To think weddings are the worst!!!

[MeteorMedow]

I’m getting married next year and we can no longer elope as planned (it’s a long story but it’s not what DP wants). We also don’t have the type of family/friends that make a DIY wedding possible so no cutting costs there.

We found a nice country house and are planning an event but it’s so expensive it makes me sick. 🤔 It’s not that I expected it to be cheap it’s just feeling like 4 event for 6 prices!

Providers just adding a 0 and making up numbers on the spot and being real CF’s about it! We’ve caught a couple out already, advertising their services for much less online than they were quoting us.

I don’t understand how they’re allowed to do it or how venues can charge a premium to hire and then stick you with exclusive providers who are also charge a premium at the venue! (Probably because they’re paying the venue to be their exclusive provider)

Atm it’s going to be around £20K, DP and I earn six figures (just) and ‘should’ be able to afford it but I’m feeling increasingly uncomfortable about it.

I totally get the whole ‘Weddings don’t have to be expensive just make it perfect for you’ but what TF do you do if your taste is unfortunately ‘country house’? (🤔 more DP than me if you can believe it).

I just want to run away the two of us or go to the registry office but that’s not what DP wants and the wedding we’re planning is lovely just crazy expensive. Am I the only person feeling like this?

Save the dates have already gone out so it’s too late to back out now.

I'm getting married next week in a country house with a marquee for dinner in the grounds.

Costs are roughly:

1k outfits for all wedding party
3.5k food - all food Friday evening to Sunday morning
2k booze - free bar all weekend, including service
5k venue hire - Friday to Monday exclusive
1.5k sundry fripperies and entertainment, including a creche for babies and toddlers.

No band and DEFINITELY no dj (never seen one who wasn't a screaming embarrassment). Spotify playlist.
Made my own cake (made my sister's too, and been to plenty of weddings where the cake was made by friends).
Flowers made by my sister.
Photographer friends with very expensive kit taking some snaps for us.
Favours were 10 pounds for 70, because most of the kit happened to be given away free.
I got TWO dresses for 250 - day and evening.

I'm not saying this to judge - I agree with others that your priorities seem out of kilter. Anecdotally from my friends, it is often the groom who gets hung up on expensive, traditional details ("I must display to the world that I'm prosperous, doing marriage properly, but actually making my wife do all the legwork of choice").

But you simply DON'T have to do it that way. People think we're spending a fortune, basing it on how much the same thing would have cost at THEIR wedding, but we aren't (we also earn almost six figures).

However, I do agree that it's not worth fretting IF you can afford it. I would have probably wrapped up our costs at 12k. It sounds like you think some of these things are musts too, since you're fretting about them. So enjoy it, if you want those things. It's a dangerous fallacy to feel guilty about things that bring you joy and do you no harm.

Incidentally, though American, this article on wedding inflation is fascinating:

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.buzzfeed.com/amphtml/megkeene/heres-what-my-parents-1974-wedding-would-cost-in-2017

@curbside 🙈 I’m too scared to stack my own cake- I looked into the mns ones and thought ‘fantastic’ until I read that you have to stack them yourself. That sounds like an accident waiting to happen.

@Little

You’re probably right 🙈 don’t want it to come across wrong, DP and I love and want the same things - he’s just more confident and liberal about spending x

I have a more fundamental question - you were to elope but aren't because DP doesn't want to so you get the wedding you don't really want. You also say you spent last night arguing over the honeymoon. Serious question - are you really so compatible? I can't imagine arguing over where to go, you seem pushed into a wedding you don''t want.

MY OH is a wedding dj and he wouldn't dream of charging that price £1k max and that's if it's all day and night. £500 if 6pm onwards. (as he's have to take a day off his day job during day and lose money) he's been doing it 12 years.
He hates that people rip off because if the word ' wedding'

You don't sound very compatible to me, sorry.

No way would I spend £20k on a wedding that didn't even include bridesmaids!!! I would put the whole thing on hold/postpone so that you can look at it all again calmly.

Be very very brutal about what is a must have and what is a nice to have.

I did my own hair - Youtube tutorial, makeup - Lisa Eldridge tutorial and cake.

I did a layered version of this (just a simple chocolate cake) - the icing is very very easy to do and looks hard

iambaker.net/rose-cake-tutorial/

Like you no cars, DH had his suit from TM Lewin and he still wears it. Cheap favours from Etsy, cost about £20 total to scatter over tables.

It did become my Number 1 hobby like you!

However your biggest costs seem to be venue, catering, photographer and DJ.

I would be brutally honest with yourself about how much you are going to look at your photos. Ours sit in an album unloved in a drawer.

DJ - does seem a large amount.

After which you only have venue - and there you can only seek to compromise with your groom. Are you totally committed to the country house thing? Are there any restaurants/lovely country pubs with licences that might look similarly beautiful in photos?

Op moans about how much weddings cost but won't compromise slightly to make it cheaper. Why post at all?!

You can hire a cake stand from a local cake decorating shop for around £15. Then you don’t have to worry about stacking it!

Stacking cakes directly on each other turned out to be surprisingly easy. I think I learned it from Bake Off

4 cut off plastic straws in bottom layer of cake as supports. Put piece of silver cake board over top. Put next layer of cake on board. Repeat.

V easy. 8 years later I still have the packet of straws I bought for the purpose

Get your mother, maiden aunt, godfather or someone to make the cake or decorate an M&S one as a wedding present.
Find a cheaper photographer.
We were looking for reception venues a few weeks back and the original choice was well over £35k for nice but overly starchy and formulaic event for 120 people. My daughter and her boyfriend thought they wanted it as ‘the’ place to hold a wedding. They don’t want a wedding there - just a reception, so an awful lot would be wasted money. They also hate chairs with material covers and big ribbon bows but these came as standard. There was no flexibility or chance to personalise the programme and menu. The options were the options from which you can choose.
They decided to look a little wider.
We had been suggesting our lovely local (pub of the year, it’s so good). 18 beautiful bedrooms, glamping, a field for campers or campervans, a B&B with three cottages within 100 yards. Then they can have exclusive use for the entire weekend. Private dinner for the rehearsal the evening before, two conjoined beautifully decorated teepee marquees, a cocktail bus, another open marquee with fire pit,, a totally free choice of menu, wine included, evening food, an MC and more. The whole site forbthe whole weekend was half the price of the more glamorous venue. Whole lot nicer too.
I’d be tempted to look in detail at pricing of other venues.

Gosh, I don't like expensive weddings. So much spending for one day. The best wedding that I went to was on a farm and they had a barbeque. Cheap and very relaxed wedding. It was so much fun that one of the photo's was used for local advertising in the newspaper for years (with permission of course). When I look back at the weddings that I went to I don't remember the flowers, or the table decorations or the favours. Most wedding cakes were not that good. I don't remember the fancy food.

I remember the atmosphere, the dress and if I was bored or not. That's it.

A wedding should be the start of committing the rest of your life together. It should be a fun time. So many people now make it a "look at me" spendfest. I can't fathom how many of my friends paid for expensive weddings and then complain that they can't buy a house. Better to spend the money on your future instead of a one day instagram feed.

You could easily cut costs: get a much cheaper deal on the photographer, a cheaper DJ, do your own playlist, a local band you like will do it for cheaper than your budget, you could get rings for a quarter of the budget, make or put together your own cake for a slither of the cost. As for the venue, you said it's not the cheapest. Well then, get the cheapest!

When my Dad got married, the florist suggested for the table flowers to go for funeral displays (like you might see on top of the coffin).
He was appalled but when she showed him the catalogues for both, the displays were exactly the same but the funeral ones were 50% cheaper... Worth bearing in mind if you want a less expensive option!

Photographer: we got a keen family photographer who was happy to show his talent. Not the professional photos people love to post on Facebook but they were real and totally showed the mood of the day and doing the trick in rememembering the details of the day when I look back at them. FREE

Cake: got three plain teers from M&S, £100, decorated with Catbury fingers all around, Added berries of different colours and a rubbon/bow around . Everyone thought it was a professionally made up cake.

Flowers: Got two Tesco finest cream coloured £10 bouquets. Added flowers from our garden. Watched YouTube videos on wedding bouquets and voilà, lovely bouquets for £20 that again everyone complemented on.

We had a lovely venue, with a Michelin star meal, 50 people during the day, an extra 60 in the evening. Absolutely everything included, wedding was under £10k. That's how we wanted as both were not prepared to pay a fortune and yet we had so many people comme ting how it was one of the best wedding they'd been too. You can do it cheaper with research, avoiding stereotyped venues/merchants, it's up to everyone whether they want to do so or are happy to spend more for a designed wedding.

What you can't have is the magazine like wedding on the cheap.

That is a lot, and one of the reasons we ended up not getting married in the UK. It cost us 17k to hire a place for 3 days, cater for 45 guests for 6 meals, pay for accommodation for those guests and pay for travel costs for approx. 20. It also included everything except my dress.

Is the caterer an in-house one and do you have to use them? Weddings can be crazy expensive, but we were similar to you in that we could afford it and wanted our guests to have the most incredible time. That made it worth it for us.

Op moans about how much weddings cost but won't compromise slightly to make it cheaper. Why post at all?!

^This. You seem to want to have your (wedding) cake and eat it. You want a fancy venue but don’t want to pay for it. Well, you have a choice. But sticking with an expensive venue and then morning about it seems like the worst of all possible worlds to me.

‘moaning’ not ‘morning’

Not sure if it’s relevant to your situation OP but it’s pretty common for providers to put on a substantial mark up because ‘wedding’.

I had a few friends book venues, photographers etc on the basis that it was a large 30th birthday bash then tell them on arrival that they had decided at the last minute to include a wedding on the birthday given ‘everyone was going to be there anyway’. They just organised their own celebrants independently to show up at the venue at x time. Without fail the prices quoted for everything were cheaper than if they were quoting a wedding even though nothing had changed, still the venue providing the same MC, DJ, food, decorations. Photographer is still there for the same amount of time originally booked and is taking the same quantity of photos to handover as originally agreed. Just choose a cake that doesn’t scream ‘wedding’ and forgo wedding cake toppers.

I was told when enquiring about venues don't say it's for a wedding. They always back prices up.

I’d be wary about claiming it’s just a party - a lot of venues where I live are on to that, and have a clause in the contract that, if it turns out to be a wedding etc, you have to pay the difference regardless.

I think there are some budget options if you really need to, but why skimp if you’ve started going all out? I think your costs sound fairly realistic for photographer, rings, etc.

Your catering is £130 per head that’s where the money has gone! Crazy. Are you tied in with catering?

Whatever you do just don’t skimp on the photographer. If I had a penny for the number of times I’ve seen bad wedding photos and upset bride and groom, I’d be rich...

And donn’t ever hire a photographer without telling them it’s for a wedding. Recipe for disaster! Bad bloody advice on here. It’s a totally different skillset than regular photography.

OP, could you hire a civic venue, along the lines of a town hall and get outside caterers?

We got married in a small castle -£500 ceremony only 75 guests then moved on to a function room in a historic town hall -£500 ish including table / chair hire and an outside caterer at £20 per head. This was 15 years ago though.

As others have already said, there are ways to cut costs. Unfortunately it does seem that the venue is such a big chunk of your budget that you aren't really going to be able to make a drastic difference without changing venue.

You can definitely do it for cheaper than what you've quoted. I got married this March in London (zone 2), 130 guests & it cost £10k. We saved money by:

• Hiring a "dry hire" venue for £2k that allowed us to bring in our own caterers (a buffet at £10 a head) and we got drinks delivered from Ocado

• Hiring a wedding dress instead of buying one: £200

• Sourcing suppliers from gumtree (eg. our DJ was £350 and our photographer was £400)

• Selling the venue decorations on gumtree afterwards to get some money back

• A friend made our cake and only charged us for ingredients (£200)

• Asking guests for money instead of gifts (THIS made the biggest difference, in fact we were gifted close to the £10k we'd spent, meaning we almost broke even!!!! )

Little kittie you got gifted £10k!! Nice.