard wedding food, hours getting photographs done, string quartet, all that kind of thing - and it was nowhere near as relaxed and fun...