Am I mad/unrealistic? (wedding budgets)

[kaykayred]

Just looking for a quick reality check really.

Basically I am having a bit of a mind melting moment about the cost of our wedding. We can afford it without struggling (for which I am very lucky), but I just can't get my head round it.

My fiancé has a big family, and it was important to him that they came (obviously!). So we do have between 70-80 people attending, which is quite a lot. Likewise, due to our families being spread throughout the EU, we decided to go for a London venue to make things much easier for our guests re: travelling and hotels, as everyone could get direct, budget flights.

I had secretly hoped that the wedding would cost around 10k, but had budgeted for 12k. Having just done a full run down of costs, the maximum we are looking at is 13k. To me this seems utterly insane, although that could get cut quite drastically depending on how much wine is left over, as corkage rates are pretty high. In fact, half of what we are spending is going on food and drink. Is that normal?????

Before anyone mentions the wedding industry machine, I have DIY'ed pretty much everything you can think of. Decoration (still more expensive than I had anticipated), Stationary, Table plans...everything! We're marrying off season. We got a big discount on the venue (which isn't like..the gherkin or anything insane). A school friend is doing the cake at cost. Our (very good) photographer a steal at less than 1k. Amazing colleague getting us the flowers at cost, and we aren't having a huge amount. I regret not getting a high street dress, but my dress is still less than 1500 including all alterations. I'm wearing shoes and jewellery I already own. Doing my own hair and make up. I'm pretty sure that we have cut every corner possible to cut given our circumstances.

Am I just being totally unrealistic to think it would have cost less? I do want to have a lovely wedding, and I don't regret we've gone down the traditional route..but I guess my tightwad side is just hyperventilating a little?

I don't understand why it is so hard.

You want to save £1K to get back to £12K.

You've put £1K behind the bar when you already have a wine table to last all night.

So just cancel the free bar.

Done.

Having been at a do where the free bar was somewhat abused by a couple of people ordering rounds of absinthe or premium single malt I wonder if you could put a limit on what people can order? eg pints, or optics spirit and mixer, but not a bottle of champagne or a vintage malt unless they pay the difference? Nobody normal would object and the grand would go a longwy.

I think it's a bit more complicated than that - this is the most amount of money I have ever spent on my life EVER, and will remain as such until one day in the not so close future when I can afford to buy a house.

I think I was more stressed about the amount of money in general and was just focussing on the 12-13. I would probably have had the same stress out even if it was costing 10k!!

I won't cancel the free bar - that's a definite. I will ask for a heads up when the kitty is half way through, just so I'm not constantly worrying if it's being powered through or not. I will hope that the bar bill ends up being a few hundred less than expected, but almost everyone is travelling for this wedding, which obviously costs, and the least I can do is feed and water them. I'd rather cut the meal to two courses, and have the cake as dessert instead. Especially as it will be difficult for us to take the cake back with us, so we want people to actually eat it!

I think I just have to suck up the fact that we could have done the wedding for a THIRD of this cost back in our local parish, but we decided not to out of convenience for others. We weren't forced into that, so now we can't really complain about it.

My dress was bespoke and 100% silk apart from the netting. Fortnightly consultations, fittings and alterations. Nothing like any dress in any of the bridal shops apart from the colour. Even allowing for house-price level inflation it was nowhere near £1500. No chip here, and no bridal rollercoaster either.

OP, I forgot to say that brides report savings of up to 50% by using the words "family party" instead of "wedding" wherever possible. If there's anything you haven't done yet, this tip might be handy!

Married last May. 30 guests came in at around 7k. Around 70% would have been food and drink. Venue being next most expensive. Your costs sound pretty reasonable. We had no photographer though. Glad you are keeping the free bar. I think it is a very important part of hosting to keep guests happy (and that includes those not drinking alcohol of course, non-alcoholic drinks cost money too!).

Stop worrying and start enjoying this stage if you can. Good luck!

I think you've done a amazing job with the budget you have, especially in London. Some of the venues we saw when we married was asking for close that amount just for hire of venue and food alone! To compare, we spent £17kin total including the fab 3-weeks three centre holiday in Southeast Asia on ours 8 years ago. We got married in London and we had 85 guests for the wedding breakfast and about 150 odd for the evening party. The actual cost of the wedding was about £14k. Most people we knew who got married same place we did at the time spent loads more, the average was about 18-20k then.

Things we didn't scrim on: professional photographs - sorry but no way could any of the guest photos match the professional ones in quality and breadth, not even close. We got one of those storybook album things and they really do depict the day to a tee (even moments I was a little cross about at the time but can now laugh at; aunt that chose to wear a bizarre looking cow type suite, I'm looking at you!) I won't say the same about our wedding video, it's tedious as hell to watch back now and only the kids and elderly relatives seem to enjoy watching it. Wished we hadn't bothered with it to be honest.

• food and drink: let's face it it's what your guests really care about. Feed them well and keep the drinks flowing and they'll be happy.

Ways we cut costs were:

Dresses - tried on the dress and bridesmaid dresses here then went online and imported the exact same dresses from the states. They were made by a well known wedding dress designer and the strength of the pound at the time meant they were literally half the price. My MIL who was a semi decent seamstress did the alterations

Cars - we didn't have wedding cars but hired white london taxis, far cheaper

• my aunt made our cake

• we found a start-up wedding organising company (through a colleague) and she did things like invites, venue decorating, table plan, place cards and flowers for less than I could have done myself. She was also there on the day of the wedding coordinating everything. She used our wedding to showcase her business and I believe she went on to do very well afterwards

• a generous uncle's wedding gift to us was putting money behind the bar.

• my sister's boyfriend at the time was our DJ and he was bloody good as well
• we had fridge magnets with our names and wedding date as favours, we got these for the cost of p&p from Vistaprint. It makes me smile that my close relatives and best friends still have these on their fridges when I visit them.

We had an absolute amazing day and had a fairly traditional day with all the trimmings too. and if there is anything I could have changed would have been having a bigger budget so we have had even more people to share our special day with; we both come from very big families and we had to be really tough about who would have. Yes, it was a lot of money to spend but I do not regret a single penny. It's up there as one of the best days of our lives.

Thanks for the views - chunderella - Yeah I can totally see why a free bar might be some people's worst nightmare if they have a few difficult people coming. There's no one coming who would be "difficult" after a few drinks, and only a couple of people who I even suspect would be drinking heavily - then again I know them well enough to tell them to calm down a bit if needs be. There was one person who turns into a disgusting sleaze after a few drinks, so I just didn't invite him to begin with.

derenstar - Thank you! The cost of our honey moon isn't included in the budget. We are considering it to be our holiday, so we would have spent money on going abroad anyway. We are staying so close to the wedding venue that we are just going to walk across! It's a three minute walk or a 15-20 minute car drive with traffic - no brainer really!

I don't see anyone in this thread being defensive about the money they spent however much or little. Indeed, posters generally seem very happy with their weddings.

The comment about 'whining about the dress' was with regard to posters telling the OP off for spending the amount she has, when it's really none of their business.

The honeymoon will be great wherever it is, I understand that you've filed it under holiday anyway, but if you wanted to save money there, you could choose Europe over somewhere far flung. We went to Italy and it was fabulous.

I was reassuring her as regards the dress, which she has already bought, and responding to her request for comments on the overall budget.

I am not telling her she shouldn't have done something she's already done, and getting bizarrely aggressive about it to boot.

My comment on the honeymoon was simply a suggestion as they may not have booked it yet. If I were telling her off for booking an expensive honeymoon when she could have gone to Bognor for a fiver, then yes, that would be none of my business.

I expected to spend 10k on our wedding 18months ago. We spent 20K

Man alive. This is just utter madness. You could buy a property (deposit)for that. What exactly is the connect between commitment, three course meals, long white dresses, table plans and photographers...? Always absolutely amazes me that everybody's "special day" is EXACTLY the same and everyone is prepared to spend their literal life savings on it. M A D N E S S

We got married 10 years ago - cost us about £3000, but parents helped out by contributing to stuff:

My parents: dress hire & photographer. Dad made the cake
MIL: car & suit hire
FIL: flowers, balloons (heavily discounted because we knew both guys)

Even though, nothing was massively expensive because we knew they couldn't afford it. I know I sound like a meanie, but it is just ONE day. It'll pass in such a blur of activity. If anyone else asked you to lay out £13k on a party to basically change your name, have a feed & a booze up you'd tell them to get knotted.

DH obviously married me for my boundless romantic streak .

If you can cut some costs, do. Above all, enjoy YOUR day. Don't go out of your way to please other people or do what THEY won't. It'll stress your head in.

Big paws: I'd say it's only madness if you don't have the money and get into debt to do it. In our case we had the money, already own a home and had exactly the wedding we wanted. We have lovely memories of the day and that's priceless to us.

NoArmarni - I agree really. My DP wants a big traditional wedding and we both have large families so I will have to do it myself soon. We will be able to afford it too. But I think we may end up in the history books for the 50 years that humans went mad about weddings

Exactly it's the getting into debt that's daft when it comes to weddings.

Op your wedding sounds lovely.

I think ours was about £10k with about 60% on food and drink (that was a free bar all evening).

So £6k food and bar, £1k my dress, £500 bridesmaids, £1k suits (we bought rather than rent), £2k misc other stuff - jukebox, photographer, gifts, decorations, flowers, hair.

We probably spent another few hundred on our hen and stag weekends too.

Sorry. What I mean to say is as long as you can afford it and are going to have a good day, yours sounds just perfect.

You can get a stunning dress for £400 - £700, even in London. Check out a photographer called Jason fry

Our bar was free all night and we had no problem, it came to much less than we thought. I think the key is to have plenty of wine. We bought a job lot of champagne direct from the vineyard and people mainly stuck to that.

My father bought his morning suit, and he still wears it at 77, so it's lasted 47 years.

That was to PrincessofChina ^

Glad to hear the suit is still going strong twinklestein - DH swears his is a bit tight just a year on!

The most expensive wedding I ever heard of (alas no invitation) probably cost more than my house.

But it nearly all went on the guests - transport from airport or station to hotel (db&b night before, b&b night after), morning suits provided for male guests not already in possession, hot and cold running champagne, etc etc. Even though the dress cost north of £20k, they still spent 75%+ on the hospitality.

We got married 6 years ago and it cost us £3k but we invited immediate family only (sisters, brothers in law, parents) and nothing about it was traditional. The most expensive thing for us was the cake, because it was very bespoke. We used a photography student for the photos, recommended by the hotel manager as it was his friend's son. Cost us £100 and they're by far the best wedding photos I've ever seen, dead arty and natural. We got married in Glastonbury (despite living 200 miles away) and did everything local, using recommendations. Nobody was out to fleece us, they just wanted to keep things in the local economy by recommending local places. I've never understood the need to spend thousands - invariably to please everyone other than the bride and groom. I bought my dress from John Lewis for £150 - it was plum, not white.