To ask how much you spent on your wedding

[namechangefidodk]

I'm interested to know how much people really spend. I'm looking to spend less than a grand all in, and wondered if anyone has ever regretted spending a fortune/doing it on the cheap?

We had planned to spend £6k which was what we could save in a year without too much stress. We were kindly given £4K by my family and £1000 by my DH’s so it ended up being £11k. The £6k wedding would’ve been just as good as would a cheaper wedding still.

For that we provided free drinks all night, sit down dinner and light evening buffet as wedding ceremony was 4pm.

I regret nothing as it was a lovely day. If I was cutting costs I’d have not provided drinks, had a served buffet for the dinner, got a cheaper dress and bought gold rather than platinum rings and that would’ve been fine.

Engagement ring and honeymoon added £6k to that total.

I had a very traditional one. I was 20 when i married and still living at home. My parents paid for reception, my dress, hair and makeup, bridesmaid dresses, flowers, invitations. Ties for the gents - they didn't have matching suits. Husband paid for his suit, the church, the rings and the honeymoon. Don't know how much was actually him and how much was his parents. The only thing i actually paid for for myself was my shoes and jewellery. But i reckon my parents spent between 5-7k on reception/flowers/invites etc - prob closer to the lower end of that. And church in those days (2007) was about 2-300. Rings 2-300 i think. My dress was the one really extravagant thing - bespoke and £1250. Loved it though! And looked awesome! No idea on honeymoon. But I'm thinking total wedding costs in the region of £10000. At the most.
Me and my mum had a lot of fun, bonding time, planning every detail! There are little things i would change but not really. It was lovely.

About £150, including rings and both our outfits!

we spent under £2000, that was including a weeks honeymoon in a log cabin. it was a registry office wedding then a meal at our favourite pub, it was perfect for us . the only regret i have is not having a proper photographer though.
it was both our second marriages, i cant remember how much i spent on the 1st one, it was done on the cheap though.

That was church service with bells, traditional sit down breakfast in a hotel for about 80, cake, evening with music on cds we made ourselves ( in the same venue), car for us between church and hotel, cash bar in the evening, room for us included that night. Photographer was a friend, for free. 4x bridesmaids and 3 x flower girls, 4 x ushers and a best man. Gosh it feels like a long time ago!

@Dragongirl10 I completely appreciate that, and I know it's a huge amount of money. However DP and I are very fortunate that that money was available for us without compromising on house deposits or university education etc. My sister got married 2 years after I did and had the same budget.

Not trying to be boastful or stuck up at all - just explaining that the cost of the wedding wasn't at the expense of other things.

Around 25k, 1.5k of which was our honeymoon. There were things we could have spent more on or cut back on but we were happy that we had the things we wanted and at a price we could afford. Had a fabulous day. Although that said, it was actually 2 days as we had to get legally married at a registry office a couple of days before our wedding as we had a humanist ceremony which wasn't legally binding. A couple of friends came as witnesses then we went for a meal just the 2 of us afterwards and it was fantastic, it felt really special to have that day to be totally wrapped up in how much we love each other, nothing else mattered on that day except us. Wedding was equally good but for different reasons, it was an amazing party and I loved seeing all our family and friends having a great time.

10k on the wedding and minimoon to Prague
Another 10k the following year on honeymoon of 6 weeks in NZ.

Both were awesome!

I want to hear details about the 75k wedding!

Around £1k, IIRC. I only regret that a couple of people couldn't be there, and I wish we'd been able to open it up to children. We ended up rushing through it and doing it very short notice. We didn't have any money to spend so we couldn't do anything fancy. In many ways this was actually really great because of how it cut down both our options and stress.

We did a registry office, dress came from Oxfam bridal outlet, suit from some high street store, friend (who luckily is a very talented photographer) did photos for us for free in exchange for keeping them for her portfolio. Midweek, which was a bummer, but OK and off-season (January). Drove family cars, as we don't care about posh cars, just tied some ribbon on. We just asked the best men/bridesmaids to wear their own clothing and roughly stipulated purple as the theme. Bought some false flowers from Hobbycraft and did a bouquet with some wicker hearts, which we still have hanging on our wall. Didn't get hair or makeup done professionally, but did have a consultation at Boots to see what they recommended suited me and bought those products. Then we hired out a Chinese buffet restaurant and paid for everyone's food but they bought their own drinks. I can't remember if we bought wine for the tables - possibly. We got a hotel afterwards as we have a DS so it was nice to have a night away from him, and we went out drinking in town with a few of our friends who were staying the night in the town.

That was it - we didn't have a honeymoon and the buffet didn't involve any dancing and didn't go on late into the evening.

Oh yes and we got our rings from Argos. Meant to replace them with nicer ones but haven't got round to it yet - we've been married four years.

Lots of different people paid for different bits, including ourselves so I don't know for sure but probably around £15k including the honeymoon, about 4k of which was our own.

It was important that our guests were fed well, drunk (if they wanted to be) and entertained. Best day ever.

About £8k all in. Did everything possible ourselves... Flowers, hair, make up, all stationary etc.

£11K (not all paid for by us but most of it). It's a lot of money though it includes the engagement ring and the honeymoon. We chose a nice cheap village hall and I then spent an absolute ton decorating it. Other than that no individual thing was particularly pricy (register office, locally made dress, honeymoon in a static caravan in France) but we had a lot of people there and I wanted a lot of fancy food and drink.

TBH I think we could have spent quite a bit less and still had just as good a day, especially as dh's parents invited 40 guests without asking us who I had never met before and very rarely since. But they were so pleased to be able to entertain their friends - whatever.

Around £1000. We called in a lot of favours.

No regrets; it was a brilliant day.

How can you do less than £1k? I spent more than that on my children parties sometimes.

Ours was about £30k, but it was 11 years ago. I’ve just booked a DJ and it was twice the price we paid all that time ago!

Under £100 - just the 2 of us and 2 close friends. It was really special.
That was 21 years ago and we're still going strong. Less can be more.

£10k but that includes two nights accommodation for 25 people over a bank holiday. Don't regret a single penny.

Must've been close to 20k, not sure on the exact final figure. 10k came from my DParents and we made up the rest of it. It's a lot of money but tbh we didn't even go mad. I have no regrets but I have a lot of admiration for people have self control make it work on a budget.

We had a great day- food was great, loads of drink, fab venue, string quartet, band, all that jazz. It was really important to me (after seeing so many threads on here) that people were fed, watered and entertained, and that our wedding party didn't need to pay for anything and that's where a lot of the budget went.

Excluding the honeymoon!

About 800/900

It’ll be in September and we’ve very kindly had a total of £16k offered to us by various family members but I’m trying to keep it all to less than £15k.

£300 odd, most of which was the meal. long time ago but reg office fee about £40, outfit £30 and I wore it to several other weddings.

ring was about the same I think.

£5000 which we saved ourselves. Didn’t have a honeymoon though

My friend just had a full wedding on £1500 and it was one of the most fun, romantic weddings I’ve attended!