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?

About £10k. The venue (got married and had drinks reception in different place to the wedding breakfast/dancing) and catering/alcohol was the biggest expense at £7000 (for 90 guests). We saved by making our own centre pieces (£120) only having bouquet and button holes for flowers (£200), two bridesmaids with dresses and accessories from the high street (£200) and bought two big photo cakes from Asda with family photos on (£40).

You can spend a huge amount, we set out with a budget in mind, but exceeded it and it's easy to get carried away with little bits that add up. The things I regret are daft personalised gifts for wedding party (£300) a really expensive vintage car to take us to the wedding (£650, we should have got a taxi, and our photographer had a nice Merc he offered to drive us from ceremony to venue in for free!) and personalised photo thank you cards (£100)

Oh I guess I should give you an idea of how we got an expensive wedding on the cheap - we got married on a Tuesday in February (was in half term), and we only had 24 day guests (100 evening guests though). Its crazy to think the exact same wedding could've easily cost 4 times the amount just by changing the date (such as a Saturday in Summer)

£2000. Registry office ceremony at 11:00 for 40 guests (registry office was an utterly gorgeous building fortunately). Then we had private hire of a private members club at the 4* hotel just across the road (where we had spent the night the night before so no transport costs). Hot buffet at 13:00 then cake and speeches at 15:00. All finished by 17:00 at which point DH and I went off to the spa for some treatments (wedding present) followed by room service. Free bar the whole time. Was perfect for us as we wanted to celebrate with friends and family but find all day weddings utterly exhausting. Was lovely to have quality time just the two of us in the evening too.

Cost wise we were extremely lucky. We got married the Saturday before Christmas and only booked the hotel six weeks before. They had had a Christmas party cancel having paid the full venue hire fee so were happy to let us have it for free as long as we had a bar and food. Incredibly lucky to get a prestigious venue for such a bargain. It being Christmas the venue was also beautifully decorated already with Christmas trees, roaring fires and tealights so no need for any other decorations.

We got a significant discount on the buffet as long as we were happy to have what the Christmas party were going to have as it had already been ordered. Three choices of main and lovely sides and then mince pies for pudding. Was delicious.

We also had help from family and friends so my mum had already made the Christmas cake so that just got made into our wedding cake. DH's GM makes cards for a hobby so she made the invitations for free. ILs paid for the hotel room the night of the wedding and my friend bought my wedding dress (off the rack from Coast but it was stunning). Friend has a fab camera and happily took a few formal shots and the rest people just sent us from their phone cameras. I think that saved us about £500 so very lucky. Did away with anything we felt superfluous like favours and flowers.

So basically we managed to have a really lovely smart wedding with loads of food and drink by not having an evening do, keeping numbers low and having it in the winter and booking very short notice. And help from friends and family.

Wouldn't change a thing tbh.

I had my wedding on Friday it cost about £600 we had a very small registry office wedding with only 30 people there and then an after party in my grandparents house. My dress and shoes where bought off the Debenhams website they both on sale the bridesmaids dresses and suits where bought off eBay the rings where bought from an online jewellers and my aunties did all the food and decorations it’s was a perfect wedding and exactly what we wanted. We spent 3 month planning it all and had nothing fancy no cars or photographer and we didn’t have a dj we sorted out own music had a family member with a jag who drove me to the venue and then took me and my DH to the after party and my uncle took the pictures.

Well under £1000 in 2002. I made my dress, cake, bouquets, & catered the buffet with help from friendswho thought I was nuts as I was also pregnant, most expensive thing was DHs suit which had to be made to measure. I'd been to a big family wedding recently & though lovely, I saw the stress it caused the bride & family, so I wanted to go back to the traditional north east weddings that I remembered as a kid, where everyone mucked in to help & kept the cost down. Admittedly we are lucky to have friends with professions like photography, paparazzi type photos made for great wedding photos though 😂. It's still talked about by friends today as the best wedding they ever went to, though the house party but was impromptu & DH missed that but as he fell asleep 😂

About £15K in 2002. As we didn't even make it to our third wedding anniversary it was a massive waste of money. I eloped the second time, it cost about £500!

I am always astounded at number of guests like 100+. I don't have 50+ people I like😂
2k, 30 people. Afternoon in registry office then off to a hired small independent restaurant. We got our own alcohol (included in the 2k) as I am picky. It was really fun and everyone clicked.

Oh and the 2k included EVERYTHING and plane tickets for some family members.

Under £500. Registry office and afternoon tea at home afterwards. No waiting to save, no stress, no debt.

£4.6k this year, we had a church wedding and a barn reception venue for 140 people. Most of the stuff was DIY as both our families are really into craft making so we saved a lot of money that way

2005. Registry office and pub meal for 14 guests. We didn't have a photographer but have lots of lovely photos that friends took. No cake. With dress and flowers less than 500 quid. Was perfect for me.

Couple of hundred, 3 guests. If I would change something I would have had a few more guests, but not too much. When you have more than 20ish guests (including kids) you don't really have enough time to speak with them. I cherish the in dept stories and wishes more than "congrats, lovely wedding, next".

While planning keep in mind what you want to remember in 20 years time. It won't be the color of the coasters, the flowers on the table or details like that. You'll want to remember your loved ones, their stories and how happy you and your OH were. Plan with that in mind, make it a happy celebration for all of you, not a show.

23k in 2012

95% paid for ourselves, we saved my entire paycheque for almost a year to save up and paid cash for everything. My parents gave us a bit of money and so did my grandma. No regrets!! :)

I think we spent more on the honeymoon than we did on the wedding. Went to New York and Cuba!
We started by looking around venues to see what prices were like and thinking of how much we wanted to spend. We already had savings though so the money we saved during the lead up to the wedding was for the honeymoon.
I'm pretty sure our package was £3k for 40 day guests and 80 on the evening. I looked at alot of venues and tbh most places just end up looking the same inside anyway... Like why pay 10k for a barn wedding if there's another barn which is 5k if you see what I mean.
I think it may have been like another £2k for the other stuff.
Don't get sucked into all the little things - I wanted to do all the things you see on Pinterest, sweet bar, hampers in bathrooms etc but in the end I couldn't be bothered and didn't miss it! The day goes by so quickly that you barely get to speak to everyone as it is without all the other bits and saves stress leading up in the long wrong.

I think you really need to decide what you want, where and when you want it and what’s important to you. Write a list. Sack off the things that aren’t important to you. It really is how long is a piece of string. And absolutely do not let anybody else influence you/ have a say / make you feel bad about what you want.

We just wanted to be married (hate a fuss!!) so got married on a Thursday, 50 people daytime 100 night time. No best man or bridesmaids. Married at 4pm, photos, speeches (me, hubby, dad) bbq, party. Money behind the bar. Cost 3k in 2010.
Our honeymoon cost 6k because that was far more important to me 😂

Not sure if final amount as parents paid for
Most but we put in 11k (around that I think) and if say whole day was probably 20-25k

And quite honestly aside from my immediate family i couldn’t tell you who was and wasn’t there, especially on the evening time, so those posts about so and so being devastated that so and so couldn’t make it blah blah nah I couldn’t give a shit so long as I was married to the love of my life.

Married 2005 cost five thousand not including honeymoon
DJ, cake, photos were all gifts or mates rates (photos £150 just costs for all proofs, negatives etc from close friend who is a photographer)
Dress was half price -£500- had tried on loads and this was my favourite hadn't even realised was on sale-
We had a church ceremony and then reception at quite a basic hotel but we didn't set out to do it cheap - we were the first of all our friends to get married so there was nothing really to compare or compete with to the point where we didn't even know about favours or extra costs like that. We made our own invites, three course meal, buffet and four free drinks per person were the biggest expense but I think that all came to around £3500. We had about 70 day guests and an extra 30 in the evening .
It was such a brilliant day- it's definitely the people that make it not the money spent -we were late 20s when we got married so all our friendship groups knew each other so it was like a big party.

6.5 k (including the honeymoon), 70 people in october in 2017. I had a bit of inheritance and we saved for the wedding and a house deposit on top of that for about a year and paid for things as we went along.
Having it in the autumn gave us a bit a bargaining power so we got a few rooms at the venue for free rather than things we wouldn't use. I also went with silk flowers and invites and many other bits off amazon which saved a bit.
my mum kindly bought my dress for me but that including the alterations and my two pairs of shoes as i wanted a spare since i m not great in heels came to £350.
we wouldn't have changed a thing about our wedding day and knowing that because we kept to our budget meant we had our house deposit saved up just after we were married and moved into a own home six months after made all the creativity to save money on our wedding worth it.

75 guests, outdoor ceremony, barn reception, catering was a BBQ so no formal three course, we bought all the alcohol etc as there was no corkage and so all our guests drank for free 😁
Lots of DIY decorations, desserts etc, everything including all clothing and entertainment came to about £8k

About 5k in 1996.

Church wedding , community centre hall for the reception with a sit down meal for 100 guests plus another 50 evening guests and an evening buffet.

Free drink for all guests for the whole day and evening.

Friends who got married around same time who went for the full wedding in a hotel/ golf club spent £15k and didn't even have a free bar all night.

Which one ?
I’ve had three 😂
The second one was £120
The first was probably about £500
The third about £1000

Went to s £50k wedding
It was pants
Was in a tent
Freezing cold
Not enough to eat

Oh and I actually have 5 wedding dresses 😱

90 people in the day, 110 at night at a country club type of place, full on all in top tier package with some alcohol such as cocktails included but not a free bar... around £22/23k.

That was this summer. Honeymoon in top of that too.