To ask if it's possible to have a wedding for 2k?

[Budgetbride]

My mum is buying my dress.
We don't have a lot of money, but would like to have a lovely wedding.
Would like to have around 60 guests but would be open to (for example) immediate family for the ceremony and then the rest for the reception...

What I was thinking so far was -
Immediate family only for ceremony if necessary
Ceremony at 4pm
Photos etc
Buffet at around 6pm
Dancing...

This would mean only one meal had to be paid for...

Would be very low key, could maybe hire a hall??

I have a friend who makes cakes for her business, she has offered to make the cake for only the price of the ingredients

My other friend is a florist, she has said she will only charge for the flowers

I can do my own make up and own hair

Best friends husband is a photographer, I was thinking of seeing if he could give us a discount?

DP's best friend is in a really good local band, who play locally to fundraiser for charity. I was thinking of instead of asking for presents, asking if guests really wanted to give something, they could donate to this charity, and ask if the band would play at the wedding? We would obviously do a large donation too!

We basically don't care about the trappings but want all our friends to come together and have a great time, nice, casual and relaxed.

Am I being massively entitled to ask friends to help out?! We would be very clear that we do not want gifts/money, just want everyone to come and celebrate with us!

Is this possible/entitled?
We would elope, but want to celebrate with our friends!

Other option is to elope and then come back and just have a party when we come back?

Bet you could do it for for £1,500 and have a weekend away with the remaining £500.

Just takes more time to organise as you'll be looking for the best bargains. Don't let that put you off.

Know of a wedding that took place in a beautiful field- had gazebos, buffet (they did hire a portaloo) homemade gin and a guy played the guitar for the music. Everything was 'rustic' i.e.- beautifully mismatched, but it was truly beautiful and memorable.

Thank you everyone!

Sounds nice than most expensive highly choreographed weddings.

Do you need wedding flowers? Could you not just buy a bunch you fancy carrying that morning?

I didn't want a church wedding and got my arm twisted, but one advantage was there were already flowers there :o I said I didn't want flowers, but the usual ones were just there - not pew ends and all that sillyness, but still vases of flowers. Had the reception outdoors, so also automatically floral without effort or money :o

Its entirely possibly.
We spent around £3000 for 30ish guests all having a night in the hotel after wedding, dress, make up, sit down meal, evening chip butties, photographs, flowers, cake,...we went to gretna green to get married and got a good deal on a venue that was newly refurbished so "grand re-opening prices"

I got my dress from ebay, flowers are foam roses so I get to keep them too, bridesmaids dresses were sale from lindybop, flower girl and page boy outfits were ebay, Childrens wedding favours were crayons spelling out their names (you could make them yourself if you get chance), centre pieces were 2nd hand vases from a local selling site, coloured sand from amazon, a pillar candle from ikea and a ribbon tied around it.
I shopped around for the best deals on chair sashes...The one I got was half the price of the hightest quote, and did free flower petals on the tables for me....so SHOP AROUND

Ok, so I think the plan is then, look for venues with last minute dates that need filling (we don't care when we get married);

Ebay for everything!
I'm all over Pinterest too! Eek!

Well you could do what SIL did - her wedding cost very little. Country pub, weekday, free use of room at back. No flowers. Invitation by text. She made sandwiches & sausage rolls. MIL made cake. Friend took photos. DJ didn't turn up so no cost for him either. Only real cost was the registry and her dress. I wouldn't recommend you go to that extreme as it was a bit awful as weddings go but absolutely it is possible to put a wedding on for a relatively small amount of money.

I would definitely look for a nice country pub - they will be more than happy to let you have a room free or at very little cost as it means their bar takings will be up.

I would definitely have a bring and share/potluck wedding meal. People bring their speciality dish that they do really well so the food tends to be fantastic. Imo it's helpful to split up the different types of dish and ask for specific ones so that not everyone brings a pudding etc.

Just don't have stuff like favours or bridesmaids. I did have my sister as an attendant but there was certainly no outfit provided. Basically before you decide on anything, ask yourself if you really need it and if there is a cheaper alternative.

We did it. Getting married at the registry office with immediate family only cost us £35 and I had a non-traditional dress that o bought in the sales. Flowers I just bought tulips and tied with ribbon and my sister and brother took some lovely photos. Then we spent a little over £1k on hall/Buffett and a DJ. Was fabulous, everyone had a great time.

fitton that sounds lovely!

My friend had her 30th in a lovely pub opposite the sea here - they did a buffet for her and people obviously paid for their own drinks - I was thinking of approaching them for a quote?

The best wedding I've been to was a low key budget affair, very much a bring what you expect to find do, guests chipped in to food, drink, music etc and everyone had a brilliant time.

A pub by the sea sounds like it could be nice. I would suggest that you say drinks are on you for the first hour (for example) which will mean everyone will get at least one drink. After that they could buy their own.

We did a version of this, not out of a desire to save money but because I feel like so much of the wedding industry is a racket.

Cake: M&S - £70 for three tiers, tasted great
Flowers: My bouquet only, £6
Dress: £25 from ASOS, another £20 on shoes
Reg. office: I can't remember, but I think £200 or so
Meal for guests after: £500 at a local restaurant, including lots of drinks

I didn't want bridesmaids etc. One friend took photos for us, another is a gigging musician and did music.

Nearly everyone who came commented on how relaxed a day it was, which I really loved.

It also turned out, between gifts from friends and my very generous gran, that we ended up with much more in cash gifts than we had spent on the day .

That sounds like a lovely wedding - definitely sounds like you can do it for under 2k. BYOB would make it a bit cheaper again, check catering because that can be surprisingly expensive but a buffet or BBQ would be lower cost options.

I went to one wedding where the favours were pebbles with the guests names painted on, and another where the favours were origami cranes.

You could make it even cheaper! It sounds like the sort of relaxed celebration I'd really enjoy.

Ask for no gifts but instead bring a favourite dish. You will get people's best savoury or sweet dishes and it will be a fun talking point. And you can supplement it with various extra bits and provide the booze.

Also down load lots of music to play on loud speakers. Forget the band or just give them a small early slot as their gift to you.

Use an old nice looking village or church hall with exterior interior space. Invest in decorating the space nicely to make it feel special.

It's really only recently people have gone crazy with extravagant weddings. Going back 50 years things were much more modest.

*make your own playlist on an ipod and borrow speakers"

If you want a proper “wedding” disco, with dancing, then I’d avoid this if you can afford it. A DJ really knows what songs to play and when, and how to get people up on the dance floor.
Songs from a playlist won’t really suit the moment where as a DJ will really improve the atmosphere.
Get a few quotes, the highest we had was £400!!!!! But we found one for £140 and he was fantastic, that price included a PA and lights.

As advised with other services, just say it's for a party, don't mention the W word!

One of the best weddings we went to was in a friends mil's back garden. They'd had family in a registry office for the ceremony. Back to the mil's afterwards because she had a huge garden. We were all asked that instead of a present we all brought a dish (her sister coordinated food so we didn't get lots of the same). Most people brought cold food and her mum did 4 huge lasagnes, a veggie chilli, jacket potatoes.

The bride and groom provided some drink but most people brought their own with them. A speaker played music from an iPad. It was brilliant. We didn't finish till 4am because everyone was having such a good time (mil's neighbours were at the party, don't worry ). I actually think it was more fun than my own wedding!

Sounds lovely.

People tend to get bored of a regular sit down 3 course meal at every wedding I find.

We arranged for our venue to do a BBQ for ours...all the trappings and sides on the main tables but there was a huge BBQ on the go where each table went to choose their meat. Then we hired an ice cream van and everyone had something from there for their dessert which they ate in the gardens.

I still get comments years later from people about how much they enjoyed the food and the van...and compared to a standard 3 course menu we saved ourselves about £3k!

We got married last year, and done it on a tight budget. We had a much larger party 130 day guests and another 50 in the evening. My parents were happy to pay for ceremony, and wedding breakfast etc so we didn't have to count that in our budget so slightly different to your situation. However we knew a florist and cake makes who were happen to just charge for ingredients/flowers, we also knew someone who had a good camera and was good at photography so that was also sorted. I brought my dress, custom made from a seller on eBay and so many people said to me how lovely my dress was etc and it had only cost me £90! Bridesmaids dresses also brought on eBay for £30 and flower girls were less than £10 (my flower girls were 18 months and 2 years so couldn't see the point in expensice dresses as they were filthy by the end of the day. I made my own wedding favours and centerpieces and roped my bridesmaids/friend (who were more than happy to help) into helping out. We had a lovely day with every one we wanted there and we weren't skint afterwards, it's 100% doable if you are willing to shop around a little more and make things yourself!

Go to Gretna Green!

Proper Perry instead of champagne for toasts/bucks fizz.. It's what The Ritz used during the war years when champagne was impossible to get (and they had complaints that standards had dropped once they were able to get real champers again!).
Work out what your non negotiable costs are - license, registrar, venue hire. Look at Pinterest for wonderful ideas.
A couple of years ago there was a poster who had MN make her a fabulous wedding on a shoestring (less than £2K). I think she went for a local hall and a pig roast with teaights in jam jars and homemade bunting/decorations.

I have just searched for the thread but can't find it in the myriad of other threads with great tips and hints on here

We did ours on a shoestring, v low key but loads of fun. Dad & I went on a day trip to France to get wine, we'd tested a few out here so we knew what we wanted. Had more than enough for 80 guests to help themselves freely and loads left over for £400, we even got a free tunnel ticket from the wine superstore

Assuming you spend about 500 quid on the legalities, music, taxis, cake ingredients, flowers, new underwear new shirt for DHTB etc etc, that leaves 25 per head for guest catering. Doable but not simple - it'll be much easier if you're in a church hall where you can bring your booze in from France, or if you get it catered in a pub but restrict the free bar to the first couple of drinks.

BudgetBride we did this very recently! One thing we did which saved money (although we didn't do it purely for that reason) was have the basic registry office wedding which was just us and our parents and then we had another ceremony at the venue we'd hired that everybody watched. We wrote the entire thing ourselves so it was very personal to us and we had no restrictions of what we couldn't or had to include. You can get them officiated by a humanist celebrant bit we chose to have one of our best friends which was really special.

It's not for everyone and some people feel cheated by not seeing the "real" thing but even people who had doubts before ours admitted it was amazing afterwards. I was so glad we had our special day just us as at the big ceremony and party we barely saw each other bar the getting married bit!

We also fed people fish and chips from a food truck which looked amazing and cost about £5.50 per head