To ask can you have a great wedding on the cheap????

[salsmum]

At the end of this year I will have been to 4 weddings (including my own sons) although each of them were fantastic, well planned, expensive weddings. AIBU to think that with ebay etc..if you so wished you could have a fantastic wedding 'on the cheap?' Myself and my partner do plan to 'tie the knot' at some point (we are both in our 50s) but I do love a bargain! can I ask did you have a 'bargain' wedding or did you spend £££££s and wished you hadn't spent quite so much??

I spent about £1700 on my wedding, including dress, suit and food. In my opinion it was a fantastic day, beautiful registry office followed by meal in lovely restaurant. Might not be what everyone wants but suited us and we could afford it with no debt or loans or having to ask family for help.

It can be done. My budget is 2k... registry office ceremony and bbq at local village hall. Lots of diy Dec's I'm quite crafty so have enjoyed that part. having a paying bar, got dress from tk maxx for £60. Although I'd love an expensive beautiful wedding I simply can't justify spending a fortune or getting into debt on what's really just a celebration! we have two children so would much rather spend money on them than ourselves!

We got married on holiday in NYC (we were already going, only decided the weekend before to marry while we were there) cost $25 for the license and $35 for the ceremony. We both wore clothes we already had and I splashed out £4 for a fascinator from accessorise.

So we had already paid £1400 for the holiday but still cheap all the same!

Everything at ours is going to be cheap and cheerfull. Hog roast and homemade buffett. Cheap ceremony venue (£130) and village hall reception. £140)
Everyrhing is homemade. All dexorations are being made feom jars paper and lace. Wildflowers for boquet and extra decs.
Bridesmaid dresses are online at £9 each and we are just adding a scrafy type shrug thing.
The band will be friends of ours and luckily my bro has a sound system for music later in the evening.
We are spendimg a bit on a bouncy casyle and fave painter....along with a few other fun bits...maybe £200.
Everything so far looks pretty good! Looks rustic but not cheap and tacky so yes, I think you can have a lovely wedding on the cheap. :)

I googled cheap wedding photographer and a photography student local to me came up on google. She wanted to shoot a wedding for her portfolio for £150 for the day. Complete bargain compared to £700+ for a professional (iirc) and the photos were gorgeous

*came up on gumtree, not google

Our wedding came in at less than £600 and was lovely. We went to the registry office (which is in a beautiful old building) and then to a local manor and ate off their standard menu. My niece made cupcakes and her bf took the photos.

Both of is were married before at ridiculously expensive dos and both of us said ours was nicer/more relaxed etc.

My wedding cost about £5000 for absolutely everything, but my dress was over £1000 (I couldn't resist it). I had help from parents etc, though. I'm sure you can have an amazing day for a lot cheaper, though! I didn't think mine was too bad when I read the average cost of a wedding nowadays is £18,000

Admittedly it's 16 years ago now, but our wedding cost £2,500. That included the ceremony venue (religious) our outfits, flowers for venue and me, a buffet for 120 people at a village venue, children's entertainers, and a week's honeymoon in the UK.

Admittedly I didn't have a traditional dress, and there was no photographer, but the food was excellent and there was plenty of it! If you knock off the price of a cottage for the week it cost us £2000. And it was a fantastic day.

Watching this with interest as I'm likely to have to do a wedding on the cheap side

My wedding cost 50p, and I found a pound coin on the floor on the way to the registry office, so actually I made money.

I also fed my family for a week on the leftover chicken.

I won't say how cheap mine was cos you won't believe me. It was a long time ago though. All I can say is that you don't have to do anything in the 'correct' way. What matters is that you and your husband have a bunch of your favourite people around to celebrate.
Don't bother with all the crap. Be yourselves and be inventive.
Our wedding was a legend.

I suppose it depends on what you see as important for a wedding AND how much time you have to do things yourself. A lot of £££ can be saved if you do a bunch of stuff yourself but some people (me) are too busy/lazy to do it themselves.

We actually spent a lot of money on our wedding BUT it was right for us and I loved it. However I have been to a fancy pants wedding in a country estate with all the trimmings and loved it AND I have been to a wedding which was a civil ceremony for 10 people at a registry office & then back to the grooms parents house for a humanist ceremony, hog roast and fun and loved that just as much. The MOST important thing you can have at a wedding is joy & love and as different as those weddings were they both full of those.

The best tip i can offer is not to buy anything that's meant for a wedding.

E.g there are loads of ways to get a lovely cake - call it a wedding cake and suddenly its loads more expensive.same with clothes, flowers, transport, venue. You need to choose things that aren't usually used for weddings iyswim

As a wedding photographer who has attended countless events of every budget, I say yes you can have a great wedding on the cheap.
You need to figure out what's important and representative of you as a couple, and stick to that. Don't get sucked in by wedding mags and blogs telling you that you must have this bit of expensive tat and that dollop of silly frippery. No-one gives a fig about the table settings or what car you arrive in. All anyone cares about is that the couple truly love each other, and there is a good feed to be had (doesn't need to be fancy, just tasty and filling!), flowing liquid refreshment and a fun party.

I have been to some wonderful budget wedding, like community hall decorated by the guests, where everyone brought a dish to share and the love, laughs, homebrew and dancing flowed all night. Bliss. Compared to the overdone drama of a country pile out in the middle of the nowhere, the huge budget spent on a meringue dress, fleet of fancy cars and huge floral displays.. and quite a few grumbly, hungry guests sidling up to bitch to me about the expensive bar and shitty food, on top of the stupidly overpriced hotel and travel they'd had to fork out for the bratty couples 'big day'.

Money does definitely not make a good wedding.

But I do advise to try not to skimp too much on the wedding photography if you can. If having good pictures are important to you, it's worth paying for a professional, even if you just pay for a few hours and get a dvd, no prints, and make an album yourself later. I've seen so many disappointed couples with disaster pictures after deciding to save the ££'s by getting an enthusiastic amateur uncle or newbie student to do it on the cheap. Yes you can get lucky, but you can also get very, very unlucky. Taking consistently good pictures in all lighting and awkward timing conditions takes a hell of a lot of practice and investment. Students and amateurs rely too much on luck for a few good pics.

If you do decide to go with a non-pro, ask to see some examples of a WHOLE wedding, not just the best two or three pictures from different weddings. If they can't show you that, don't do it.

WWe had a cheap wedding. I'm most proud of the venue. We used a gastro pub with a very ornate victorian decorand got a large back room and private bar area for £150! They did a buffet as well for £7.00 per head.
Cake was £50: hired cake stand plus 3 cream cakes in various sizes.
Flowers were £25- just bunches from a shop. Noone can tell a great flower arangement from a crappy one in any case and noone cares.
In London, wedding rings seem to be cheapest at Hatton Gardens- you want the grubby little shops not the big flashy ones!
Wedding dress was made by my talented mum. I paid £150 for the fabric.
Got a mate to DJ as a favour.
Our whole thing came in at £2000. It wasn't a small wedding either. We had 50 guests for the ceremony andbuffet and another 100 for the evening do. It was a proper wild, fun wedding complete with falling over drunk grannies, cocaine in the toilets and a bridesmaid shagging the DJ.
My top tip is that if your asking people to volunteer theirservices make sure they are well looked after and have a good time. We put aside a £100 just for refreshments for the volunteer DJ and photographer and deputised my Dad to make sure they both had all the food and drink they needed.

I had a cheap wedding. We were 21, madly in love and had no money, so it had to be that way.

Register office, followed by a huge party at a local venue. We asked everyone to bring booze.

We did buy a nice outfit each and my dad hired us a fantastic car. My fil bought enough sparkling wine to make sure there was a toast and my mil ordered some flowers and put on a spread. I bought a cake. Friends did the photos and another friend dj'd.

We have been to a range of weddings over the years and the best one we went to was in a smallish hotel where all of the rooms were taken by guests, who paid for themselves. It was lovely being there all day with a room to retire to at any point if you wanted to and to see the Newley weds at breakfast was lovely too!

It can be done!

Mine cost us about £500. After planning my best friends wedding for 2 years for her to be a complete stress head on the day as nothing went right. In fact I think they paid off the wedding 2 years after the divorce came through.

I always knew that when I got married it would be a simple affair. Was 15 years ago

My dress cost about £100 to hire, no bridesmaids and DH & best man just wore their best suit.
Wedding cake was from local bakery (just a square one tier) £40
£140 for registry office and bits
The balance was to hire a pub hall and a buffet.

I had a lovely day, it was so low key and relaxing.

Oh and my uncle took the photo's, lovely photo's as people were relaxed with him. Of course this was our wedding gift.

You definitely can.

My best tip is, if you want flowers (I know not everyone cares), order them wholesale from Holland. Google and there are loads of options. I got a van load for peanuts and just had to make up bouquets for me and plonk things in vases for the reception and the church - it was dead easy and florists are ridiculously expensive for what's often quite ugly, IMO.

My mate did photos and they're great, and I've never really seen anyone fail with that option these days.

I do wish I'd spent more on my wedding dress, or chosen a bit better, that is the only thing I regret. It looked nice in the photos and was comfortable, which were my priorities, but I could have had a bit more fun really.

I doubt if many had a cheaper one than mine, we only decided 3 weeks before and then decided to get on with it. My wedding dress cost £5 i
(it was 39 years ago) in Richard shops Bournemouth we got married at the registry office and had a lunch party for 12. tbh im not a person who likes fuss so suited us just fine.

My wedding photographer is usually a war correspondant! He was great because he is used to setting up shots really quickly so he didn't feel the need to spend ages faffing about arranging where everyone should be standing etc.

That is very cool, dash.

too many people are obsessed with "the big day" and living up to expectations or even competing with other people. it's sad. of course you can do it on the cheap. what matters is the people and the vows, not the price ticket on everything. our wedding was just perfect and came to about £2500

including band for barn dance, cold buffet in afternoon AND hot buffet in evening for over 100 guests, with luscious desserts, photographer including mini albums for parents, mum did the cake and flowers, my dress was £50 from a charity shop and nicer than all the meringues I had seen in the posh shops.