Wedding on a Budget

[hejg283]

I've recently got engaged and we're looking at getting married in 2020. We're struggling to find venues in Leicestershire that are decent prices (but we haven't fully fully looked yet!) So I wondered what ideas people had for DIY things for the other bits? Things like invites, flowers and cakes and stuff. Also any ideas for wedding favours as well would be much appreciated!

Well, it depends what "on a budget" means to you.
Most people have a budget - just varies in size.
If you need to keep costs down, I would bother with favours at all. Totally unnecessary and plenty of people don't. Flowers - don't bother, or bridal posy only.

Cake - if you have one, use it as your dessert to save paying for that course. Might not work well at all weddings, but my first wedding was a hog roast with free seating, so a slice of cake if wanted worked fine.

Invitations - I used vistaprint, not expensive wedding stationery.

My first wedding, I chose to get married late in the afternoon, so the hot roast was served at about 17:00. This meant no worries about canapés or even buffets. We did have cheese later, but not large amounts of anything.

The biggest tip to remember is that just about everything you think is a must have, really isn't!

Bring a dish buffet supervise the dishes everyone will make. Same bring a bottle etc but buy some staples. Depends on budgets. Some people have an entire wedding for the cost of a wedding dress! Depends on what your happy with. But there is no need to get into debt for it! Some people do x

We're looking at no more than £10k ideally. It's just all the venues as so expensive. We want somewhere a little bit nicer than just a community centre and somewhere that is just the reception is still looking to be about £7k just for a bbq and then evening buffet. Going to hopefully meet with them soon to see if we can do just an evening one though or if we find a nice venue where we can do our own catering, we'll have a later wedding so it is just the buffet there as well.

Don't get married in spring and summer months. Hotels charge more then.
Can you have a Friday wedding.
Have the wedding later in the day. Invite all guests wanted to meal.then no need for evening buffet just offer late nibbles..
Don't go overboard with favours, trinket and fluffy stuff people don't remember. Themes and stuff can eat your budget.
Be sensible in thinking 10 bridesmaids etc.
Keep it personal to you not what others expect

Having a Friday wedding is pushing costs onto your guests, which isn't an especially friendly way to do things. I've used five days of holiday this year on weddings.

Have you considered a village hall for a venue? Lots of them are very nice-looking, and come with free furniture you can use. The one near my parents in the Lake District is £80 for the day, and comes with spectacular valley views.

I was looking at getting married on a Sunday as they seem to be cheaper than a Saturday and then people won't have to take the days off.
I'd just been thinking about bubbles or something on the table as little favours.
To be honest there aren't very many village halls that are particularly nice round here!

OH and I both sat down before we started wedding planning and discussed what were the three things that were important to us at the wedding (besides getting married of course!) we found that it really helped as if it wasn’t on the list, we weren’t that bothered about it and didn’t spend money on it.

You can also do things such as not hire a DJ and create a Spotify or iTunes playlist which can save a bit of cash. We also ended up getting our reception venue for free-provided we hit a minimum spend on the bar. Google ‘free venue hire’ as a starting point for the area and see what there is-there may be places you haven’t even considered that are perfect!

Three years ahead? Wow.

Favours - no one cares. Ditto chair covers and all the other frilly crap.

Feed them, dont keep them waiting around, keep them watered and be happy. All else is forgettable.

Will it be a church or hotel/venue wedding?

Lots of people would have to take the next day off for a Sunday wedding, surely? They won't all live locally and will have to travel back the next day if they wanted to stay late and have a drink.

Why are you waiting until 2020?

Don't write off village halls-there are some amazing ones. Ours was £250 and awesome- beautiful location, lovely building and great kitchen for the caterers.
Favours - don't do them
Flowers - do them yourself. YouTube tutorials, some ribbon , flower arranging tape and some bouquets of Lidl flowers did our wedding!
For food we used a caterer and for alcohol we did a 'booze cruise' to France.
Cake - M and S do wedding cakes. You get a nice simple one and decorate it yourself with fresh flowers or whatever decorations you fancy.
It is more work when you're on a budget but we actually really enjoyed doing lots of the stuff ourselves. Good luck! You can definitely do a good wedding for 10k.

My DH is a wedding photographer, don't bother with favours they often get left behind.
If you want a candy buffet do your own, you can order a sweet package from makro online for about £30 and homebargains do loads of lovely jars cheap and tongs.
Get married in winter most venues offer a discount for November and January weddings. Most offer package deals, if you can keep your numbers within a deal it can be great value.

Perhaps a marquee? Or a smaller wedding with fewer guests?

Ditch the favours. Noone cares. Just go for a buffet and make people buy their own drinks. Spend the money on a fab honeymoon instead.

Leicester Town Hall looks very nice and Coalville and Glenfield registration offices are lovely buildings and the ceremony rooms look attractive. The ceremony room at Loughborough looks amazing - have you seen the virtual tour?
www.mi360.net/LCCC/LCCC_Weddings_LRO/_auto/html5/LCCC_Weddings_LRO.html

The two best hall weddings I went to were at Quorn Village Hall and Ratby Village Hall.

The first was fully self catered and they did it on a very low budget but it was beautiful. The second was catered by Orange Tree Weddings so they sort the food/staff and provide a paid fully stocked bar. Would definitely suggest looking into them.

I’m not married but have been to a fair few weddings
For a Sunday wedding most people were working the next day so after the evening buffet the place nearly emptied.
Definitely ditch the favours, no one cares about them.
Wedding cake, m&s do lovely wedding cakes now, a recent wedding the bride had jazzed it up a bit herself but it was delicious
Feed your guests well, doesn’t need to be fancy, just make sure there’s enough. A buffet meal at a wedding was seriously undercatered and the people at the back of the queue got nothing.
Don’t worry about a free bar, in all the weddings I’ve been to there’s never been a free bar, it’s only on mn I’ve heard of them

People on here will give you wildly different opinions, you need to figure out what is important to you. We had a smaller guest list than most we know, no additional evening guests, no cake, dried flowers, no videographer, just one photographer (some seem to have more than one). Still spent the best part of £15k though! You'll get a lot of 'the best weddings I went to cost £400' on here too. For me, how much I enjoy a wedding isn't related to what it cost at all. Whenever the word wedding comes up people like to give you opinions, which is why I'd do your own list of what's important and then hear from others. If you can be arsed and have the time then go ahead and make stuff. My invites cost me about £70 to buy and I adored them, easily worth it. My friend regretted making hers because it was harder and cost a lot more than she thought it would. I didn't want wedding prep to take over my life and be a huge project, we booked a venue and got married in around 9 months and that was long enough for me. I still got sick of people talking to me about nothing but the wedding in that time!

Best weddings I have been to were least formal so more opportunity to catch up with a variety of people rather than seating plans and 3 (or 5!) course meals with the same 6 or 8 people. Yes its nice to be sat with my cousins but I'd like to talk to my older family members too.

Have you got any creative friends? One of mine did our wedding invitations for us as our wedding present. My mum made our wedding cake as a present for us although it did cost her nearly £150 in ingredients so might be worth checking out the M&S ones.

I made a small mini bottle of sloe/damson gin for favours - cost me about £100 for 100 bottles (50ml) but it was an extra that I wanted rather than needed.

We also had a hog roast (in addition to the main meal) and to be honest, its all anyone can talk about. It cost £600 for a large whole pig and they came and set up in the garden etc....you could do a later wedding i.e. at 5pm and have the hog roast plus cake for food in the evening. Most of our money went on food but we did have 80 guests so it could be done cheaper.

Free bars are easy to find everywhere - ours came and set up and didn't even take a payment from us (except licensing fee of £25).