To ask how much you paid for your wedding?

[augustine77]

Just that really. We're just at the start of saving for our wedding and I'm trying to get an idea of how much we can be prepared to splash out for a wedding that's not super fancy but still nice and fairly big. How much did your wedding cost and how long did it take you to save?

£27k including accommodation for guests and hire of whole venue for weekend. 2013. My dh and I wanted to get married in a barn but my parents offered us opportunity to get married in beautiful house with their money. It was gorgeous and they were very insistent so we were grateful and said yes.

Was great fun! Would I spend that much again? No, definitely not. It was too much and we could never afford it ourselves.

About £5k (not including honeymoon), 5 years ago, 80 guests. We did some things ourselves (invitations, decorations etc) and asked for favours rather than gifts so one friend did the cake, another my nails etc. We also got married in winter which saved a lot, I expect doing the same 6 months later would have been nearly double!

I'm getting married in March next year, and the entire day for 44 guests along with a week long, all inclusive honeymoon is costing us just under £3,000. It's shaping up to be the perfect day after we cancelled our first venue, which would have set us back over £7,000.

Around £25k including the honeymoon in 2016.

We had 70 day guests and an extra 30 or so in the evening. The biggest costs were exclusive use of a boutique hotel, an amazing photographer and the food and drink. We’re also in the South, and though I know it can be done cheaply, most of the venues we liked were priced similarly. We didn’t really save, just paid things off over the year as we went along.

10k 10 years ago including honeymoon. Small wedding at fancy hotel.

A grand total of £96 back in 1984.

3.5k including honeymoon. Small church wedding with reception in church hall. Seven bridesmaids (we have a lot of nieces), dresses all from ebay. My dress from eBay, husbands and groomsmen wore suits from Sainsbury (DH still uses his), waistcoats and cravats from ebay. Church provided decorative flowers (it's not what you know 😂), mine and bridesmaid flowers came from Dunelm. Mil made the cake. Friends made lovely favours for the tables. Caterers supplied tables, crockery etc (this bit was where most the money went) and I bought a load of Tesco value glasses and donated them to the church after. Oh photography was a local photography student and I had everything in a CD and made my own photo book on Photo box and a friend DJd for us. It was really good. In hindsight I wish I'd had a buffet and invited twice the amount of people, there was plenty of room but I wanted a sit down meal. Oh I also forgot to do a seating plan 😁

£3000 including honeymoon.
We had a very small wedding, which ended up with us eating loads of cheese and dancing with friends at a gig.

£200 in total.
Took an afternoon off work. Meal withfriends in the evening.

£500

we eloped. We used our saving as a deposit for a house. I would have never blown it on just a single day.

Oh, and had a lovely wedding.

20k 10 years ago.

About 10k 20 years ago. Church wedding and then reception at function room in local hotel. 120 day guests mostly family. Another 40 local friends in the evening. Standard big family wedding of the time. Honeymoon in the UK. The reception was the bulk of the cost. Paid for entirely by us from long term savings.

£15k in 2001 for 70 guests, but it was a full castle and meringue dress job, with too many relatives I’ve barely seen before or since. I would never do it that way again. It would be a maximum of about 30-40, close friends and family, book out a section of a nice gastropub type place for the evening and be far more relaxed about the whole thing.

Spent £10k for 130 guests, but we asked for cash instead of gifts and nearly broke even

12k all in. 72 guests. No additional evening guests. Had fresh bbq as the dinner, was great! Didn't have wedding cake, got some nice cake from m&s instead. Registry office was on same site a reception venue and provided a nice royals Royce to take me to the venue and for a little drive after ceremony. DJ, and that was pretty much it. Fantastic day.

12k all in. 72 guests. No additional evening guests. Had fresh bbq as the dinner, was great! Didn't have wedding cake, got some nice cake from m&s instead. Registry office was on same site a reception venue and provided a nice royals Royce to take me to the venue and for a little drive after ceremony. DJ, and that was pretty much it. Fantastic day. 2018

£1,500 for 45 people. Included a honeymoon.

That was in 2012

20k in 2006. My parents paid. It was a beautiful, happy day and we have lovely memories of it. And we’re still happily married
Just thinking what I would do differently.
We spent a lot on flowers, I’d cut that back.
I wouldn’t have a video.
The cake was £600 which seems extravagant now!
I wasn’t happy with my hair colour so prefer the black and white photos.

About £22k 7 years ago. Parents chipped in £15k. About 120 people, country house hotel, band, fireworks, free booze, contributed towards hotel costs for guests. It was a lot, but I don't regret it.

£500 or so. Four guests. That included my wedding dress and DH's suit but not the cost of the rings.

With rings included it was just shy of £900.

11k in 2013. 50 guests at the day and 80 at the night in a middle-standard hotel.

We saved and had contributions from parents - my mum bought the dress, dad the cake and PIL gave a lump sum of 2.5k.

That doesn't include the honeymoon.

If I did it again, would probably cost as much but we'd have just gone to Florida and done it there and had a 2 week holiday at the same time.

Similarly to a PP, we eloped and paid around £1500, that included fights, accommodation, ceremony, honeymoon; everything. It was a wonderful experience.

We had saved a lot of money for it though, but decided to purchase a buy to let property instead of spending it all on one day. Having extra income for the past 10 years has allowed us to drop hours at work and have a a better quality of life so that decision (for us) was life changing. :)

About 5/6k I think. Registry office then dinner for 30 at a nice, but not outrageously expensive, restaurant. Dress was £60 but I spent a bit on accessories (hat, shoes, bag) so the outfit in total was about £400. Rings were biggest expense- about 2k.

Honeymoon was a gift from my parents.

It was all great actually! I’m glad I did it 10 years ago when we had less money and that really represented all we could reasonably afford. I think now I’d find it hard not to dip into our savings (we didn’t have much at the time!) and go a bit mad.