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..

We weren’t especially trying to save money for our wedding but I like making stuff and really am a bit of a skinflint...
My friend made the cake (as a gift), my dress was £80 from a vintage style boutique (opted for purple rather than trad white/ivory etc), we did most of the invites online for free (except a few paper ones for oldies in the family!), I made a load of the decorations myself (eg saved up different size jars, wrapped in lace off-cuts as candle holders), and made a whopping batch of tablet instead of favours. Flowers came as part of the package but my friend had absolutely stunning flowers that she got from a wholesale market the day before her wedding and didn’t bother with a bouquet!

I don’t think most people will remember the finer details (I was at a lovely low-key pub wedding on Sunday and trying to remember if they even had flowers!) so just do what works for you, and what you will enjoy doing without putting too much extra pressure on yourself

Thanks.
Goingto Aldi the weekend so will look then.
Started saving jars too :)

Not read all the posts but you need to pay for the registrar (not just the venue hire) and for copies of the wedding certificate. Just wanted to give you a heads up in case it wasn't mentioned!

Hope you have a wonderful day and marriage!

Go for off the peg bridesmaid dresses. Mine were from m&s in the sale about£30 each. Looked beautiful. Everyone whose ever had them made and fitted has had endless dramas and difficulties getting the fittings sorted. They have cost a fortune and still never seemed to fit anyone right.

I just bought a bunch of random eathernwadd type jugs from charity shops for my centrepieces. They looked really rustic. Only problem was my mum put a couple of her expensive ones in amongst them -and people took them
Home never to be seen again!

Look at chotronette for dresses. They are online based on Romania but they make to measure and the dresses are really unusual and gorgeous. Mine cost £300 from there

Being really relaxed about wedding suits saved money. I didn't need them to be all the same.

Did table flowers myself. Watched some flower arranging videos on YouTube, wasn't over ambitious.

Tap water, not mineral water.

Don't buy a cake from a wedding specialist.

Walked to registry office and got a black cab to airport after the lunch. They did ours for free - Hackney cab traditional apparently.

My table decor is empty spirit bottles and I'm making paper flowers - flowers for roughly 13 tables is going to be expensive I'm hoping will be less that £100...got people all over collecting me bottles - I tried my first set of flowers today - will take AGES but I love a diy wedding!

dontcallmelen it looked lovely

Cake and flowers are easy to economise on as the price of the "wedding" versions is so vastly inflated compared to what they normally cost!

I just bought bouquets and forgot to mention it was for a wedding. For the cake I hired a wedding cake stand and then just bought three fruit gatauxs in different sizes. It cost £50 in total and was yummy

Have long tables with pink and ivory runners down the centres. Big cheap gold charger plates from Poundland or Amazon (or buy another colour and spray gold. Collect wine bottles (and any other glass bottles) and paint them gold, blush and ivory. Then get some of those fake big monstera leaves from Ikea and put them in the painted vases. String cafe lights or fairy lights around the ceiling of the pub, make paper heart bunting (good tutorials online).

For cakes, M&S do lovely ones for not too much. Or ask a friend who is a good baker to do some Victoria sponges and rent a tiered stand and get your florist pal to dress it with fresh flowers.

I made origami cranes from magazine paper - I picked up old magazines from the staff room at work (having checked first of course!), reused a couple of bridal magazines, and FiL gave me
lots of photography magazines full of amazing pictures. I made them in all sizes - the little ones I threaded into short rows and hung them from nobbly twigs that I picked up in the woods. Then stuck them in old beer bottles with the labels soaked off. They were our table centres - totally free but for my time. The bigger ones I made into long strings and hung them around the venue. And all recyclable afterwards - though I kept one, and a friend took a couple as well.

I also bought job lots of random buttons and threaded them onto florists wire, then shaped them into hearts. Loads of people took them away - they are hanging up in their houses. Again, time consuming but v cheap.

We bought flowers the day before from the market and arranged them ourselves in old jam jars and jugs. And a friend of my mum made yards of bunting from old sheets and curtains that I bought in charity shops.

Oh, and our florist let me down so I did my own bouquet, with dried wheat and flowers, as it was a country wedding. And made the buttonholes too. I had wheat, freeze dried oak leaves, dried lavender, and freeze dried roses. All ordered online, all still looking good today.

We emailed most of the invitations.

Had 75p ikea vases and bowls with ebay ribbon tied round. Stuck some carnations in the vases, and sweets in the bowls. Bunting was our luxury spend, but it looked good (borrowed the scout hut, helped that dh is a scouter)
We had two buffet type meals, background music was an mp3 player & an amp. Priority was to allow people to hear themselves speak.

Finished the evening with a campfire, where the only expense was marshmallows, but that's our idea of awesomeness

We had flowering cyclamen pot plants as table flowers, and then gave them to all the people who were most involved in the wedding at the end. The best thing about this was we could buy them a few days ahead and they didn't need 'arranging', we just got some glass containers super cheap online and tied a ribbon around.
It's worth looking online for cardstock, envelopes etc for invitations - mine cost a grand total of £7.60 plus postage

You can make 70 meters (equivalent to 3 swimming pools) of bunting for approx #40. You would need 2 contrasting fabrics (approx 3.5 meters of each) and 70 meters of bias binding. Very quick to staple it together, which is fine if won't be low enough for people to see it close up. In that case, I guess you might prefer to sew it