Cheap wedding ideas

[Ireallywantsomechips]

Shamelessly posting for traffic to steal all of your ideas

Thinking about doing a registry office and then party in a function room at a hotel or pub maybe?

Has anyone done something similar or slightly different but low cost?

I’d love a big fancy Pinterest wedding but the cheapskate in me doesn’t want to fork out. Did you manage to make the room looks how you wanted? Was there anything you wish you’d taken into account, such as time, having to decorate yourself etc?

My wedding is planned in a hotel and the whole thing cost under 2000 which is still quite expensive but i have friends who paid upwards of 10000 so im choosing to believe it's a bargin i managed to get private decorators who make and put up decorations who were surprisingly cheap, and i found using a cleric to be a lot cheaper than a registrar and the ceremony isnt religious, my cake is being made by a family friend and i have a family friend doing my flowers too and photos too, the biggest expense has been the venue and the food

We had a church wedding and then hired the community centre across the road - it was really cheap for the hall. I then got marquee linings put up inside the hall so once you we're inside it looked like the inside of a marquee. Hired people to do balloons and flowers and the caterers took care of the table linen, tableware, cutlery etc.

I hired chair covers, but we had a lot of small children at ours so I went round the day before borrowing high chairs from my family members to use (we put ribbon around them to match the other chairs.

We made our own sweet table by using glass dishes and containers we had (borrowed some from parents). Got the sweets from the cash and carry and then paper bags, tongs etc from eBay. Was a big hit especially with the children.

I also made my own order of services. I got the print out from the church and then did my own copy on the computer. Put them together with some ivory card and ribbon and decorated with crafty bits.

Also all of the wine for the tables and champagne for toasts i got gradually before hand - when they had offers on in shops. We had our ushers pour out the champagne and hand out to guests when they arrived at the reception as the caterers wanted extra to do that.

It was probably more stressful than letting someone do it all for you but I really enjoyed arranging it all. My best friend and myself went to the hall the day before to set it all up just how we wanted it. We had lots of comments about the small details and how nice it looked

@Mytinyman that is indeed a bargain! I’ve looked at basic venues, and for the venue alone it’s usually £5-7k and it’s just silly! Ooo I will look into a cleric and private decorators! Thank you!

@justwinginglife1 marquee linings? That’s genius! My concern for a community hall was the ceiling 😂 I didn’t know such things existed! Sounds so lovely! Thank you!

Also rather than spending loads on favours for the table that would end up being left behind, I just got everyone a lotto lucky dip and got little carded envelope to put them inside with a little note. That went down well and none were left behind. That was when they were £1 each though

It was interesting getting them as I ended up driving around every local shop asking for 10 at a time individually printed (to avoid causing a big queue in one shop). I did have to explain why so they didn't think I was just being awkward 🤣
I think the most anybody won was £10, but it was a bit of fun

[quote Ireallywantsomechips]@Mytinyman that is indeed a bargain! I’ve looked at basic venues, and for the venue alone it’s usually £5-7k and it’s just silly! Ooo I will look into a cleric and private decorators! Thank you!

@justwinginglife1 marquee linings? That’s genius! My concern for a community hall was the ceiling 😂 I didn’t know such things existed! Sounds so lovely! Thank you![/quote]
Have a google, can't remember how much they were as it was going back a few years but you would have had no idea we were in a hall. It looked very pretty and covered up all of the skittle scoreboards etc 😂

What is your budget? How many guests?

We were due to get married with just witnesses but after pressure from family we had a small wedding with close family and friends. We got married in a registry office at 4pm and after photos (found a photographer who would just do the ceremony and a few photos after 2 hrs work for around £150). We chose a sit down meal at a lovely restaurant in the city - walking distance from the registry, it was set up so we had a section to ourselves and it being near Christmas was already decorated romantically with twinkling lights and candles. Nice meal, couple of drinks then back at home by 9pm to get ready for our flight to the US.
Worked out well for us and definitely under £2000 (not inc the honeymoon ofcourse!) x

We had a registry wedding, just the two of us and my two daughters as witnesses. We had bubbly and cakes at home afterwards and then a meal in a great restaurant in the evening. It was perfect.

If we had had family and friends there (all scattered across the U.K. and abroad so it wasn’t an option to get everyone together which is why we eloped) we would have had a party or a meal for everyone afterwards to celebrate.

Ask about. Loads of people have bits and pieces of decorations that are left over from their own weddings that could be borrowed.
Jam jars are lovely for centrepieces

Friend of ours had a beautiful wedding in December at a village hall, and decorated by borrowing loads of christmas decorations and christmas trees. It looked absolutely amazing with all the fairy lights, LED candles, fake snowballs etc and then it all went home with those who had lent it out
Someone else I know had their reception in a school hall, catered by the ladies from their church. It might not have been Instagrammable, but the food was plentiful and great, and everyone had a fantastic time.

We had a registry office wedding followed by a meal at a small restaurant that had space for 27 people only. We rented the whole restaurant for the lunch period and we're home by 4pm. It was lovely and cost less than £2000.

Definately look at community centers for reception

Also, don’t spend a fortune on a dress. Look at debenhams, Dorothy Perkins, next in-line, ASOS for dresses

Minus the rings which costs $1400
My wedding cost $3000 food being the most expensive thing it can be done!
The celebrant was a few hundred dollars and did the ceremony at a nice park. We had a lunch afterwards at the pub, i hired a flower wall for photos, bought my dress for jjshouse.com for a couple of hundred dollars and my husbands suit he bought for another person's wedding!

Have a colour scheme if you want but don't fret too much about things not matching perfectly, the guests won't match!
Lemon drizzle cake is safer than chocolate butter cream with best clothes.
Have a back-up plan for one of your helpers going ill with food poisoning - or anything else.

We had fish and chips delivered for wedding food.

Everyone chose what they wanted when the returned their acceptance.

Local chippie delivered individual boxed portions sorted by table.

Not fancy, but who doesn't like fish and chips. And cost averaged around £4 a head.

For dessert we had an ice cream buffet.

I did this - it wasn’t ‘cheap’ because we paid for all booze and a sit down meal with caterers but having a buffet and a paid bar wouldn’t knocked £4K off I reckon.

I used a wholesale flower company and did my own table arrangements and bouquets.

I made my own invitations

I bought the booze wholesale from Majestic and in bulk from Tesco

I used an iPod with a carefully arranged playlist that lasted the whole night

I used a church hall which was £500 for hire from the Friday afternoon before to midnight

My friend made my cake

I made my table plan, place cards, table numbers etc

I made edible favours which were very popular and everyone ate them within seconds of sitting down

My wedding cost £11k for 80 ish people and a rough breakdown:

£4K catering
£2k booze
£1k dress
£500 reception hire
£400 register office
£1k rings (two simple platinum bands)
£400 all flowers
£100 ish - stationery
£200 - glass/tablecloth hire
£150 chair covers
£250 decorations (helium balloons, table confetti, favours etc)
£100 a lot of donuts for evening buffet

Worth mentioning that my PIL paid for our car - my friend was going to drive me in her Corsa as I don’t care about that stuff but they insisted on a fancy car for us.

We were also given £5K as a gift from family. Our original budget was £6k as that was what we felt we could afford and would have had a lovely wedding with that too.

If you don't have set ideas about flowers get a supermarket bouquet and wrap garden twine around the stems. You can do the same for button holes/corsages. M&S do orchids/seasonal flowers in nice pots for table decorations that guests can keep. Look online for dresses. DIL got a French Connection dress for £75 reduced from £250.

@justwinginglife1 oh that’s a great idea!

@InDubiousBattle I don’t want to pay more than £2000 for a really nice venue, there are some around but they can be tricky about catering, which is why I think I would prefer event room in pub hotel/community hall. Only about 30-40 guests

@Naive101 that’s what we were going to do! But I thought I’d actually like my daughter to be there (she’s only a baby now) so decided to have a small wedding instead. Yours sounds lovely!

@Ninkanink that sounds great! We would have people coming from all over so I was a bit worried if we got married early and then had more of a meal type thing later what people would do in between. My parents would definitely offer their house in between!

@Kreacheriscleaning that’s a great idea! I’m not opposed to making stuff as I’m quite crafty but I’m sure I’ve seen people try to sell bits on fb marketplace

I got my outfit from Debenhams! About £80, 15 years ago. Shoes were from a catalogue. Hair accessories from Claire's. We had a bog standard register office ceremony and a buffet in a pub. We used minibuses for transport, brides side in one, grooms side in the other. No photographer, but my Dad is handy with a camera so I let him do the honours. Cake was from M&S. We weren't interested in looking good just wanted everyone to have a nice time without any fuss.

We eloped with friends and hired out a beautiful townhouse close to local beauty spots for the photos. The register office wedding ceremony was in the morning and then we spent the rest of the day having a fab piss up with our friends. Having spoken to people who had formal weddings, a lot have said they barely spoke to their other half on the day. Ours was all about 'us' and we have great memories laughing together throughout the day. We also didn't dip into our savings for a house deposit and bought our first home not long after.

I bought my dress from Hobbs. I didn’t want a weddingy dress so I went for one that I could wear again for other events. I wore bridal shoes which I bought on sale for almost nothing from Monsoon (they do lovely wedding dresses too), and a previously worn designer pearl and Swarovski Crystal bridal headband which I bought from eBay.

We had a marquee in our field and decorated it with lots of hops and cut lavender, the local farmer brought some hay bales to put round the edges to sit on (obviously we had tables and chairs for the meal). We had vases of lavender on the tables and fairy lights, around, it was very pretty and not madly expensive.

I would focus on what's important to you and everything is window dressing.

We knew we wanted good food, free bar, good music and a good photographers. This is where we spent our money.

We had a church then village hall. Hired some fairy lights that created a canopy. Place cards were handwritten, didn't look perfect but who remembers? Used a website to get some free fancy fonts and made own posters, table plan. Didn't have favours and provided all alcohol for free. We collected gin bottles for table vases then the florist gave us some simple flowers which we arranged ourselves.

We had 50 people. Had some friends to help set up day before and it looked fab. People don't remember those tiny details you might have spent lots on, they remember how they felt, that's the most important!!

Good luck with it all x

@CMOTDibbler I didn’t think of a school hall! We have some lovely village schools around I could look into, thank you!

@Dylaninthemovies1 yes I’ve spied some on ASOS that I like! Failing that my mum can make me one on the cheap! I did see my ideal one for the bargain cost of £14590 😱

@Blueuggboots that sounds great! I can still have an early night!

@CoconutsHaveWaterInThem a flower wall sounds amazing!

@julybaby32 great tips thank you!

@TakeMeToYourLiar yeah I thought of food carts or something but the local chippie is genius!

@Merryoldgoat that sounds reasonable! Thanks for the tips on what I can make! Good idea for the wholesale flower company! I am allergic to most so will want non smelly cheap ones 😂

@countrygirl99 brilliant idea for the flowers!

A friend of mine bought some fruit cakes from M&S and stacked them herself, she just poked fresh roses in between the layers. Cheaper than having one made and still looked good