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!

We did it for 10k. This included everything - rings, Paris honeymoon, outfits, postage for invites, etc, etc.

We spent our money on a 10 piece band, food, and booze.

We had friends who made decorations for our venue, didn't bother with table flowers or favours, had pals design and print our invites, hired a taxi to get us to the venue and had a pal take a few photos. My wedding dress was handmade for less than £250.

We had the best day of our lives and our guests still talk about how brilliant a day we all had. (Think the amount of booze may have influenced this!).

2k for wedding and 1k for honeymoon in 2013.

Registry office (fortunately in a stunning building) ceremony at 11. Reception at 4* hotel with hot fork buffet lunch. Free bar. Wedding finished at 4. Honeymoon was a week in Majorca.

Cost savings for us were getting married in December, having 40 guests, having a short reception. Also friend paid for wedding dress (from Coast), family made the cake, friend took photos, family made the invitations and family paid for the hotel room. Friend paid for spa treatments after all the guests had left too. We booked short notice (less than 6 weeks I think) so venue waived their charge, reduced the food and upgraded us for free.

Also we prioritised food and drink (hence the free bar) and didn't bother with flowers, favours etc. We had a very informal day with no seating arrangements etc and it suited us perfectly. Very very happy day :)

A lot!! Best day ever. I still think about it almost every day. My wedding looked like something out of a bridal magazine.

I'm glad for you.

Personally having a princess fairytale wedding thing is not something I can get excited about.
I certainly wouldn't want to aspire to look like something out of a wedding magazine.

The best days of my life were the days that my children were born. Nothing comes close.

I had no frills wedding purely because the cost spiralled out of control when everything stuck their nose in. (Looking at MIL)

Everyone*

Best advice I can give is to sit down and decide what is important to you as a couple rather than what is important to the wedding industry. So is a large wedding important? Have you always wanted to get married in a specific place? Do you want a free bar. And so on and then build your wedding (and budget) around those priorities. Chuck anything that isn't important to you :)

It's crazy how much weddings can cost.

We are getting married in June.

Registry Office and notices - about £300

We have a budget of £1,000 for my dress and rings.

Absolutely no guests, just two witnesses.

Short honeymoon after will be about £2,000.

1997 - c£3-5K and the same again in 2006

Wedding 1 - Dress £600, cheapish reception place for 50 people (regret that), church, suit hire, printed invitations and order of service, wedding cars, cake, 1 bridesmaid, photographer

Wedding 2 - Dress £200 (regret this now), expensive reception for 23 people - really nice food and free flowing champagne/booze, no cars, no cake, no bridesmaid, photographer, homemade invitations, evening wedding

We could have afforded more both times but...quite frankly are too tight/simply didn't want the fuss of a big expensive wedding!

I did go, with hindsight, too cheap with the reception in wedding 1 and the dress in wedding 2 - definitely regret that now. However, I have no regrets about having a very late afternoon/early evening wedding for a small number of extremely close friends and family, and no cake or bridesmaids.

Have a cold hard look at all the expenses associated with a traditional wedding and think about how important they really are to you or are you considering having them just because of some kind of wedding tick list of 'must haves'?

£75 plus the cost of Nandos for 7 afterwards

£120 reception at Tobey Carvery plus £300 registry office

About $6k in June 2010 - not including engagement/wedding rings (twice cost of wedding), wedding gifts or honeymoon (didn't have one, got pregnant before we decided where to go!)

We didn't have a budget but live in the Caribbean and got married on the beach so it ended up far cheaper than we'd anticipated. In fact, due to the generosity of our friends and family, we ended up making money on our wedding and we ended up buying our first home about 3 months later.

I'm pretty sure if I'd lived anywhere other than here, the wedding costs would have sky rocketed with all the extras we could have had, but we didn't really need them here.

Basically we just had a massive party on the beach with a BBQ and a boat party and every time we have a boat party and stop there, we get to spend time in the place we got married.

£12000 including a honeymoon to newyork. We did get discounts as dh is in the industry.

£4000 12 years ago including everything but the rings. 80 full guests and an extra 30 in the evening. Buffet meal and evening buffet. Ccocktails straight after church and champagne for toasts but otherwise a pay for your own bar. My dress was £300, dh hired a suit. Venue was an converted warehouse by the river (think 1920s/30s speak easy theme).

2015 we paid around £17k including 10 day honeymoon.
We had about 80 day guests with a sit down meal and drinks package, about 20/30 extras in the evening and had fish and chips cones.
I did all the stationary myself, my dress was £500 so not toooo much.
Photographer was quite a lot and we got a photo booth as well. A friend with a nice car drove me.
Or big expenses were the venue, food and honeymoon which took up a big chunk of our spend.
I'm glad we spent what we did though as it was honestly the best day I could ever have imagined and I can't help but smile when I think about it and get a bit teary over the photos

First wedding (to exh) about £25k not including rings or honeymoon. Second wedding to current dh about £5k on same basis. I honestly preferred the second one - we had a civil ceremony and afternoon tea and it felt much more relaxed and I got to spend time with people that really mattered to me (60 people mostly friends at second over 100 mostly extended family at first including random parents friends in evening since they paid).

Approx 5k. In 2009, with 180 guests. (Including honeymoon)

But we always knew that we didn't want a traditional, formal wedding which would restrict who we could invite due to our budget. (Paid for it ourselves and savings also had to be kept aside for IVF treatment and deposit for house, which were higher on our priority list than a formal wedding).

We just wanted a simple ceremony followed by a massive party, with no formalities or sit-down meal. We wanted to be able to invite all our friends and family - including kids - basically an open invite to everyone we knew. So we hired a huge hall with a bar, had a simple buffet for food, did all decorating ourselves, bought cake from M&S and decorated it with fresh flowers. My dress was half price in sale and cost 400. A friend who has a hobby in photography did the photos for free, we just paid for the cost of the album.

It was honestly the best party of my life - wonderful day, lots of fun, everyone there who we wanted to be, really relaxed atmosphere. So glad we didn't bother with a rigid formal traditional expensive wedding.

12k for 112 day guests last December - we hired restaurant with room for dan e floor which saved a fortune and was awesome x

About £20k. Smallish wedding in a Mayfair hotel. Guests didn't open their purses for a thing on the day. Worth every penny as it was very "us".

About £30k I think, although my dad paid a fair whack of it. Most expensive item other than the venue cost (which included food for 100, some booze, cake, DJ) was my dress. With alterations it cost about £4000 - was beautiful though! No other dress I tried on came close, it was amazing. Shoes and veil were also expensive, as was my ring. I don't think anyone except my mum knows how much these items actually cost though - I didn't tell anyone how much my dress cost. I chose it because I loved it. Not even my husband knows how much it cost

It's interesting that quite a number of people in retrospect would spend less. I remember how exciting it was to plan, and I wonder if some of the feelings of wanting to have spent less are because by then all the excitement has gone. The best bit by far was the actual wedding - I was exhausted by about 7pm! Evening passed in a bit of a blur

I loved my wedding and we could have saved money, but I was very fortunate that my father contributed a lot. I wouldn't have put myself into debt for my wedding

Rogertherabbit do you really think that only people that spend a fortune on their weddings get any excitement out of the planning!! I loved planning my wedding, although it didn't take over my life. Some of the best bits of that planning was working out bargains and knowing it was still going to be lovely yet only cost £5k.

About 5k in 2012.

£1,200 last century (well 1999), lovely day, marriage still going strong.

£6000 in 2013. 37 for dinner and 120 for evening. We didn't do evening food (it started at 8) but we did have 5 big cakes that were cut up and put out.

£630! All told we had everything except a reception and a honeymoon. Had a sit down meal for 16 in one of the nicest hotels in our town. Bought a proper wedding dress on sale, shoes and jewellery on sale too. Had lovely flowers and nice cheap white gold rings. Was fab.