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?

Ours cost between £2000 and £2500 including honeymoon.
I made my own dress.
Wedding in registry office.
Meal in local restaurant who did it for about £5 a head for just over 50 people. Wine was extra ( FIL covered that though!!)
Flowers - I bought 3 or 4 bunches from local supermarket and picked and mixed the nicest ones into a small posey.
No 'favours' for guests.
No suits hired (no suits required, informal dress code).
No evening reception, we all just turned up at a pub and bought our own drink.
We walked to the wedding from our house and home again ( luxury of living near city centre!)
Honeymoon was 2 weeks camping in France.
Everyone said it was a really lovely and great fun and relaxed wedding, as everyone could pretty much do what they wanted ( for example the 'teens' wandered down to the waterfront after the meal to avoid the tedious parental chit-chat session!)

Oh, made my own invitations too. I used card from a sketch book iirc which I cut and folded to fit envelopes were from a pack of pretty cheap, square christmas cards. I glued squares of fabric and stitched some beads on.
Printed the inners on work computer provided own paper though!
Second class post.

Hiya LMGs we did Ds's wedding last year for 3000.00 got alot of teh things of ebay, found heart shape boxes, and heart shaped choocs, filled each box, tied with ribbon, printed their names and the date on stickers and fixed on the front, cost about 10p each. Cheated with the wine, bought tesco own, soaked the labels off and again printed labels with names and dates and put them on.
Go to bonus print and look at their little invites we got them all for 20.00 (DS and DDIL had actually got married in SA but this was a full blessing) we used a photo of the actual wedding on the front.
We did the catering ourselves, as we had a Makro card it was really cheap.
They had 150 people there, so it was a big do, didnt have to pay for teh venue tho as it was a frinds barn.
Will email you some of the photos of the things we did if you want.

my village hall only costs 8 quid to hire - and you can have my dress for 100 quid - don't suppose you're a petite 10/12?

We did ours reasonably on the middle ground:

Wedding itself (50 people):

Register office (big room) £240.
My dress (coast) £180.
Shoes about £40
Suit for Hubby £400

Had drinks at home (50 people):
Champers (lots) £600
Waitrose nibbles £400
Soft drinks etc £100

Photos £800 (including prints / album etc)

Evening do (4 course sit down meal for 80 with silver service etc):
Venue hire £500
Food £2400
Booze £750
Disco £150

Taxis (used one as a wedding car too!) £50

Cake and flowers free as our mothers did them!

So all in all about £6500, almost all of which (£4150) went on food and drink! (on the bright side I did have 3 cases of very nice vintage champagne left over which I have been really enjoying!!) You could easily do it for much less (we weren't trying to save money we just wanted to do it before it all turned into a big saga - and we got married 6 weeks after we decided to go for it).

At the moment im a generous 14! I plan to lose some but a 10 is pushing it a bit far!

Church £Donation to church
My dress £300 in sale
Shoes approx £20
Kilt hire £40 each X 5, I think the fathers paid for their own. We paid groom , best man and usher.

Meal for 30 and welcome drink £can't remember, but we negotiated a good price with the manager and chef, by simplifying menu and smiling a lot.

Photos £Gift from Uncle (he is a photograher)

Evening buffet £My mum paid for this but saved her money by asking for a buffet for 60 even though we invited loads more, ther is always too much anyway and loads wasted (I was right plenty for everyone)

No venue hire just pay for meal and welcome drink in Hotel. Smiled lots more and got the bridal suite for free, they give you free use for changing through the day, so I asked for it it overnight and they agreed. Think we paid for breakfast though.

Disco £150, cheaper than a band but he played all the celidh stuff too.

Cars, used other uncles car for bride (lovely merc) and ordered 2 taxis from local company that has nice ones.

Cake , Mum got a freind to make it at cost price.

Flowers, got massive quotes from the designer florists, showed me lots of glossy brochures. Got a fantasic price from a small florist that sells veg and all sorts but she showed me pics of her actual work. My bouquet abotu £35 (including fancy roses), bridesmaid £18, big display for church £45, pew ends 6 X £3 ( moved these to reception and laid along tables), display for car £15 (moved to top table).

EBAY

Forgot

Stationery- invites, order of service, menus and scrolls, printed them all on basic paper in a fancy font and finshed with a stamped design in gold ink. Hand delivered all that I could localy.

Favours- paper roses from AuNatral (two bunches reduced to £1), cut them into individual buds and twisted them together with fabric heathers (cost price £3.95) from florist), printed and hand stamped tags tied on with fine ribbon.

Why not get married on holiday? Best of both worlds. We went to the Cook Islands with Kuoni, and the whole package for the 2 of us was less than £2000. I'm sure it can be done even cheaper though, and some hotels have their own wedding service, so you can pay for the holiday and practically get the wedding thrown in!

Scottish weddings are usualy after lunch and day guests have a meal about 5pm. Evening guest arrive 7.30 ish and get a buffet sometimes. I invited the minimum I could to the meal, but all the cousins etc came to the service, went for chips them came in the evening.

Just get hitched in a registry office. Marriage is not the same thing as a wedding (weddings - overated and expensive in my opinion, especially when you already have kids to think about).

Already have a family friend who could marry us in a church so that bit is not the issue, its mainly the reception that needs to be done cheaply. I don't fancy a meal or nothing at all, I have a big family and big parties are par for the course etc

I guess it's getting the whole ammount, everything can eb done cheaply but you add it all up and it's 2k at least! I'll have to work on paying some debts off and come back to this in a year or so i think thanks for all your help!

As you are a size 14 you could apply to Radio 2 for the Drive Time Wedding Dress

www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/shows/evans/drivetime_dress.shtml

I've just done a search of local caterers (to us) as a matter of interest. One does a running buffet for £9.95 a head, and a spitroasted whole pig serving 130 for £450, so if you look around you may be able to do it relatively cheaply.

(or get everyone to bring a dish to share?)

I'm sure we got married for far less (was just under 16 years ago, so my memory's a little hazy on the actual cost). The only essential cost is the actual ceremony/service - you are not legally required to have guests . We had a reception in our flat, mostly involving sparkling white wine and cake (which almoste everyone likes ). We got the guests to the registry office (yes, in sunny Brixton) by taxi. I made my own dress (a major achievement for someone who took the best part of the Lower Fourth to do a bound buttonhole properly). I didn't have bridesmaids, photographs, nails done, makeup (serious risk of DH not recognising me .

we got married last year and spent maybe 4500, although some things were extras we could have done without if we hadn't the money.

we got married in scotland, with a civil ceremony, 3 course sit down meal for 17 f+f. we stayed there for 2 nights. then when we got home, we had a party for 100 in the function room of a tennis club with a buffet. bought dress in the sale, champagne on a booze run to france. did the invites myself.

there are loads of ways to save as long as you are not swayed by the wedding magazines and the tv shows that show all these fabulous little extras that won't make a blind bit of difference except to your bank balance.

Dh and I got married and ended up paying £800 for the wedding , dress and also reception.
We asked people to pitch in as their gift to us. Like many others i had a mate do my hair and make up, Mum payed DJ, MIL paid hall and catering which BTW was a cheap buffet. Used friends cars. Got married late in day so only had one party. Flowers from ebay! FIL and BIL hired suit for DH and themselves. My dress from evans and cost £61. Sister did favours and my table decorations. Friend made my cake for us. We were also really lucky and ended up with our honeymoon being sorted too by all aunts and uncles who gave us money as present which paid for flat in blackpool!

Well, my wedding cost all in about £500. If that. And it was nice. Not skanky.

Personally I think spending thousands on a wedding is rather bizarre.

We had a big picnic.

Our wedding was pretty cheap - our best bargains were:

Made our own invitations - bought nice cards from Hobbycraft and printed out using PC.

Combined wedding favours and place settings by buying heart shaped ginderbread Xmas tree decorations from Ikea (about £7 for 150 IIRC), putting icing on them and writing names on with a food colouring pen. We put them in little bags and tied them up with a ribbon, and they looked really nice.

Got the reception and table flowers from a flower wholesaler for about £50, bought 90p vases from Ikea, and my godmother arranged them. Used tulips as you don't need extra foliage.

My Mum and MIL baked loads of cupcakes and iced them in 'our' colours. FIL made a wooden tiered cake stand and sprayed it silver. Had this instead of a wedding cake.

Wedding dress - I bought an expensive bodice, but a cheap skirt from Debenhams - you'd never have known they didn't match exactly.

Bridesmaids dresses were 70% off in Monsoon.

You are NOT living in dreamland - you can have the wedding you want, with a bit of planning and lateral thinking. I think you need to decide what is important to you, and is worth spending money on, and what you are prepared to compromise on.

I really wanted a free bar, and didn't want a limit on numbers if I could help it, so we kept the food simple ( no starter, bangers and mash, then choc brownies and cream - yum)and, as well as the savings I've already mentioned - I was driven to the church in my uncle's Honda Civic, as I figured that no-one saw me arrive - DH went with best man, and DH drove us both to the reception in his beloved 1976 ford Escort.

You can do it!!!

Can't remeber the programme but they had the wedding in the community centre but everyone pitched in and it was unrecognisable, they had fish and chips from the local chippy, they came in those oblong cardboard boxes and they wrapped a sheet of A4 around it printed in black and white photos of the couple.

Lateral thinking and a bit quirky can save you loads. Picnic sounds great, get everyone to bring their own gazebos and a dish instead of hiring a huge marquee and caterers.

Wasn't there a MNetter who was going to a retro festival camping wedding type thingy and had to get a dodgy 60's dress for it.

Watever you go for have fun and keep it simple, far less to worry about and go wrong.