Wedding budget planning - what would you do

[Bunting12345]

Hi!

If you had a relatively good job with good prospects but owned a home that is a ‘project’ in the south (affluent area with a high mortgage) how would you choose to do your wedding/prioritise spending? FYI household income under £100k combined.

Circumstances:

• 30s
• Can realistically save £24k in the next 3 years and would be gifted a minimum of £5k for a wedding (maybe £10k). This includes any money for house work.
• Would like to have a child in the next 4 years and probably should save something for mat leave, as the breadwinner, but we will have remortgaged by then.
• Owe £10K re. a casual loan

Other factors:

• I have an intense job and sometimes CBA with the idea of planning/mental load of organising large wedding and the politics involved (inc with fiancé!)
• Really want to improve house and living environment, particularly before a child.
• Still want to celebrate but don’t want it to be shit. Likely guest list would involve 80-100 people, even if it was a party so it’s hard to have a small celebration.

Have toyed with the idea of a ‘wedding party’ instead and Registry office with immediate family, or just eloping to save costs and hassle but I wonder if we would regret not doing a proper celebration. Equally, I am keen to not put extra financial pressure on us and start our married lives debt free and in the most comfortable/stress free position possible.

If you were me, how would you allocate the 25k?

Looking for advice to see what others would do in my situation!

Registry office wedding, function room type celebration, the rest on home improvements/maternity fund.

Absolutely save all you can for maternity leave and the home. I'd do registry wedding, immediate family and less than 30 people for a mid-week lunch. Have an engagement drinks party for fun if you want to chuck 1k at it.

Nursery will be expensive as well if you go down that route, I'd strongly recommend you game it out against your current income and mortgage for the next 5 years in a spreadsheet and see what that looks like.

I would do a small registry office with dinner afterwards for my nearest and dearest (<20).

Use the money to pay off the loan and then improve the home.

If you want 80-100 people it is going to cost tens of thousands for a traditional wedding. The other option is registry office and then a buffet type celebration at a village hall/your house/ church hall / pub.

Keep in mind that even a not so flash wedding is expensive now. We spent around £18k in 2024 and we did the decorations ourselves, the flowers were from M&S and my bridesmaids dresses were <£80 each. Food for 72 people (no starters just main, dessert and canapés) was £7,000… not including any alcohol.

80 - 100 wedding guests are not cheap to feed and water. Even if you DIY it will still be expensive. Options for this could be doing a later wedding with just a buffet and disco. I think it's really hard to give advice because once you're married it's easy to say oh id do a cheaper / smaller wedding but I know I wanted a big celebration in line with my peers. If you do go for a big wedding, try to save on bits and pieces. Spend on venue, food and drink. Save on favours, decoration, invites, cars, cake. It all adds up v quickly and can snowball. There are some great wedding dress outlets around.

Kids , mat leave and nursery are expensive! House renovations are expensive. If I were you'd id definitely prioritise those over a wedding. How old are you?

Sorry - just seen you are thirties. Imo you shouldn't waste time organising a big wedding if you want a child (and especially if you want multiple). Just get married low key and focus on those other aspects you spoke about.

30's would suggest registry office with a couple of friends (my original plan):or registrar somewhere special and small group for nice meal...(What actually happened!) Still not crazy money wore a cocktail gown, used black cabs for transport... Mainly friends, immediate family only... budget easy to manage
Was lovely lots good feedback but equally original plan would gave been good too! Less stress as well... The marriage was the focus not the wedding....

We got married in a registry office with just both sets of parents followed by a nice lunch, just the six of us, and then DH and I headed off for a long weekend city break. A few weeks later we had a party for around 50 in a private room at a pub near home with a lovely river view. Very down to earth but lots of fun. A friend baked our wedding cake (she asked if she could do this). This was ten years ago, the party cost about £2k with us providing a free bar and food (probably 10-12 of the 50 were children).

We didn't do it to save money though. That was the wedding we wanted and it was fabulous. I think there is a balance between saving money and having the wedding you want, although you do need to balance with your other financial goals.

Of the 80 to 100 people I'd think about how many you will still be in touch with in 10 years time.

And then rethink the guest list.

Shop around.

We had a lovely wedding on a budget.

Rather than a fancy hotel we had the ceremony and meal at a masonic hall. It was a lovely building and much cheaper and more flexible than the hotel packages.

It was a buffet meal afterwards. We provided some drinks but the bar was open and good value too.

You don't need to get sucked in to spending £££ on flowers, wedding favours, table decorations etc. There's always better value alternatives.

I was thinking Marylebone Town Hall (£1,700) and somewhere after for a party, but lots of places have a minimum spend (as a guide £6k for the evening for light food and drink plus service which seems to be on the cheaper side!!) so it could easily end up being £15k with the additionals

That’s probably ‘cheap’ now, vs a few years ago sadly!

I get 80-100 is a lot but a lot of that is close family and friends (more so 80).

it’s hard trying to achieve maybe the only day where you might have everyone together vs the sensible approach 😵🫠🥴

I think central London is never going to be particularly budget friendly.

Do you live in central London? If you don't need to get married there you will probably get better value moving the venue a bit further out.

We don’t live too far, south east and where we live is not particularly cheaper. The appeal with Marylebone is that their biggest ceremony room can fit 100, relatively affordable, already decorated and it doesn’t look shit. Most of our guests are based between two locations too

A wedding does NOT need to cost a lot and certainly not 25k. Our wedding in 2019 was about £10k for 85 guests, and that included £800 for a very elaborate cake that we treated ourselves too but definitely isn't necessary.

Wedding party and registry office.
All day. Every day

You can do it for 2 or 3k or spend more
For under 10k all in you will still have a very fancy / nice day.
We did marylebone 100 person room and hired out a restaurant in marylebone. Reception was 35 people
Rings dress suit cake reception and registry was under 10k. All expensive food and fairly expensive booze included.

This was 2020.

We used the difference in cost of big fat wedding vs registry to

• buy and fit a new kitchen
• fund 2 x 13m mat leaves.

Absolutely zero regrets.

I recommend cutter and squidge wedding cakes.

Registry office and party with a budget of 10k or less.

Prioritise home renovations

Try and save more

Try for a baby as soon as you are married.

This is music to my ears! Would you recommend your venue for after?

I think I would be happy spending somewhere between £10 - £15k (hopefully closer to £10K) especially if some of it is gifted.

I think that will mostly achieve the balance we are looking for.

You’ll need to leave London to get better prices. We opted for York as the prices involved halved.

It’s been 5 years since their wedding OP. Just be aware that prices have skyrocketed since. £15k might just do it though for 35 people. Good luck.

I DMed you....

Agree prices have gone up and youll prob need to make savings on florals / weddong attire / rings / cake

Good luck

You haven't got £25k and you have £10k debt. Weddings should cost what you have, or your parents have, six months after the engagement.

1. Repay debts

1. Simple marriage; self catered party on a Friday evening for immediate family and closest friends - 30/40:tops. Keep the budget well under £5k. You don't have champagne money so ypu can't have a big, flash wedding.

1. Sort the house as much as possible, plan for maternity.

we got married 15 years ago and had a cheap ish wedding, I was 24 and then bought house at 28 and had child at 37 (DS took 10 years to join us). I think I’d spend the money on the house and maternity leave, kids and houses are expensive! A wedding is for one day whereas the house is where you live and spend most of your time and being stressed about money on mat leave or having to go back to work earlier because you can’t afford longer off is horrible.

My friends had a civil ceremony just them and their parents and went for a meal after. They then had a reception at the Red House (a catholic club) in West Ham a few days later (hire is very affordable) I don’t know London so this may not be anywhere near you. It was a lovely day, they had an Indian buffet for food (done by an Indian catering company) and brought in drinks themselves. They had a small number of flowers for the tables which they did themselves and her aunt made about 2 miles of bunting for decoration! She hired her dress, and they had about 100 guests, it was a great and I think about £5k (2 years ago).
one of my other friends had one of those paella men you see at the fayre for catering with some salads she did before and then had the wedding cake for dessert, if you find a venue to hire where you bring in your own catering and do diy decorations and things, it can be affordable (although £5k for 100 is still tight if you want a photographer, dress, hair etc). We had a big(ish) christening at a cricket club, had a local cafe do the catering (£12 a head) all in for about 60 people Inc hire it was about £1000 (guests bought their own drinks from the bar). If you are going for a pub or hotel who do food it will be a lot more as they will want to supply it, but there are spaces such as village halls, charity spaces, working men’s clubs etc which are cheaper to hire.

We had to pay for our own wedding, so worked out between us what was most important. The only thing my parents could pay for was my dress, so that was covered. We chose the venue we wanted (civil wedding), limited guests to 40 (parents, siblings and very close friends - family kicked off a bit, but friends totally understood - and about seven friends were waiting outside after we married to wish us good luck). I wanted someone I knew to drive me rather than a posh car, so did that. Also, I wasn't fussed about matrons of honour/bridesmaids, so didn't have them. We were lucky and had a meal after our wedding, but that was it.

Good grief, can't believe these prices!
I certainly don't envy anyone getting married now, although I had bare minimum guests, cheap but beautiful suit (second wedding) pub meal.. all I really wanted was nice photos to look back on, & got those! (And got my husband, which of course was the main thing!)

Take a long weekend trip to NYC. Pop to city hall on Friday with your passports and birth certs. Pay your $60 fee. Get married on Tuesday - they’ll provide the witnesses. Job done. You’re married. Fly home on Wednesday. It’s how I did it. It was great 😂

I wouldn’t mind eloping but my partner is against it. We really wouldn’t be able to do 40 - that’s not even my close family.

but I definitely agree with allocating most of the pot to house/children

I know people won’t agree but I’m really not worried about the loan and am not factoring it in as a priority at this stage.