If you could go back in time, would you spend more or less on your wedding?

[IDKNABYBIF22]

Starting to plan our wedding and torn between potentially regretting not spending more on it in the future, or spending too much on it 🙈.

YABU = more
YANBU = less

Definitely less we spent £15 including the rings etc and to honest it's a waste of money for one day I see that now.

£15k not £15

Overall probably more. I'd choose a different dress, one which was £400 cheaper. I'd spend a bit more on shoes but nothing too crazy. I'd get a pro makeup artist, and a pro photographer though. Less on food, we got talked into buying way too much.

@IDKNABYBIF22- the only area I'd spend more on would only be on a proper photographer so we could have decent pics of our lovely day. My BIL said he would take pics; result = a bit average/bad, esp when cpared to the ones SIL took just on a whim, which are great!

I'd have spent a bit more...and probably eloped just the 2 of us. We both have quite dysfunctional families and the whole lead up and the day were awful

If we'd have stayed together, I'd have said more. We did it fairly simple but actually now I wish we'd have had a lovely big wedding.
I'm currently waiting on my divorce paperwork so I'd say less. The divorce has already cost me more than we paid for the wedding.

Less! I haven't seen half the people since my wedding. I think the trends are changing and people are leaning towards more boutique weddings now, but back when I got married all the venues had minimum 100 guests which is ridiculous!

I would do it all exactly the same. We did spend approx. 10k but most of it was covered by relatives. This included a venue with inclusive accommodation for 2 nights for our bridal party/close family, which is what really made it special. We all spent the whole weekend together in a gorgeous manor house. I didn't buy many little extras though, I made the favours, designed the invites, designed the table plan and we didn't have any corkage fees at our venue - so we went to France and bought lots of good wine at good prices for the meal. We didn't have an open bar or chair covers. Our biggest indulgences that we could have cut out (but wouldn't) would probably be the live band and photography.

The same tbh, about 10k ish. Only regret was not have a videographer as the pictures are lovely but the videos people took are lovely. I would do it all the same again in a heartbeat

Definitely less. We were very, very young and wasted a huge amount of money (at the time) we’d have been much better off saving that for house deposit. In fact had we done so we could have bought our house and it would have been long paid off by now.

Spending £400 on invitations, over a hundred pounds hiring napkins? So many things we wasted money on.

Same. Very cheap but perfect

I don’t think we could have spent any less. Handful of family as guests, catered for it ourselves. It wasn’t particularly enjoyable but spending more wouldn’t have changed that.

My wedding cost about £400 including a meal for the family with Prosecco and other drinks. The meal and drinks were the main cost, we had a registry office wedding with just 5 guests then met 3 other family members for a meal after. It was perfect for us! We knew we would rather have the money for holidays and house furnishings.

We spent hardly anything. Registry office, thai meal with immediate family and 2 friends, then home to drink champagne and watch Peep Show. No regrets, we knocked £££ off our mortgage instead. Will be a milestone anniversary next year and we are thinking as soon as it is safe we will put a marquee up in the garden and have a big party without the need for a silly dress, flowers, speeches or wedding-related mark up.

Less. And we had a small wedding with 50 guests all day.
I would spend much less on flowers, a less extravagant meal, possibly the dress.
Of those 50 people I only ever see about 15 now. The rest have died or moved away.

£12k which was exactly right for us.

We spent more on rings £800, his suit £800, the cake (it was £300 but Amazing), the registry office (£800 in marylebone), photographer (£1k and utterly amazing)
Food (4 course fine dining for 35 and canapes - £3500) Alcohol (£3k open bar with wine prosecco beer and cocktails)

Medium spending on dress (£700 with alterations), hair (salon did nails and hair for 4 for £200), florist (£175 for corsages and bouquets they were stunning) groomsmen/bridesmaid gifts (£150)

Low on bridal shoes, makeup (diy was really happy and comfortable), bridesmaids dresses (under 100 - they picked), thank you cards, party favours, music (we made a playlist which was a big hit) transport (2x adilee taxis and an uber)

We were very close to booking a 55k wedding but due to covid that was dodged.

I naively didn't realise how much pressure there would be.

Ours cost all in about £25k maybe more and when I think back wish I had spent more on some things. You hopefully only get one wedding day so do what you want. I would say though we were in a good position financially and didn't take any loans! Don't get into debt for it!

Our wedding was only 2 years ago so don't know if that clouds my view and I'd say something different if it had been longer but I would say I'm happy with what we spent.

I mean, partly because around half of it was paid for by both sets of parents which helps! But even so, MIL offered to pay for things that we politely declined as we didn't think they would add anything to the day and she would just be wasting her money. Such as giant light up letters. Things like that just weren't a priority for us, but a live band and a great photographer were. But everybody is different!

The same
My wedding was quite expensive, but it was lovely

The only regret my ds has is not paying for a professional photographer.
We got married 40 years ago and our photographs are better than ds's.
Out dd had a brilliant photographer too.

We didn't have much money and it was more important to us to be married simply and affordably than to save up for years and not be married. So I would have liked to have spent more but circumstances didn't allow for it. In retrospect the only thing I would do differently I think is have a photographer, as we didn't and all our wedding photos are snapshots taken by our family and friends (I also took 2 films worth of photos and then lost the films before they were processed).

I'd have spent less by inviting fewer people, especially then work colleagues who we've now completely lost touch with.

There are some things I'm glad we didn't bother with. Chair covers is one but to be fair the chairs matched our table theme anyway. We had no florist involve and just got a potted orchid for each table which we then gave as gifts to bridesmaids etc. Just got flowers from the market for the bouquet. We made favour boxes and put nice but cheap chocolates in them. I wish we'd found a cheaper and more local supplier for the invitations- we ended up ordering them from abroad and had to pay customs fees too.

Less. My mum paid for the meal, we paid for outfits and flowers.

I would cut out:
The fancy car - waste of money, anyone could have driven us
Posh printed invites and order of service - £200 wasted

Might have cut some of the relatives from the guest list too - folk I didn't see then and don't now. We had 90 guests but could have made it 70 maybe.

We didn't have a lot of frippery (wedding favours, glitter on tables, sweetie cart (!), photo booth) as that wasn't the fashion, but I wouldn't want it now either. My dress was made fir me so pretty cheap but I chose expensive silk fabric. I would never spend £1500 on a dress to wear once, I thought £350 was bad enough.

Would never skimp on:
Food and wine (we had wine on the table and bubbly)
Photos - depending what you want

Less. It became a day about other people.
If we could go back we would elope and spend the money on an amazing holiday

My wedding was about £11-12k which included 110 day guests with loads of booze and food. That value also includes both rings and the honeymoon, a live band and all officients, photographer, flowers, dress, shoes, 6 bridesmaids dresses, shoes, hair and make up, grooms suit and 4 or 5 usher/best man suits, oh we also had a mobile ice cream cart come through the day for everyone to have ice creams with all the works while the booze and photo bit was happening.

We didn't spend money on chavari chairs or on chair covers.

I did the sweet table myself and got in props in case people wanted to take photos but didn't hire a photo booth.

I put selfie sticks on each table (everyone has a mobile with a camera) which went down well.

I would have spent more on the photographer and paid for a videographer and it's the only thing I'll regret from my wedding to be honest.

Also, my florist died not long before my wedding so had to get another local florist to help me out so in the end I only had bouquets and button holes and the table centrepieces were bought from IKEA.... Lanterns and candles at less than £10 a table with decent resale value!