AIBU.. To ask how much your wedding cost?

[LouBlue1507]

From what I've read, the average cost of a wedding is now £20,000-30,000! This can't be true surely? 😫

How much did your wedding cost? Any tips?

Thanks!

About £20k (which included £4K honeymoon) 4 years ago. We didn't scrimp too much though, married in a 'posh' venue, dress was £1500, bridesmaids (4) dresses £1000 and 80 guests. We did get a friend to sort the band, didn't do favours (charity donation instead) and got a friend to do the photography so it could have easily been more.

11k 7 years ago, venue was nearly half of that for exclusive 3 day hire. Included all outfits, singer, bar, hog roast, buffet, drinks, accessories. I was canny and shopped around, made a lot myself including bouquets, totally worth it, awesome weekend!

£10k including £3k honeymoon 26 years ago. Reception for 100 guests. Late afternoon wedding so no evening party necessary. Catered sit down meal in a marquee and all drinks provided: Good quality sparkling wine (champagne for toast), pimms and barrels of beer were a last minute addition because the temperature soared above 80. Nothing overly extravagant.

12 years ago it was around £3,000. We kept it simple and could have done it for a lot less if we had hired a hall for a party rather than a traditional sit down meal followed by evening disco / buffet.
50 day guests, fizz on arrival, sit down meal with plenty of wine provided, additional evening guests, disco and buffet.
No wedding cars - we used family cars
We bought the fizz for the welcome and toasts and for during the meal, we paid a corkage fee which worked out much cheaper (pay bar for anything else)
I made my dress and one for my only bridesmaid
Wedding Cake was made by mum and iced by a friend.
Chapel flowers, bouquet and table decoration were all made by family.
Photographer was a friend, not a professional but a keen amateur, we paid for his hotel room.
Simple invitations and order of service.
Chapel and organist made no charge as close family links.
DIY hair and make up

We worked out that ours cost between 3-4 grand.
Mind you, we were only engaged 3 months, so we didn't have time or money (we had a baby on the way) to plan a fancy reception with sit down meal in a nice place. And we didn't have a church for the same reason. Also we got our food and reception pretty much at cost because we had it in the function room of the pub where my dh worked at the time.
Also we got our photography done for free, dh has a friend who is a professional photographer, and he insisted on doing it all for free- said it was our wedding present from him and his wife (yes we offered to pay full price, or at least something, but he wouldn't have it). And I only had one bridesmaid to keep cost down, and dh just had his best man.
Most expensive thing for us was my dress, veil and alterations (£1400 dress, £150 veil, and £100 alterations, which is a lot when I was a student and dh was on mimimim wage, and we only had 3 months, and had a baby on the way).
And the car, cake and flowers cost a bit. Oh and we didn't have a honeymoon.
We worked out if we'd had the fancy reception, meal, honeymoon, more bridesmaids, church, and had to pay for the photography, it would have been more towards 10 grand or so.

One was between £40/45k

The next was about £2/3k it would have been cheaper, we told the florist £400 as a budget for flowers and somehow it got interpreted as go fucking mental! Was a bit weird how she didn't want to give the invoice on the day. But that was lovely, really informal and relaxed.

We had a church wedding which was a donation, used own cars, wedding dress was vintage, new £120 full suit for groom, £250 on 3 bridesmaids, celebration after was a buffet in a pub, it was a quiet pub but really nice inside so they had no qualms about letting us have it for free, we decorated each table for £2 a table with a heart weight and helium balloons. Cake was £120 and could have fed the 5000 to our design, buffet was £300, plus £100 behind the bar. Then the disco was £100 with kareoke, the flowers were a whopping £800, photographer was a friend who did it as a present, we did the stationary for £30 if not less.

So really closer to £2000, if you don't have a friend that's good at photography, a lot of newspaper photographers will take the photos and give you a few copies on discs, I think my friend paid £400 for that. You don't need to go crazy having them in a fancy album, you can do that yourself so much cheaper. Be firm on flowers, don't say 'around' say 'ideally' £400 if over can you let us know please.

If I compared photos from first wedding which was £1200 to the free ones that were done by a friend really interested in photography, plus other guests had DSLR's so we got about 3 sets of photos, but the £1200 were no better really. They were printed onto posher or thicker photo paper. We didn't even get a digital copy. So I would go for digital copy and print via snap fish.

Your main things you want to get spot on are your dress/veil/shoes & bouquet, the grooms suit/shoes. You can buy matching ties, unless you really want to have full tails. Otherwise black suit, white shirt and matching ties is fine. Be specific with the bouquet, or you could end up with anything. No fern, for the love of God no fern. My first bouquet was meant to be teardrop and it looked like a collection of weeds, as for the roses & lillies used, all you could see was fern. Same with buttonholes.

The cheaper affair was more relaxed, we bought the knife for the cake that was £10. You honestly couldn't picked fault at it apart from I didn't like the taste of the cake. The food they kept refilling if anything ran out, there was loads left over which we have to a homeless shelter.

So see if there's a quietish pub that's to your style, if you want a celebration that's informal. The girl that caught the bouquet got married next too! So the superstition must be right!

We had a register office wedding which cost I think £120.
Dh's friend's wife did our photos so that only cost us £250.
The car cost about £200.
Our cake cost £200.
We had a buffet with a disco and dj in a local pub and that cost I think £250.
I wore a bridesmaid dress and that cost about £100; the shoes on top of that were about £60 and the accessories were another £40-50.
Suits for dh and best man came to about £200.
Our wedding rings cost £400 and I paid them monthly for a year.
Someone did the invitations for us for nothing.
I can't think of anything else that we paid for (there was no honeymoon unless you count the week in dh's colleague's caravan, that she gave to us as a wedding present, a few months later) so I think altogether our wedding cost us £2K all in. We paid for a lot of it and our parents paid for a chunk as well.

Just over £20k. The venue alone was about £11k.

This was 3 years ago.

Probably about 3 grand probably more.... had small registery office wedding and reception after noon to evening at a pub with private functions room small wedding big party. Me my husband and our parents all paid for wedding. It's been 9 years ago.

Ours will be about 10k in November, whole day in a swanky city centre restaurant where we live for 50 people and then another 30-50 in the evening. Doing my own make up, future SIL is a cake decorator so our cake is free

5K five years ago, for a church wedding with reception for 50 day guests and a further 50 evening guests at a local hotel. Honeymoon was 6K for a 14 night stay in a 5* resort in Jamaica.

My tip, spend more on your honeymoon than your wedding. You can have a beautiful wedding on a reasonable budget but it will only ever last one day and it's really mainly about making your guests happy. Your honeymoon will (typically) last two weeks and be all about you and your DH, completely besotted with each other because you just got married and you're on cloud nine! It's so romantic, wonderful and much better value for money!

August 2016

We provided hair and makeup for my mum, make up and dresses for my 2 bridesmaids, dresses for 2 flower girls and suits for a groom's party of 7

Dress, veil, shoes, alterations and underwear £1600
Hair and Make Up £350
Bridesmaid / Flower Girl Dresses £200
Suits and shoes £770
Venue £5700 (approx. 70 day guests and 50 additional to the evening)
Registrar and Marriage Licence £550
Photographer £800
Videographer £1295
Florist £550
Gifts £200
Car £300
Invites, save the dates and thank you cards £300
Stationary (Table Plan and Order of Service) £60
Rings £500
Favours £100
Cake £350
Sweets for candy cart £50
Booze and corkage £200
Honeymoon £5500
DJ - Close friend (but would have cost £500)

TOTAL - £19375

We were gifted £2000 in total from our parents and had 9 months to save, plan and pay everything off.

I wouldn't change a single thing about the day, the weather was perfect and by far the best spent money was the videographer - we can watch our memories over and over again (which we do) and it captures other parts of the day (speeches etc) that your photographer wont.

Nearly 20 years ago £300 we did our own photos we had 3 guests and a meal in a restaurant. Best wedding I've ever been to and we're still going strong

£66- registry office fee

£6000 last year. We ran off to NYC without guests so that covered a flights, a week's accommodation, spending money for the week, officiant, photographer, hair and make up and our outfits.

It was essentially our wedding and honeymoon in one. I wouldn't have changed a thing about it.

£450

register office
dress and suit for me and dh
rings
flowers (made bouquet and buttonholes myself)
booze up in real ale pub next door to register office

still together 16 years on

About £1k, I couldn't justify spending our savings on a party when we wanted to buy a home. Much better use of the money.

The vows are the important part, the rest is just for show.

About £4500 5 years ago. 35 people during the day about 80 at night. No honeymoon as we couldn't afford it. I can't get my head around spending crazy amounts on one day tbh. SILs wedding cost about £20K and it wasn't any better than our wedding just more guests that she didn't really want to come but was made to invite.

Dd's wedding was about £10k. Dress from Monsoon, beautiful, simple, elegant. Marquee in paddock belonging to friend of her fil, live music, reception was Mediterranean buffet with 'lazy Susan ' thingies on each table replenished as required, top of range porta loos which were so nice my 5 year old dgd was offering to take guests to 'look at the lovely toilets'!
The booze was unlimited supplied by dd's mil and her dh. Car was vintage Alvis convertible owned and driven by my cousin. There were 150 guests. The wedding itself was in a little country church and we all walked from the church to the field. We all clubbed together, us, the inlaws and the happy couple it came to about £2500 per family and was the loveliest , sweetest wedding I have ever been to.

A little under 9K 2 years ago, including registrars etc but not honeymoon.
We had 126 guests all day, 2 musicians during the day, a ceilidh band in the evening, food from street food stalls all day, ice cream van, free bar, two cakes, circus skills workshop, bouncy castle, provided transport for guests from home or local hotels..
DIYd everything, even grew our own flowers. made dress, cake, snacks, tree slice cake stands...everything; provided a hamper of games, pashminas for the ladies, umbrellas/ponchos in case it rained, hampers of crisps and bottles of water etc. bathroom baskets. I read too many blogs and incorporated too much really (for my own good: it worked out well on the day). It took a lot of organisation. We sold off almost all the things we'd made/used afterwards and offset a significant chunk of the cost, otherwise it would have been bearer 13K.

About £1000. Registry office about 60ppl then bbq, and later buffet and disco at local pub. Bbq was paid for as a pressie. We also put a couple of hundred behind the bar. Proper wedding dress too (£90 from local outlet). Fab relaxed day

Our wedding (2011) cost £10k - in a nice hotel, sit down meal for 50 (and we paid extra to give a really good choice menu - 3 starters, 4 mains and 3 desserts), then evening do for 100.

The Band for the evening do was expensive at £1250, but worth every penny as they were brilliant!

That 10k also included the actual wedding ceremony, a venue fee to the hotel, my dress etc, grooms suit hire, maid of honours dress/shoes/wrap/jewellery, hair for both of us, bouquets and buttonholes. Hotel night before for DH and his dad, Hotel night of wedding for me & DH, his dad, and my MoH and her partner. Table dressing, decorations, seat covers, favours, invites, our rings, all the sundry bits and pieces, non-alcoholic punch that was served after the ceremony and before the meal, the photographer, a live jazz band to play before the ceremony, for walking down the aisle and during the bit between ceremony and meal.

My parents very kindly offered to pay for a glass of prosecco for the toast, and then also offered to pay for the evening buffet and wine at the tables during the meal - so cost about £1k. Very unexpected and much appreciated as we'd been happy to pay for it ourselves.

The 10k also included our honeymoon!

It was worth every penny and we spent money on the stuff that mattered (ie good music and food) and i saved money in other places and did alot of the preparations myself.

Mine is July this year - will cost around 20k. It's for around 100 people.

3k 6 years ago
However I didn't pay for photography, flowers, dress was an eBay fluke -closing down bridal shop. So wedding was technically "worth" 6kish.
BBQ buffet rather than sit down meal helped massively with costs.
We had 100 guests to day & night

sinisterbumfacedcat

"I still can't get over the Baileys fountain "

Our wedding, our money (some gifted off his parents and my dad) people loved it. So no need for sarcasm. It was just there at the evening part of the day. We had a great day and are still very happy.