To ask how cheaply you can do a wedding.. But nice.. Any DIY ideas.

[MarmiteAndCheeseRolls]

So 15 months to go and thought I'd better start working out the odds and sods costs. The venue for ceremony is £700.. The reception venue is free, its a pub but will. Close to public as its where dp has done a lot of unpaid work so she's said we can have it for free and she'll do the food.

So as for everything else.
Car.. I have that sorted as my dad has a classic in storage so will be put on the road for that

Cake..

Flowers..mums friend is very artistic and it going to attempt a posey if no good will go to florist

Photos.. Newly Qualified realative so hoping maybe £400 as she wants the experience, but if more that's cool

Dress for me.. Dontb want a full on gown maybe just a nice occasion dress..? Hmm?

Suits. DP, Teen DS and Best man
3 x bridesmaid.. Age 16,7,18m

So it's table decor etc.. Kinda want to make my own. But what.. Prob about 30 tables.. Lots of craft shops local so should be easy for supplies..

What else do we need..

Any ideas for DIY stuff

Not sure on color scheme.. Prob ivory and pink..

I got lace wedding dress by Ghost and Marc Jacobs gold brocade going away dress from eBay - less than 100 quid for the two. Years ago but neither had been worn.

Lookout for for suits bridesmaid dresses, for older ones search prom dresses.

Pinterest is your friend for decorations and flowers. Search DIY wedding a budget. Amazing stuff.

Let us know how you are getting on.

We are getting married in August and dont have thousands so are doing it super cheaply. The ceremony is the local registry office on a wednesday in the holidays as most of our family/friends have the holidays off etc. Came to £146 all in!

We are having a big garden party at our house but quite lucky as we live in a lovely rural area and have a garden big enough, I realise this wouldnt be doable in a town centre terrace! Local farmer is supplying straw bales for sitting on for £50 and we are making tables from stacks of pallets we get free down the road.

Ive been gardening like mad every day to make sure we have tonnes of flowers and have potted up huge numbers of planters we got free on facebook. Plants grown from seed in our conservatory.

Food, we are doing a buffet. Im making a naked cake and decorating with wild flowers. DP is a carpenter so can make log slices to display all food on. We are using his classic car for a wedding car. My dress so far has been the most expensive bit at £300!! No one is wearing suits either which has helped. Ive bought super cheap vintage crockery and china off facebook and got a job lot of glasses from a pub that was getting rid.

If you dont have the money you sort of have to find another way! Its a fun challenge and Im interested to see whether we fully pull it off! Good luck OP!

If you’re not bothered about a traditional wedding dress, look at bridesmaids’ dresses. They’re invariably cheaper and only you will know that’s what it was marketed as. Also they often come in several colours, so you could put your bridesmaid(s) in the same style, but a different colour. Debenhams is good as others have mentioned, or Monsoon.

I don’t know if they still do it, but M&S used to do a very reasonable wedding cake bar (long and flat rather than a traditional tier). You could get one of their single tier cakes (about £45), jazz it up with ribbon and use that for the cutting the cake moment/pictures, then cut up the bar later to give everyone a portion. Also if you know anyone who works there, staff get 20% off.

@dontcallmeelen what area do you live in? I have set up a cake business and I am trying to build my portfolio of wedding cakes so have been offering them at a very reduced rate

Sorry replied to the wrong comment was meant to be @marmiteandcheeserolls

Monsoon sale for 7yo and 18mo bridesmaids dresses, then get something in a matching colour for the teenage BM.

The BM dresses don't need to be identical. If they're the same colour and you do their hair with the same colour ribbons / flowers / or other decoration, then they'll look great.

If you have a Home Bargains near to you they do a good range of wedding decorations and favours, and are cheap too

I made my own seating chart with pressed flowers bought online (tried pressing my own but they looked crap). Dresses for me and the bridesmaids were from monsoon (at the time they had a points card so I ended up with a voucher after the wedding).

Family pitched in using their various skills, sounds like yours are doing the same. My grandma made the cake and had it iced professionally, didn't cost much.

If you want a band for the reception or classical music for the ceremony, try your local university music societies. They usually grateful for the experience and don't charge much.

For table decorations, I used jam jars, ribbon and tea lights. Also milk bottles (our venue was a converted dairy barn) filled with flowers.

Ask the florist which flowers are seasonal and cheaper at that time of year.

With each supplier, just explain that you're on a budget and what can they do for £x.

Have a look on Offbeat Bride, loads of good ideas on there (my own wedding was on there!) of cheap and cool ideas. offbeatbride.com/

The site looks as though it has changed a bit in the last 7 years, but you might still find some good ideas.

We hand made a lot of our wedding stuff. We did all our own flowers, I ordered online from triangle nurseries online, and made up fresh flower centerpieces, bouquets and buttonholes, as well as a gift bouquet for my mum. We gave some of the centerpieces to guests as gifts too. Our centerpieces were a glass cake stand with a crystal decanter on top, a ring of flowers around the base of the decanter, and a spray of flowers coming out of the top too, with the table numb r poked in there. My clever dh filled the decanters with little crystals and battery powered fairy lights he got on eBay too. The decanters were something we had at home, and I got the cake stands on eBay. I sold them afterwards to our wedding manager! There are loads of flower arranging tutorials online, we even made flower wands for the bridesmaids. We had so many compliments about the flowers, so many people thought they were a professional job, even a friend who's mum is a florist. I'd never done flower arranging before that day!

I made the cake, with help from sister in law, 3 tiers, fruitcake to an old family recipe, lemon sponge was a very simple recipe, and then chocolate which was a Betty Crocker box mix! Covered in ready roll icing, and my SIL made sugar flowers because she is Uber talented, but I would have quite happily put fresh flowers on it.

We hand made invites but tbh it was a faff, there are loads of people on eBay and Etsy who will do them for you for not too much money.

I got bridesmaids dresses from jjshouse online, very cheap compared to some of the high street shops, and they were utterly stunning, they did take 10 days to arrive, but fit perfectly. Adult bridesmaids dresses came from Dorothy Perkins bridal range and I used my student discount card to get some money off. My sil made our hair decorations, hair vines made of twisted wire and beads for the adults, and flower bands for the kids, again, loads of tutorials online.

We made little paper flowers for the place names, and I bought a load of little money envelopes in one of our wedding colors, and filled them with wild flower seeds for the favors, the kids got home made chocolate welsh love spoons instead, cheap mold on eBay and some nice chocolate, melted and chilled in the shape.

For decoration we bought a string of fairy lights with pegs on, and printed out a load of family pictures, parents wedding pictures etc, and hung them from the fairy lights, they were a huge talking point and cost me £10.

Also when doing our flowers I found that you get absolutely loads of some things for your money, things like baby's breath and eucalyptus, for example. If you have 30 or so table decorations to make, little bottles or jars with a nice sprig of baby's breath and some greenery would be very pretty.

We had friends make our cake as our present. I think a couple of them chipped in for ingredients and the expert baked and decorated it.

We got married week last Saturday (our colour scheme was ivory, blue and pink ) and did quite a bit on the cheap. For table decorations we had nice bottles ( bottle green pomegrante 275ml) a local cafe saved the bottles for me or you can buy 12 off Amazon for £16. They looked lovely with 3 on each table with big pink daisies in and white flowers, with little crystals (Hobby craft ) scattered on the tables too. I found a local cake maker for £110. Bridesmaids dresses from chi chi london, £75 each. My dress was from Pre Loved, I was so lucky it fitted like it was made for me ! My flowers were fake from a co. off fb, I paid £90 for my bouquet, 2 bridesmaids, 1 wand and 7 button holes. Good luck !

No suggestions OP but so refreshing to hear of a 'normal' wedding. I'm sure it'll be fab.

Don't follow the advice to buy the dress from china, the pictures are not what you'll get. DD's last bridesmaids dresses were "made to measure" in China when they arrived not one fitted and the bride had to pay £500 to ge them altered even then the proportions were all wrong and only one looked any good in them.

Monsoon do lovely wedding dresses and are bargains if you can get one in the sale. Some charity shops are wedding dress specialists and you can get some bargains

Yes to homebargains for cheap wedding decs.
Next do nice suits for £85.
The great thing is that they do different fits of jackets and trousers so if teen son prefers skinny fit but DP needs tailored fit you can still have same colour. Can also be reused for other occasions/work/interviews. Waistcoats extra but not essential.
My DSis got older bridesmaids dresses from Asos and kids ones from Matalan in plain cream but bought ribbon to match colour of older ones to use as waist ties.

Asos also good for wedding type dresses.
Dorothy perkins sells some too.
Debenhams have sale on at the mo.

If you want floral centrepieces on the tables, get a batch of these: www.amazon.co.uk/Oasis-Plastic-Square-Flower-Arrangment/dp/B006W8PEOQ/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=oasis+bowls&tag=mumsnetforum-21&ie=UTF8&qid=1528894964&sr=8-3

A piece of Oasis in each, some pretty garden leaves, a few cheap flowers and a lot of ribbon, curled and secured onto push-in wires and you're done

Looks very pretty and need cost hardly anything at all

Further to what I just said, I don't know if your ceremony venue is the sort of place you can have what they call "pew end decorations" in a church?

If so, try these and decorate the same as the dishes: www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Spray-Dish-Handle-Tray-Floristry-Florist-Oasis-Shovel-Pew-Plastic-Green-/263553353792?var=&clk_rvr_id=1563792653368&utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=twenga&utm_campaign=twenga&utm_param=eyJlcyI6MCwicyI6OTcyMDIzNywiY2kiOiIwM2U0ODFmN2Q1YjUyYmY0OGRhMDY2ZjljNTJjZDM5MiIsImkiOiI3MTE4NDIxMzYzNjM3MTgwMTgwIiwidHMiOjE1Mjg4OTU0ODcsInYiOjMsInNvIjoxNTAwLCJjIjozMDk3fQ%3D%3D&rmvSB=true

This way, if you can talk someone into snipping off the "handles" after the ceremony, you get decorations for the ceremony AND the recption tables ... win win

I bought diamanté broaches from ebay and put them in my bouquet made it look more expensive,I bought bags of faux crystals as well at a pound or so a bag to scatter on the tables I also got chair sashes online too.Scour e bay they have loads of choice in varioud colours

Get your wedding dress and bridesmaids' dresses off-the peg from Monsoon, ideally when they have a sale.

Make your own invitations and place cards (Hobbycraft!).

Get wedding flowers from a small local florist.

Instead of a wedding cake, make your own/get a friend to make cupcakes, and present them on a tiered stand. Decorate with fresh flowers. Easier to make well than a proper wedding cake if you're not a professional.

@QueenOfMyWorld dd used my late dm broaches in her bouquet looked lovely, yy makes flowers look so pretty & cheap.

I like the jam jar idea with the ribbon.. :)

Will get people to collect them as we don't eat jam lol. And only rarely a jar of sauce but I'm sure I can get some...

Pinterest is full of DIY wedding ideas and tips on how to save money and create a beautiful wedding.

Ebay also has tons of wedding decorations that are being sold at a fraction of the original costs.

Get to ALDI asap!! I've bought so much stuff for my wedding from there. DM is a bit of a snob and genuinely cannot believe how stunning and cheap some of the bits I've bought are.
Guest book was £3.99
Wooden frame with wooden hearts for guests to sign was £10
Bunting/fairy lights/just married/mr and mrs signs are all under a £5 xxx