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?

I organise them at work! If you want a church weekend the cost is around £600 (it varies a little by church but not a lot). We've had couples who rent the halls (£300) and self caterer/use a supermarket buffet service, buy a dress second hand, bring your own booze etc spending under £1500 others admit to spending more than that on a dress (and then ask for a discount on the church - no!)

The key thing is the marriage not the wedding, keep in perspective what is important to you - ditch the things (mostly new ideas imported from the USA) you dont need, nobody wants personalised soaps with your names on not do you need 6 bridesmaids and a ton of men in matching suits!

And I recommend delaying a honeymoon to later in the year, people are knackered after getting married, just go home and sleep before sorting the post wedding stuff

Just over £25k five years ago (not including honeymoon), partially paid for by generous parental contributions and buying things each month during the engagement as we went along. Never regretted the money, and don't imagine we ever will!

£18K on 2010. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, I would never spend that much now and would have something far smaller!

About 9k.

You can see my wedding here
offbeatbride.com/muticultural-fusion-wedding/

Think ours will be £10k in total, we are getting married 15minths after getting engaged.

We've only had to pay deposits up to this point so started saving now for all the final payments which are due in about 8 months

£252 for the actual ceremony.

More for the holiday in Vegas, though 😬

Registry and local nice bar after. 50 guests.
Under 1000 Inc all dresses suits everything
The 100 for a meal me and dh alone in the evening

I don't like being centre of attention so this was perfect for us
Everyone said how lovely and relaxed it was

About 250 quid. if not less .we eloped too.It was perfect for us.

Probably £20k all in plus 5 weeks travelling in New Zealand for our honeymoon. To be fair we were probably given £6k in gifts, and our parents contributed maybe £6k between them.
It wasn’t mega fancy but it was a traditional white church wedding followed by a marquee at home for 100 day guests and a further 300 evening guests. Loads of flowers, several bridesmaids and ushers, lots of good food, provided plenty to drink, live band and Dj etc. Soon adds up. It was absolutely perfect lot of money but it’s what we both wanted.

A ridiculous amount, I think a little over £30,000. However, we had the money to pay outright and wouldn't have had such a 'big' day if we'd had to go into debt for it. It covered everyone's food, drinks and travel for the whole thing and included hiring out the whole place for a weekend and a nanny company so that parents could drop their DC with them if they wanted to party.

Looking back I'm glad we did it the way we did, but having been to lots of others since, some of the best weddings I've been to were the low-key fuss-free ones. So long as you don't go into debt and worry over making everyone else happy, you'll have a great day.

We spent 6k on a package at a lovely hotel. It included everything; ceremony, flowers, all food except the cake, reception, a few drinks, 50 day guests and 80 evening guests. We just had to show up in our gear. It was perfect for us, a really nice day but low key. This was in 2015.

£6000 80 guests, church wedding, hotel reception and disco, 10 years ago. If I had my time again I'd go abroad just us. I don't really like weddings and I hate how we conformed to what everyone else does, it wasn't us at all, I don't really have fond memories of it.

All in I think it hit around the 30k Mark. Married in 2018. We had 190 guests plus 14 bridal party. Usual ceremony at church (1pm) then onto a hotel with cocktail hour. 4 course meal. Band then dj with an evening buffet.
We saved for a good number of years while also getting our mortage and having a baby in between.
It's a lot of money but looking back On the day I don't think I would change one thing about it.

22k this year. All inclusive holiday. 5 star hotel. Married at hotel and hired a yacht for the reception. 20 people.

Paid for parents also. 14k was for the holiday. Remaining money was for everything else like the dress, rings, flowers, favours, yacht and reception, bridesmaid dresses and presents.

Was totally stress free. We literally just turned up

£11k all in in 2013 if we are including Jamaica honeymoon. For everything for 100 people, except my dress which my Grandparents bought.
Church wedding, reception in a beautiful old watermill/hotel venue, canapes and cocktails on arrival, sit down wedding breakfast, band and disco, hot bacon and pulled hog roast baps in the evening, overnight accomodation. Car hire, rings, suits, shoes, bridesmaids dresses, flowers, dressing for tables, hair etc all included but my uncle was the photographer.
It was absolutely wonderful! We didn’t skimp on anything. We were very lucky though as parents from both sides paid the majority.

£30k 5 years ago.

Don’t regret a penny! We saved where we could (I did my make up for example) but we got everything we wanted including our dream venue and fireworks.

Thirteen pounds and fifty pence. That was the cost of the licence, forty years ago!
Us, two witnesses and a registrar. Back to work the next day for a 56 hour shift as a junior doctor.
I’m autistic, and couldn’t hack the fuss of a daft dress, photos, being stared at and having a reception full of people to cope with.

Ours was about £28k 2 years ago. I never thought I would spend that much on a wedding but it was amazing and I wouldn’t change it, we had the best time.

Venue £11k (Worth every penny and not standard as venues go, very quirky and unusual place - 80 day guests with drinks/dinner plus around 30 more in the evening/DJ etc)
Registrar fees £600
Photographer £1.5k (Worth every penny)
Videographer £1k (6 min video - lovely but crazy expensive in hindsight!)
My dress £350 (ex sample)
Bridesmaids dresses - £150 for three - ChiChi but looked great!
DH suit £800
Musicians - £250
Cake £250
Dinner for close family/friends the night before - £500
Hotel rooms - £2k
Flowers £1k
Hair for 4 £80
Extras (favours, sparklers, sweets etc.) around £500
Honeymoon £8k

We paid for it ourselves from savings, my parents bought my dress.

About 40k, this includes a wedding party too though we had as the ceremony itself was abroad

2004 £3000 ish
Church wedding followed by reception for 50 at nice country house, extra evening guests and evening buffet. Made my own dress and one for my only bridesmaid, mum made the cake and friend decorated it, friend is a good armature photographer and took our photos as a gift, used our own cars, we supplied our own wine for arrival drinks, toast and for the table and paid a reasonable corkage fee.

About £6k two years ago. 80 guests.

How we spent money:

Church wedding, converted barn reception, all decorations had to be done ourselves (Amazon is your friend!)
Free booze all day, as we declined having a cash bar, so a lot of our budget went on Hot UK Deals finding the best combination of wine and beer offers.
Pizzas cooked to order for our guests by a mobile wood-fired pizza oven company, then pasties in the evening (Cornish wedding), plus an M & S wedding cake, and a cheese wedding cake. We also used M & S for our arrival canapés, of which there was a full buffet. As you can see, food and drink were our priority spends!

How we saved money:

Just don’t listen to the people who plan weddings for a living! We realised very quickly that wedding fairs are total bullshit, filled with people saying, “But you MUST have a sweets bar, and a four foot high light-up “LOVE” sign!” No, you really, really don’t.
We did our own flowers. I practised exactly 12 months before with supermarket flowers, so I knew how many days before to buy them so they would be in bloom on the day, and used a few YouTube tutorials. Nobody could tell the difference, and the table flowers and the bouquets were lovely.
No wedding photographer. Wedding photos are awkward and boring to take, and I wasn’t going to spend one minute feeling awkward or bored at my own wedding. Of course, everyone these days actually has a camera phone, or a decent hobbyist camera, so all told we actually have 2000 wedding photos, and they are all brilliant and natural and fun to look at.
No wedding cars, my dad drove me there himself, and we put a couple of ribbons on his car. I mean, what is the wedding car tradition all about anyway? Does anybody actually care what the bride arrives in?
One friend’s band played, and another friend was the DJ, and both gave us a discounted rate as a wedding gift.
The day was reasonably short compared to some other weddings I’ve been to, which naturally keeps the costs down. We were married in church mid-afternoon, and finished up the reception at midnight, which is long enough really. I’ve been to one wedding recently that started at 11am... we were so bored by mid-afternoon! And it was at a very expensive hotel, so the day drinking got long and very expensive.

My mum and her friends are keen flower arrangers so did all the flowers.

I did my own make up too. I bought some high quality products and practiced. I wanted to look like me and the trials I had I didn't like at all.

£5000 in 2012. Hired a castle all day to ourselves, 3 course meal in day, buffet in the evening, loads of drink, designer dress.... oh it was fabulous.

About £12k 10 years ago. We didn't save, we booked our venue 3 years in advance and paid for it along the way. I had three jobs, DH did lots of overtime.
We were gifted the car (friend) and the cake (another friend) and that £12k includes my mum paying for flowers, my dad and step mum for photographer and my ILs contributing cash (can't remember how much).
It's easy to get sucked into the bridal magazines, but then you start to consider what's important to you. We opted to not have wedding favours as we thought they were a lot of effort and money for no real point. Instead we put the money on extra wine at the restaurant. Much better value imo.

I loved our day. We had about 80 people at the ceremony, fed 50 and had over 100 for the night do. We the details of the ceremony at the bottom of the evening invites so that if anyone wanted to witness it, they could, but it was clear that we wouldn't be feeding them. We chose to go to a local restaurant around the corner from the venue, so it worked well that everyone was leaving anyway, and those that weren't coming to the restaurant went to find food. Then we all met back at the venue for the party where we had a DJ and a casino (play money).

As much as I loved it, it was right fit the time in our life. I think that if we did it now, DH and I would just elope, we wouldn't even take the DC. We'd go away for a weekend and come back married. But we're in a different time of our lives.