TIPS - How to do a wedding on the cheap?

[LoveMyGirls]

I want/ would like to be married, dp says we cant afford it and if we could afford it he would rather take the dc's on a really nice holiday - fair enough but i still want to be married one day preferably in the next 5yrs (by then we will have been together 10yrs!) BUT he had also said that if we could easily afford it he would happily marry me but as we are skint doesnt see the value in making ourselves broke (fair point)

Dp thinks you can only get married if you spend a fortune, I think we could do it for about £3,000 max if we got married at 3.30pm and just had a buffet etc

So how much did your wedding cost and what are your top tips?

Also wondering if anyone thinks I'm living in dreamland and theres no point getting married?

loads of thread on this
willl dinf

Thanks Cod

www.mumsnet.com/Talk?topicid=9&threadid=21975#541482

www.mumsnet.com/Talk?topicid=1375&threadid=342431#6955228

have you watched that big day programme on thursdays it's actually quite good

do what we did, run abroad and it do it
WE didnt have children and went to caribean and did it there.
Kill two birds with one stone, take kids to a hot country and marry there, it costs less and then have a big party when you get home but ask famiy to help out with paying for dj, catering ect insteed of pressies

Good luck

Lisa

Well, for our a lot of friends helped with different jobs.

1. My b/f did my nails, another did my hair
2. My b/f's mum made the cake (individual cupcakes with b/f's sister painting names of guests + date)
3. Borrowed brother's car (porsche) as my car to get me to the church + dh drove me to reception from church.
4. We used our car for bridesmaids (landrover -then)
5. Family friend did the flowers (she was a florist but had tricks up her sleeve)
6. We only invited 50 people.

We didn;t intend it to be on a budget it just turned out that friends wanted to help and we preferred this to presents...

I suppose you really need to work out, how many people are going to be invited, what is the most important thing for you and your dh -Photos?/food?/your dress? and then budget more for that and less for the lesser important things.

Good luck

Make your own invitations/cake/table decorations/whatever you can!
We had our wedding later in the afternoon then had a buffet with pie and peas, hot beef sandwiches, chips etc. Not very elegant but everyone loved it and it was cheap!

Hog roast and ask people to so salads and pudding by way of wedding presents. Scour the country side and peoples gardens for flowers, don't bother with expensive cars

LMG, my wedding only cost £3k and most of that was on the honeymoon! And it was a brilliant day.

Here's a quick breakdown of the cost:

Venue: we had register office so only paid their fee, was hardly anything (can't remember exactly how much)
Reception: We had bit of a pub so didnt have to pay hire fee.
Food: About £300 for buffet (sarnies and sausage rolls, we aren't posh!) for 60ish people.
Drink: We ended up putting about £1000 behind the bar - enough for everyone to have a few free drinks (in fact this ended up lasting most of the day).
Dress: £168 in the sale at Liberty (wasn't a wedding dress, I didn't want one).
Shoes: £12 from M&S
His suit: £100 or so from Burton, I think.
Rings: £250
Cake: £130 (made by lovely local cakemaker)
Car: my dad put ribbons on his
Photos: my stepdad did these for free
Flowers: SIL who works in florist brought buttonholes, I didn't have a bouquet
Hair: did my own

We didn't have a wedding list but knew people would want to give us something, so we asked for cash and were amazed by people's generosity, so don't be afraid to ask people to give something towards honeymoon or drink costs etc. I know some people think this is crass, but no worse than having a gift list IMHO.

LMG, my wedding only cost £3k and most of that was on the honeymoon! And it was a brilliant day.

Here's a quick breakdown of the cost:

Venue: we had register office so only paid their fee, was hardly anything (can't remember exactly how much)
Reception: We had bit of a pub so didnt have to pay hire fee.
Food: About £300 for buffet (sarnies and sausage rolls, we aren't posh!) for 60ish people.
Drink: We ended up putting about £1000 behind the bar - enough for everyone to have a few free drinks (in fact this ended up lasting most of the day).
Dress: £168 in the sale at Liberty (wasn't a wedding dress, I didn't want one).
Shoes: £12 from M&S
His suit: £100 or so from Burton, I think.
Rings: £250
Cake: £130 (made by lovely local cakemaker)
Car: my dad put ribbons on his
Photos: my stepdad did these for free
Flowers: SIL who works in florist brought buttonholes, I didn't have a bouquet
Hair: did my own

We didn't have a wedding list but knew people would want to give us something, so we asked for cash and were amazed by people's generosity, so don't be afraid to ask people to give something towards honeymoon or drink costs etc. I know some people think this is crass, but no worse than having a gift list IMHO.

Do you have friends with a nice or quirky car that you can use as a wedding car?

We have a 1970s Beetle that my brother and SIL had as their wedding car. Bought some bows and ribbon for a few pounds from an ebay party supplies shop and it looked fantastic !

Thanks everyone, i do think its more important to make it personal & chea[than to have a lavish wedding that i will spend years paying off.

I've just written a rough guest list to see roughly how many people we would invite, bare minimum is about 120 people.

This maybe a dumb question but who has to wear a suit other than groom, best man, brides dad, who else?

Also what have i forgotton off this list?

outfits
hair/ make up
church
photos
rings
flowers
car
room hire
invitations/table plan & decorations
dj/ entertainment
food
drink
cake

when we got married, only DH wore "the suit" - therefore saving quite a bit of money straight off

if you want everyone in the groom's party to look similar without hiring them each a suit, get them to each wear their best suit and buy/hire them all a matching tie.

Cars may be unneccesary if you plan your venues well, or a normal black taxi can look very stylish whilst costing no more than a minicab.

Also with that many people consider having an (eg) afternoon wedding, serving champagne / scones / the cake / tea etc then senidng everyone home - saves money on both dinner and evening entertainment.

I say again the most importnat thing is for it to be personal -have just come back from one where they ended up spending a fortune on the party to make up for a ghastly conveyor-belt Anglican service neither of them believed in. Better to put more effort into the ceremony IMO.

I've had a look and think we can do it for £2,000 minimum.

Now all i have to do is earn more money pay off my od, convince dp and start planning it for in about 2-3yrs time!

Ours hardly cost anything. We were impoverished students. Dress from the high street, shoes I already had, small bouquet, lunch at ILs (cooked by SIL) for immediate family afterwards and out to dinner with friends in the evening - small church blessing 9 months later, same dress, extremely simple bouquet of yellow gerbera, out to lunch with small group after. We had to ask people to pay for their own meals, sadly - it was just like going out with a group of friends - but we paid for the drinks.

I don't for a second regret getting married, although I would like to have been able to afford something a little bit, not bigger exactly, but more ceremonious. OTOH, I think if we were doing it now we would go right down to the absolutely bare minimum - literally get married with just us, ds, two or three very close friends as witnesses, then have people round for champagne the following weekend and not tell them until then. I find that idea extremely romantic.

We had a register office do on a fri pm, afternoon tea for 60 guests, no evening disco although people just stayed chatting until 11pm at venue.

Instead of a night do we went to the Races the next day...i wore my dress again and DH his suit...on the invites just said no prezzies but please join us at the races.

We went in the posh bit so everyone dressed up agin...was fab. I hired a double decker bus to take us all to the races...cost £70 and for the wedding itself i had a white merc taxi that id seen at a taxi rank take me there so was £25.

My dress was from Monsoon..£200 although i did blow £100 on my shoes but they are bright pink so i still wear them.

All in all it cost about £2000 and this was with having the afternoon tea at Bettys in York which is v. posh!!!

If you really want to do it sooner rather than later, why not pare down the guest list. 120 people is still a lot of people. I would rather have a much much smaller guest list but get married sooner. One of the nicest weddings I've ever been to was that of two of our university friends. They got married in the seaside town where we all went to university. There were only about 20 guests and afterwards we had a walk along the seafront and then had a meal in one of our favourite old restaurants. It was a perfect day and I'm sure it cost them very little apart from the actual wedding service and the meal for 20 people.

Or do as someone else suggested - take your children on holiday abroad, get married there and have a party when you get back - or even better, get your friends and relatives to have a party for you!

I actually like berolina's idea best - a really quiet wedding, perhaps just you two, the children and a couple of really close friends/relatives, followed by a lovely meal out somewhere. Then get everyone around for a surprise drink/party. Or even better, send them postcards from your honeymoon/holiday and tell them the news, then let them organise the 'surprise' party for when you get back!

I don't think you could do it much cheaper than we did.

Registry office with 2 witnesses, lunch for 4 afterwards at beautiful place. Then overnight at hotel in suite before jetting off on honeymoon next day.

Just cost a new suit for dh & a dress, hat & shoes for me.

We had been together on & off for years and dh's parents were dead, so thought it unreasonable to marry with just my family their, hence the best friends as witnesses only. It was a fabulous day and I would thoroughly recommend it if you're just keen to get married and aren't interested in having lots of attention lavished on you.

My sis got married in Scotland in May. Had a humanist ceremony with 90 people on top of a mountain and the hired the local hall for the evning do. We all contributed food and she paid a local family to do all the washing up. We decorated the hall ourselves and she hired a ceilidh band to play all night. It was a fab do and I bet it cost less than 2 grand....she's on her honeymoon in Tanzania at the mo so can't ask her for final figures...

Other friends hired a youth hostel and it was great...all the guests could stay of course and we had pizza and chips for the meal! A bumch of us made a cake too.

Ours cost 2.5k at most.

Dress from Monsoon / TKMax (I bought a sale bridesmaid dress for £75 and doctored it with lace to jazz it up a bit.

Wine and Beer from off license where you can hire the glasses inc (think Sainsbury's do this too). If budget runs out charge for drinks - we managed without and fed and watered about 80-90 I think. You can jazz up chairs with covers or you can hire chairs/ nice cutlery etc.

Hire a village hall and everyone chips in with a dish. We did a salmon, rib of beef, turkey and a ham and loads of salads.

Instead of flower arrangements we bought 50+ pots of chrysanthemums, put them on tbles with bows round and gave one to each family /couple as they left.

Find the poshest car of your friends to ise as wedding car.

have a lovely day xx

Mine came in under 2K I think.

Humanist celebrant (has to be in scotland though) £250
My out fit - under 200 (fenn wright manson at John Lewis)
Hall - £36
Decorations - 150 ish - flowers from wholesalers, arranged myself, fabric and tableclothes from fabric wholesaler.
My dad did a booze cruise for the alcohol
Hog roast about 4-500 including salads and all
Cailidh band £200
Dsico £140
Other stuff we had to buy was
Clothes for the kids
Transport for the guests (we were in the middle of nowhere and I didn't want them to have to drive)
Strawberries and MnS chocolate fudge cake instead of a wedding cake.

We only had 53 people there which included 17 kids.

I think it would be much cheaper without so many people but I just can't do it with less people I want all the special people in my life to be there when we get married, they have all helped us along the way, we wouldn't be as happy as we are without everyone having some input into our lives, as well as being married i'd like to celebrate with all of them as a thanks for being in our lives iyswim?

I have a big family, dp has a large-ish family, his mum is insisting we invite more people. Bare minimum is us and our children, our siblings thier partners and children, aunties, uncles and a few cousins, grandparents and 6 significant other members of the family and 30 friends (not all would come to the church but the majority would) I'm only going to get married once (i hope!!!) I want my close family and friends to be there when we do.

So far the things i think we can get for next to nothing is..

photos
hair/ make up
church
flowers
2 dj's and band
car

the wedding party would need to buy their own outfits.

I think that's pretty good but its the food and drink that would cost us the most probably about £800?

How much is a buffet for say 250 people? (always better to over estimate)

Get some local catering quotes, but bear in mind that at £3 per head you will get rubbish but for £2-£3 a head, if you do it yourself; you'd get a feast!