To ask if you regretted Wedding spend?

[FeelingFlat]

I'm getting married this year (date quite set can't do another time or year)

I'm completely stuck on type of wedding.

I have two options-

Small immediate family, lunch after that may or may not spread into drinks into the evening.

Big white traditional wedding with most extended family and friends invited at a cost of approx £20k (more likely to tip over than under 20k)

Whilst we can afford the big wedding it would literally leave us on zero savings.

Heart says big wedding, head says small.

Has anyone ever had regrets after a small or big wedding?! Wished you had done the opposite afterwards?

To not drip feed and to make this easier please understand that there's no inbetween wedding or budget we would be happy with despite looking at many options.

Help me decide

what about doing your vows somewhere else. I beautiful day just the two of you somewhere posh in a hotel, with amazing food, then one massive party with your friends and family when you get back?

We spent £13k and had a midsized wedding with 60 guests. We didn't really have any decorations other than centrepieces (is no special lights/chair covers/flowers etc).I actually wish we had spent a little more. Our wedding didn't have the wow factor!

Yes I slightly regret the 20k spend, we already had one DC and had a house and we could afford it BUT it was just one day! That 20k would’ve be better spent on the next house move. BUt I don’t completely regret it as at the time I was thinking about what my DDad who had passed away would’ve liked me to do. And I thought he would’ve liked his family to see me get married.
If your dream is a big wedding, then I’d look at cheap church halls as if you’re just having a normal party. Found the word wedding increases prices extortionately!

Well, we've only been married for two months, but for what it's worth I can't see myself regretting it.

We did a DIY wedding at a fancy venue kind of in the middle of our guests. It was a whole weekend affair, and we put on food and a free bar from Friday evening to Sunday morning.

I made my own cake, we hired one piece of entertainment, bought in a huge simple buffet on top of the 3 course meal, and didn't have a photographer. My two dresses cost under £200. Oh, and my sister made the flowers.

Spent 13k in all. Not a cheap wedding, but we spent the vast majority on food and booze. Yes, people had to pay for their rooms, but everyone thought we'd subsidised them - we hadn't. They were just cheap.

DH & I paid £3k for an incredible month-long honeymoon. Road trip across USA, including 3 National Parks.

We got married in Nevada for $200 the first day we arrived! Amazing, amazing memories. I'd much rather spend on travelling than dinner for 50 people.

Your wedding us for YOU, but if a 20k wedding is dearly what you want, do it if you have plenty of money and don't need it for kids, debts, or towards a house.

If it wiped out my savings, personally I wouldn't consider it.

We were somewhere in the middle with largely parental help. But 9 years later if I was to marry now I would have a small wedding with an awesome honeymoon, I don't need pomp and ceremony and would rather spend the money experiencing something new with my DH rather than reiterating a day everyone else does. A wedding doesn't make a marriage, I could never justify £20,000 there's so much more we could do with that. I love being married, but as time has gone on I realise how ridiculous weddings have become, less about the couple and more about show boating.

We had a white wedding but got married at 3.30pm then had a "posh" bbq at the venue at around 6pm with it all flowing through nicely until the early hours.Had around 60/70 guests it was ideal.Id definitely recommend getting married later in the day.

Feelingflat lots of my friends have married in lovely London venues for around 10k. I think the trick is finding a diy no corckage venue. Then you hire in caterers separately, do a booze run to France (with the benefit of being able to offer a free bar), just a few flowers or go to Covent Garden flower market a couple of days before a do your own, etc,.

Personally I just couldn’t imagine spending £20k on one day. Do you own your house? Surely that could pay a chunk of the mortgage or put down as a deposit.
When I think back to the weddings I have been to over the years I have lost touch with almost all the ‘friends’ weddings I have been to, looking through my old diaries recently I can’t even remember who some of them were or how I even knew them. Work colleagues probably. Not to mention that over half the weddings ended in divorce.
I am still in touch with cousins weddings I have attended.
None of the days particularly stand out as ‘fabulous’ days, most were just a social obligation I felt I had to accept, which is terrible when you think of the costs involved. One of them appeared on the ‘worst wedding’ thread .
I’ve been married twice, first time was a bigger event with a scout marquee in the garden and my DM & her friends did the catering, very informal, just like a garden lunch party. Nice day but wrong man . We didn’t have a huge garden or grand house.
Second wedding was just a very small lunch out at a nice restaurant for eight of us. Both occasions were just right at the time and I am so glad I didn’t spend huge amounts of money on one day.

I'm not married but have been to loads of weddings in my time. As a guest, I can say without any doubt that the nicest and best have always been the smaller ones and while everyone loves their wedding day no matter what, the brides at the smaller weddings were far more relaxed and enjoyed the day more (and most of them have actually said so afterwards; those with the bigger weddings while they don't regret them have said they wished they'd have gone smaller and spent more actual time with guests and savouring the day than worrying about what was going on)

18 years ago dh and i went to the registry office, just us and two witnesses. no guests. MIL has hated me ever since but no skin off my nose. don’t like drawing attention to myself, so the thought of walking down an aisle makes me shudder. i know people who have paid 25k upwards. absolute madness.

Pressed too soon.

If I got married, I'd have a smaller one. Mercenary though it may sound to some, unless you are well off, spending £15-£20k on one day when there's a 50% chance you'll be getting divorced, and house prices are as high as they are, is quite honestly madness. Think what else could be done with most of that money! Why have one memory when you could have 20?

I know what you mean, DH and I have got 23 first cousins between us, and some of them had small children. So either we invited all of them or none and it made the difference between a big or small wedding.

In the end we had a private ceremony in the morning in the register office with just our parents and siblings and invited everyone else to a restaurant for a sit down meal in the afternoon, it cost us £5k.

If we’d gone for a venue where we could have everyone at the ceremony it would have cost us at least double, I know some people grumbled about not being invited to the ceremony but the register office charged £50 for the ceremony and the fee just to get the registrar to come to an outside venue was £500 plus whatever premium the venue would charge for being licenced for weddings.

Yes. We didn't have a massive budget by modern terms but I still wish we had just had immediate family and then a small party after honeymoon. It was fun but 10 years on we are no longer close to quite a few of those invited and the money could have been much better spent.

We spent about £2000. Had about 90 guests, church service and then lunch in the church hall. Meant we could easily invite everyone we wanted, and people could bring kids so no childcare costs for anyone etc.

Everyone was home by 4pm.

Loved it. People still talk about it every now and then (not that I care whether it's talked about or not) and say they enjoyed it, so it must have been ok!

Hi Op

I had a lovely wedding in London with 100 guests for £6k plus the cost of my dress.

We kept costs down by choosing a venue that allowed us to bring our own caterers and drinks. We chose an amazing caterer that usually did farmers markets with a few weddings a year and the food was amazing. A catering student made our cake. We bought drinks from Costco and from waitrose on sale or return. A relative did the photos

The only thing I regret about it is that the photos weren't better as it was such an amazing day I would've liked more memories!

We had the whole big day and spent similar to your top budget. Honestly I’d spend it all again in a heartbeat. We had the most wonderful day and have some fantastic memories, photos and videos of it all. There are some small things I might have changed but broadly speaking I’d do it exactly the same over and over. We had a wonderful day and so did all our guests. I think it’s hard to gauge what to do based on the experiences of strangers in the internet though, you need to really work out which option holds the most pull for you two as a couple. Me and DH have very large families so it was always going to be slightly larger than average anyway, but we also don’t often have chance to have a big celebration round here, so the big day was something to look forward to and just a bit different from the every day.

I went small (ish) (definitely small compared to friends) and had 80 people and cost 6k, it was wonderful but my mum always complains I didn't invite her family (barely know them tbh) and because of this if I could do it again I'd just take DH and DD to a registry office and treat best friends and imidiate family to a dinner sometime. However if my mum hadn't complained ever since then I'd stick with what I did I loved it. Two of my friends had 25/30k days and both regret it big time money wise

Have you looked at local authority owned venues? Tend to be a bit cheaper. We were really tempted by this place for our wedding party www.hackneyvenues.com/hackney-marshes-centre/ we did a small family wedding and were planning to follow up with a big party for friends a few months later but then found out I was pregnant so it never happened ...

The big reception cost is likely to be food so you could save a lot by doing something less formal than a sit down dinner e.g. food trucks, afternoon tea, hog roast. This was another reason that we planned to separate the wedding and the party: no expectation of being fed if it's just a party, unlike a wedding.

Also, every London wedding I've been to (including mine) has had the reception some distance from the ceremony - you can hire buses/coaches to transport everyone and means you might be able to broaden your search area (including some cheaper options)

Finally, you could look into pubs which will often let you have the space for free with a minimum spend for drinks (this is what we ended up doing for friends on the evening of our wedding) - I would look at pubs in the City which are likely to be quiet at the weekend and glad of the business (again, this is what we did).

Btw, the 'official' portion of my wedding finished at around 4pm but I was still out and doing spontaneous karaoke at 3am with friends, so if you do end up with the small family do, you might want to think about an informal gathering with close friends afterwards to extend your day and avoid the home at eight scenario!

There are a lot of deeply unpleasant and judgemental comments on this thread. Spending a large amount on a wedding does not mean you are not happy, or that your marriage won’t work ffs - we just had the money to spend and wanted to do it in a specific way. I was lucky enough to have my exact dream wedding. That’s it. There is nothing wrong with an inexpensive wedding but also nothing wrong with an expensive one.

HOWEVER the piece of advice I would give is only have the wedding you can comfortably afford. Otherwise you will create stress and problems for yourself, as I have seen others do. And don’t try to recreate an expensive wedding on a budget because it always looks lame and tacky.

We went in the middle and spent about 12k, of which 2k was a gift. It was a lovely day with 68 people in the day DH has a big family and another 40 in the evening.
There was lots of food and drink. (A massive amount ended up going to a homeless shelter) We did it at a country house for 5k with all food included.
We could have spent about 3k less but we saved up and did a few extras like sparklers and a laser shooting game! You can do things cheeper and still have the elements of the white wedding. My dress was from wed2be and cost £50 but looked like it cost £2k! We used lots of local suppliers who were cheeper. We also got married between Christmas and New Year so didn’t have to do many flowers as the house was dressed for Christmas etc.
We had everyone we wantedut we didn’t have bridesmaids etc asdjdnt want to pay for dresses and makeup etc. Our priorities were food and drink!

Sorry dress cost £500 not £50!

Small is beautiful IMO!

Go small. We had 25 people and it was perfect.

So many good tips and links thanks everyone, I really appreciate people's opinions! Ultimately yes it's mine and DP's day and we have lots to think about but it's really helped hearing everyone's thoughts and advice!!