To think this is possible

[arrrrrgh]

First off I'll just say I know absolutely nothing about weddings/wedding planning! I'm engaged and I want to get married quickly, cheaply and easily...is this even possible? Thinking of a budget of around £1000 which is kind of flexible by a few hundred and doesn't include rings. Guests would either be about 25 if we only invited immediate family or about 90 if we invited the whole family. I'm thinking the 90 wouldn't be possible on that budget though . I don't even know where to start or what to do!

Book the registrar, surf ebay, get a gazebo, party in the garden. Sorted.

I'd say for 90 typically you would need to add another 0.

For 25 if you did what the OP said maybe. Biggest costs are catering and venue.

It's a huge expense and shouldn't detract from what the day is all about. You can get married with any budget, you may just have to get imaginative and DIY it! Good luck with your day X

Registry office or local church if you attend, village/ community hall, invite all your friends and family and ask them to bring a bottle and buffet dish to the reception instead of a present. Hire a local band if you know no musicians. Send your fiance to buy a suit he will will wear again and get yourself a dress off ebay.

When I got married it was less than a grand. Lounge bar at a local pub didn't charge as long as the bar made over a certain amount. Did an evening buffet ourselves, the pub supplied big pans of stovies and stew for next to nothing for our meal, got a really cheap dress online. People wanted to get us presents so I asked someone to make a cheap sponge cake, someone else to do my hair, someone else to do my make up, someone else to do flowers, very much depends on your friends and families skills really.

We hired a local karaoke/disco guy and had a grand old time.

It's perfectly doable shame the divorce wasn't as stress free though

For 90 I think thats a little ambitious for 1k. If you just do a registry office and a few drinks at the pub, then maybe.

What kind of venue are you planning? Would you like a professional photographer... a DJ... catering... ?

If you are catering yourself, then Costco is your friend. It's ideal for catering.

Oh our photos were done very cheaply, we advertised at the local college and got someone who wanted experience and we said they could use our photos in their portfolios if they wanted. It's a bit risky, but paid off for us.

Our wedding was £1500 10 years ago

Registry office - ours is in a lovely old mansion so quite picture perfect as opposed to an office block!

Then we hired some holiday cottages for family/friends for the weekend (they all paid £50 each (£25 per night) which covered the cost of the accomadation and saved them all having to find hotels etc) I also then cooked several types of pasta on the fiday night and provided all the cottages with breakfast stuff
We then borrowed a marquee from a friend, and had a big BBQ for 40 people.
I did all the food and my dad manned the BBQ. We bought loads of booze but so did everyone else!
I made cupcakes instead of a wedding cake and DH did a music playlist.
My mum did pay for the flowers and my dad paid for a fry up in a local pub on the Sunday morning for everyone.

Depends how big your house is. We had registry office (£120), 70 people in our house/garden for a party (£0), food from Tesco (£200), champagne/wine free (I worked for majestic at the time and they gave free wine for weddings). Dress £200 (wish I'd got a 'proper' one in hindsight). So that's £520.
I can honestly say I don't think anyone had any less fun at ours than at anyone else's wedding. We all just got pissed and danced with friends.

Ours was £8300 including honeymoon. Most expensive thing was my dress at £1300. My dress was more than our honeymoon which was a week in New York the week before Christmas.

We had 30 day guests (all the Reg Office could hold) and 140 to the night. We didn't have a sit down dinner, just a massive hot and cold buffet.

Our reception venue was £450 plus £150 for the bar hire.

It can be done as cheap or as expensive as you want. Ours was cheaper than my sister who spent over £20,000 14 years ago.

My friend got married two months ago and her sit down dinner cost the same as our entire wedding.

Dress won't be a problem I've seen one for £150 that I like so I'm quite happy to go for a cheap one (I'd never spend that on a normal everyday dress so it's funny to say it's cheap for a dress I'll only wear once!) I was thinking if I had 90 then we could just do registry office and a party somewhere...if you just invite people to the after thing do you have to feed them? I thought us and the 25 could eat and then the party would just be like drinking and dancing? I've only been to two weddings and they were years ago I just don't know what people will be expecting!

I'd probably have some nibbles but not a proper meal (but I'm really anal about having food around if people are drinking 😂)

You probably need something like a buffet or something for the evening do, yes.

I think it would be tough to do a sit down meal for 25 and then an evening do for 90 even catering a buffet your self.

Having said that, if it was a close family member I'd be happy to pay for a post ceremony lunch in a pub or restaurant or something. I know a lot of mners would go spare at the idea.

The other alternative is to go straight from the ceremony to the evening do.

Registrar fees could take up a chunk of your budget so I'd look into these first - ours were £500 but that was for them to come to a venue (which was on the same street!). I think to do it at the registry office with ceremony room hire ranged from £150-£350 depending on date and time.

Friends had a big church wedding for a few hundred pounds. About 80 family and friends stuffed in there house and garden. Because they were already living together and had the toaster and pots and pans so they made up a list as to what food and drink people could bring instead of presents and had a big buffet set up around the kitchen work surfaces. Drink in the fridge and dotted around the windowsills and they hired in a few tables and benches for the garden.

When I got married a few years ago the registrar fee was about £350, so that leaves you with £650 for everything else. It'll be tight but just about do-able.

Hall hire, buffet, friend organises the music, friend acts as photographer.

Fish and chip supper in a local hall. Buy cheapy disco lights off ebay and a cd player.

Try dresses on at a sample sale to see what you like then buy from china. There's groups om facebook to find reliable sellers. Charity shop for a suit.

Flowers can be £50 for artificial ones off eBay if you just get something for you and a buttonhole.

Waitrose does a layered chocolate present cake for quite cheap that feeds 25. Its birthday cake size but two small tiers to feels weddingy.

Poundland has amazing stuff for decorations. Spray painting their plastic dinosaurs gold is very popular right now.

We had a registry office wedding, an eBay gazebo in the garden, made our own buffet and booze cruise booze for 100 guests. Cost about 3k. Also I made our rings and didn't get a big white dress.

Did this about 10 years ago. Hired a social club, hired a disco/karaoke and used the caterers supplied by club. Rings were from Argos and dress under £100. Flowers were weddfing present.

We did one lot of food so we could have everybody there for the whole thing. I think you could do no food for the evening as long as you make it very clear to people they need to eat before they come as there is no meal. It's not very party ish though to have no food, and it depends who you are inviting in the evening. Load of your mates, fine. Family might be a bit more expecting of food!

What about getting guests to bring a plate instead of a gift? A recent wedding we went to we were asked to bring a dessert. We could see it had been split into cheese, starter, dessert and they just circled dessert on our invite. Could you do something similar?

Our wedding cost:
Reg office (plus notice of marriage) £180
My dress £85 (Dorothy Perkins!)
DH suit/tie/shirt £200
Flowers £80
Lunch/drinks (for 12 adults and 2 kids) after ceremony £260
Other bits (handmade favours, table decorations) £50
My niece made my cake so £0 for that
Hair on the day £20
Did my own make up but had a free consultation at Clinique and spent £50 on make up
So just under £1000 in total

We had 8 guests for ceremony (all the room could hold) and 14 in total for lunch.

It was a perfect day btw, I wouldn't change a thing about it.

Oh I got my shoes (brand new) on eBay for £15!

Our church wedding cost £250 so that wasn't too bad.

Check how many people can come to the registry office though as ours wouldn't fit anywhere near 90.

If you are having the party in your garden choose your wedding colours early and get some cheap flower seeds in the right colour and grow them in the garden. For less than a tenner you can make it look like you have spent loads on decorations.

I sold my 2000 pound wedding dress on eBay for 65 quid. You really can get some beautiful bargains on eBay. You could also try charity shops. Church and church hall is a good idea. You can do your own flower arranging and often if the hall has a kitchen they are more than happy to put the kitchen to good use for you for a pretty low fee.

I think it can also depend which part of the country you are in and of course whether you have a garden big enough to have a marquee or gazebo for a venue. We live in Sussex and I tried to source everything to keep the cost down which was hard to do in this area. When I looked at hosting the whole thing near my Mum's in another part of the country it was cheaper. However, we decided we didn't want friends to have to travel miles so we decided to stay put. We got married in a very pretty registry office but that was also because DH is Jewish so it made his Mum happier, I think about 200 in total. It was in a town that has a castle so we walked 2 mins up the road with guests for photos in front of the castle on the veandering pathways that were free. DH is an architect that works for a practice that also does high end interior design so a couple of colleagues/friends offered to do the photography and help set up the Reception venue to look good. Again that was free.

My Dress was in the sale from French Connection. I know people can think FC a bit tacky but this was a white unclingy maxi dress. It had amazing embroidery work from the chest to the feet on the front. It looked like a vintage Bridal dress and people assumed it was 1000's, including a guest who designs clothes for a living. I bought it for £120 down from £270. I did have a tiara that was my Mum's and it was beautifully made in the late 60's, it suited me so that helped with the bridal look. We found a venue that let us hire the whole place as long as 1500 was spent over the bar but that included them setting up and us hiring the marquee at the back of the venue from the back doors. That also included the price of the food and a glass of champagne for our 45 guests on arrival. So as you can see we didn't need to make up the difference. The disco lights and speakers where again provided by the venue and the DJ was my DH'S bosses son back from uni- he was amazing and appreciated the 150 he got for the night.

My little DD and my niece were both bridesmaids so that was fairly cheap as no adult dresses to buy. We had to decorate the marquee and venue ourselves and did this by going to Tiger shop and getting stuff like bunting, disco bracelets and necklaces for the child guests. I made my own cake. The cake stand was the most expensive part. I got quoted £170 for the cheapest cake and made mine for about £25. However, I did that the day before and that was hugely stressful with children around. I also sourced my flowers the night before by going to this amazing florist at a big train station I live near to. I told her it was my wedding the next day and she did a bespoke arrangement for me and chucked in two bridesmaids poseys for free. Again, I was traipsing around the city I live in late pm, early evening looking for a shawl or something to cover my arms for when it got cold at the wedding reception and to get flowers, this was after I'd finished my cake at 3pm and picked up my DC from school for my Mum to look after in my home, she was also staying with us to look after them for the wedding night the next night. As was my Dad who she is divorced from so I had to set up two beds for them as well. It was stressful as I was marrying at 2pm the next day. However, sort of thrilling as well and good to know that you've done it yourself.

All in all we created an amazing event for just over £2200. This is not including rings and a night at a pricey hotel on the night of the wedding. We used our money for a very expensive honeymoon and we were buying a house and couldn't justify thousands on a wedding. I'm glad we didn't though as everyone loved it for the fun location and atmosphere. I was a SAHM at the time though and that afforded me plenty of time to source stuff and venues and event managing the whole day really.