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?

25k including honeymoon, 8 years ago. 90% funded by ourselves. But that was mainly paying for the venue for a whole weekend, inc accommodation for guests.
And technically we had 2 weddings... registry office for the legal side and then the "big do" abroad.

It was an amazing day but there are things I look back on now and think "why the fuck did I feel the need to spend money on that!".... I blame Pinterest! Lol

An obscene amount of money - so much I doubt I would be believed. But it was a dream and completely worth every penny and I don’t regret a damn thing!! (We had help from both sets of parents too!)

£1,5k all together. Registry office affair so I could get away with a £70 maternity dress (6 months pregnant at the time). The venue was dead cheap, a large hall style room in the building where one of my aunts lived at the time, about £20. We provided a buffet lunch and drinks for 30-35 guests (already had the wine in). No evening do which was a good thing as we were in bed asleep by 10 pm, PILs sleeping in the living room

Three weeks after the wedding we went to Paris on a week's holiday. We call it our honeymoon, but actually it had been planned and booked long before our wedding, which came together after a six week engagement So the costs for this are not included in the £1,5k.

Good luck with your wedding planning, OP. Depending on what you want I think a wedding for less than a grand should be perfectly doable. I know that we could have saved on expenses in several places. We bought silver wedding rings after much deliberation, but as neither DH nor I are the ring-wearing type, they have been put away. Also the food could have been cheaper had we done the catering ourselves.

I actually have no idea. I think probably about £40k. My parents paid most of it, the IL’s gave us £10k and we paid about £7k which included honeymoon. We had 200 people in a central London venue with all food and drink included. That was in 2000.

£2k total about 11 years ago consisting of:

£700 for dress

Then there was a taxi, flowers, bridesmaid dress, photos, new tie for DH for £300

£1k for a meal for 25 with drinks included at a local restaurant

6k 8 yrs ago, not including honeymoon.
Luckily we wanted a quite small and informal vibe.
Roughly :

500 registry office
£2k sit down meal and wine in local Italian for 40 guests
£2k welcome drinks and canapés for about 100 in total evening ‘party’ guests, paying bay thereafter.
Evening venue was free if we covered bar costs which we easily did with 100 guests
£1k clothes and rings (my dress was only £150 and I loved it). Paid for best man / bridesmaid clothes within that.
£150 flowers - just me and 1 bridesmaid, again I loved them.
Fancy cake £500 extortionate and we supplemented with piles of doughnuts which went down a treat!
We were lucky to have friends dj and take photos.
Did our own stationery.
No favours (slight regret)
Also slightly regret not having official pgotographer, we have some lovely photos but not all I would ideally want.

About £150. We had a child and couldn’t bring ourselves to spend lots of money that took so long to earn. I’ve saved money for my children but won’t be paying for their weddings, would be ok with a small contribution but wouldn’t be shelling out thousands.

14k about 7k of which came from my parents. Church wedding, reception at a nice hotel, band for evening do, 2 bridesmaids outfits, rings, hair and makeup etc

Less than £500 on the wedding itself, which was on a beach in Key West, Florida. Flights and accommodation not included in that obviously.

We spent 36k though half was paid for my my parents. In no way regretted we had the most amazing day and the wedding of our dreams.

However I don’t think budgets matter at all. The best wedding I have been to as a guest was one of my best friends who spent less than 1k and it was so wonderful.

Have the wedding you want within the budget you can afford. We were very lucky to have the budget we did but not everyone has and would want to spend that money!

£5k, but lots of fAmily his side. Mostly food and transport from registry office to restaurants for reception. 80 guests.

It was fun.

I'm sure you can OP - we spent £2000 including honeymoon as I wasn't fussed on the wedding but on getting married. Just did afternoon tea in a posh hotel, 2nd hand dress from local Oxfam bridal shop - they have these all over the country and I took it back there. No regrets about the money - wish I'd never married him but that's different!

Probably about £36000, £20,000 from my parents and then rest we paid. Then another £8000 for honeymoon.
Sometimes I think what else we could have done with the money but I don’t regret it. We had a fabulous weekend and people still talk about it. It was the wedding my dad always dreamed off for his only girl lol.

I think everyone has a different vision of what they want their wedding to be like or what they will enjoy.
I ask lots of people the same question I have heard of weddings costing up to £30k ... in fact more often than you think. My cousin did hers for about £4 k catering all in big dress decorations etc ( recommend the range!! It’s marvellous ) I am getting married end of the month and mine has crept up to £12k all in ( I literally mean including the stamps for the invites etc / thank you notes etc) the wedding itself is about £7000 but we have sit down meal and buffet in evening job and it’s catered the rest seems to have grown from suits / dresses for me and bridal party ( 3 nieces ) thank you gifts / sweetie stand / centre pieces ( £10 per table the range ) photo booth hair for bridal party and make up etc ... flowers ...photographer... very expensive ... although I have considered eloping a lot less work .and money , I am so looking forward to it as it is just how we saw our day and I am hoping I love every minuet ... we don’t go out much or have expensive holidays ... and fingers crossed you only
Do it once ... but if you get what you want for £1000 go for it!! I think in retrospect it could have been done cheaper but there is an awful
Lot of bartering to be done when negotiating Wedding costs ... I can’t barter for toffee ... people automatically double the cost because it says the word Wedding 👰 🎩

15k at the turn of the century.
It was a very average wedding - 15k at the time was the average amount spent, and we invited the average number of guests and so on...

18 years later there's very little I'd change.

Overall ahout 6k including honeymoon

About £500 including a 2 week honeymoon in Portugal

But it was well over 30 yrs ago

£5000 which was a very generous gift from my dad. It was a perfect day! Honestly wouldn't have changed anything. Doing it cheaply was easier than I expected, the hardest part is finding a good value venue and catering. Managed to get an amazing deal on a hotel trying to build up their wedding portfolio, which included absolutely everything we wanted. No one could believe we had a church wedding with a hotel reception with all the trimmings for the price we did. But it's about finding priorities and things you're less worried about.

We didn't care about photos, so got a cheap photographer starting out for a bargain price to placate our parents. We wanted plenty of food and drink, so put a big chunk of budget into that.

3k - no regrets!

About 15k I think. We had 120+ at the reception (big families, lots of family friends that "had" to be invited) so the main cost was food and drink. We did some bits more cheaply and no regrets at all:
Cake - mum made it, friend iced it as a gift
Flowers - pots of a local flower on the tables cost a fraction of the price of flower arrangements; my bouquet was a gift from a florist friend; no flowers in the church, it was beautiful enough without
Veil - 2.50 from charity shop
Make up - did my own
Invites/order of service/etc - designed and printed ourselves
Venue - we got married at a place we have a particular link with - very, very beautiful and perfect place for a wedding. Would have been expensive to book an equivalent elsewhere, but hire costs were actually next to nothing because of that personal link.

What I wished I'd done differently? Because of the size of the guest list I was reluctant to spend on a few other things. If I was doing it now I'm older and wiser I'd have been more ruthless on who we invited. I'd spend the money on a string quartet instead - might seem like a frivolous expense but I've always regretted not doing it because music is a big part of my life (whereas there were 20+ friends-of-family who I can't name in the photos)

Around £13k on the day, totally paid by ourselves, 3 years ago.

Don’t regret spending a penny, you can’t take money with you when you die!

Just under £3k a month ago. £750 ish from each parents, rest from us.

Reg office for family only, later afternoon. Beautiful barn conversion village hall from 6pm for 80 guests. All drink provided plus posh street food van and cake buffet, 4 bridesmaids, few flowers, Spotify and amp, and no photographer. M&S naked cake, my dress was £99, invites decs and favours from eBay. Mil made oodles of fudge to give out, and we came home with gallons of wine and fizz. Venue cost £250, rings about £500.

Everyone had a really great time, the playlist was perfect and the venue looked much more expensive. Wouldn't change a thing.

Around £4-5k, 20 years ago. PILs paid for wine, my mum paid for buffet (£1000) and dress (£350). We paid for venue (£500), church costs (incl donation for flowers), groomsmen suit hire & bridesmaids dresses, DJ, photographer etc. Bought/made our own decorations, favours etc. Disposable cameras on tables. It was really fun - both to organise and be there.

Only regrets are things we couldn't have afforded anyway, like a free bar and some guests we couldn't invite.

I am intrigued about the £75k wedding that you "only" spent £1.2k on the dress. I was guessing it was a bigger part of the budget. Did you just fall in love with one that happened to be a reasonable price or was there another reason?

See, I don’t know if I am just terrible at sourcing bargains, but I’m massively struggling to see how booze for 80 people all day isn’t like £1k In itself?

Honestly I just did a children’s party and the food from M&S (sandwich platters etc for 50, mainly children) was £300. Decorations were £200. How are people catering to se many more and decorating much bigger venues?

About £150. Just like taxing the car. We're so romantic.