Ideas for a cheap wedding reception

[iiiiispy]

Can someone give me some inspiration? We are getting married in a registry office and don't want to spend too much. All the ones I've seen cost thousands!

Hire a hall and self cater or use a fish and chips van?
If you know someone with a large enough garden you could hire a marquee.
Limit numbers.

Village hall, social club, pub. Tell a caterer your budget per head and go from there.

Go non-traditional. I went leopard print for 50s rewearable dress and dh's matching tie. Avoid anything wedding venue-ish. We booked local bar/band venue for £800. Just mentioning the word wedding hikes up prices dramatically! Rope in mates for music (most venues have sound system you can plug you laptop into), cake (leopard print again lol), photographer (digital age afterall) etc. Or friends of friends.
Have 'business cards' for invites. Ours (leopard print of course lol) cost about £30 from vistaprint online. They do different sizes

Don't ask for presents, instead get guest to pay for their own booze.

Only have small number of guest til evening so people can eat before they came to cut down on food costs.
Didn't see the point in flowers at venue. Again don't mention wedding if you do want flowers.

Be honest with friends that you have a very strict budget and you'll be surprised who can help 'cut corners.
We had an amazing night for £3k for everything including registry cost. Could have done it for £2k but I felt like splurging. Lol

A hog roast?

We found a local pub that did us a buffet for £6 a head. It was great!

Yep - local pub is your best option here.
You could get a hog roast and simple buffet.
How many guests will there be for the evening?

We had a garden party with a bbq. All wine for the meal from aldi and then bring your own in the evenings. Our caters weren't wedding caters so think it was £10 a head which included them serving the sangria as a rival drinks and serving prosecco for toast. We only had one course and desert was homemade cupcakes that we made ourselves. All decorations were homemade.

There are weddings for all budgets. run a village hall. It's £20 per hour for evenings so works out fairly cheap. Bit of bunting, music from a laptop run through our speakers and there you go. Catering is usually anything from hipster catering vans outside to each guest bringing there own. It depends how you want to go. You do have to tidy up yourself at the end though. People can get very overwrought about weddings and want to measure multiple times & plan decor, table height, chair covers, multiple meetings with caterers, etc - that's what bumps the price up. We didn't used to charge extra for that but bad experiences mean we now do. My own wedding cost £100 all in including the banns and ceremony 😊

A lot of pubs will offer free private hire if you have them cater and/or on the basis of a minimum bar spend by guests. One of the best weddings I've been to had a very simple but well done "sliders" type buffet at a local gastropub and they hired an ice-cream van with a very jolly driver l to rock up for dessert, which everyone loved. Cost friends about £1,000 in total for around 60 guests. (It probably helped that it was a glorious mid-summer day and the reception could mainly spill out into the pub garden though - maybe not much good for a winter wedding.)

Afternoon tea (little sandwiches, scones, cakes, tea, prosseco etc) is also an option I've had at a wedding rather than full lunch and it went down really well. Likely to be less expensive.

Village halls are good value and often in beautiful settings. You could then hire caterers or do your own buffet.

We were engaged 3 months, planned the wedding in 2, and had a baby on the way. So we had to watch costs. Plus it was all within a year of being together, so no savings at all.
We had the reception in the function room of the pub my husband worked. His colleagues done the food. Luckily we got a discount with him being staff. We did a buffet instead of a meal. It's cheaper and easier as there's bound to be something for everyone with a buffet.
We put money behind the bar for drinks and we provided the champagne for toasts.
Dh decorated and set up the room in the morning, so we were not spending money having someone do that. And we didn't waste money on chair covers and stuff like that. It's a chair, people sit on them, that's it. And we had a dj for music.

We were pretty broke. We hired a village hall. Set up tables etc the night before. Employed 2 people on the day to help serve and clear up. I roasted a turkey, beef joints and baked gammon (all done the day before to be eaten cold with salads). Made several chocolate freezer cakes 2 days before. Other dessert was raspberries and cream. A troop of friends came the morning of the wedding to make salads and got ready at my flat. Bought drink from off licence & were lent glasses free. Long time ago now - exhausting but fine.

PS I made the wedding cakes beforehand and a friend iced them as my present.

I'm having a village hall (£1000 Friday lunch to Sunday morning) inc staff and clean up. Can buy own wine (at corkage cost) and I'm DIYing as much as possible. I could make it much cheaper if I wanted with the caterers etc by making own food - I'm having a buffet - much cheaper than sit down meal

Have a 'village garden party' style reception. Either outdoors or in a nice village hall.

No gifts.

Everyone makes a bunting flag to be delivered in advance for assembly, or decorates a jam jar for tea lights. Put the tealights/fairy lights outside for illumination; use florists wire to hang the jam jars from trees, decorate the hall with the bunting. Get a local ceilidh band in for the entertainment and trestle tables where everyone contributes a plate of food.

Perfect!

Village halls tend to work better if they are somewhere pretty. You definitely need a good band or disco to make it own.

If you are doing it on the cheap, make sure the logistics are easy - either easy to park, hotel close by, easy to get a cab home etc. So check pubs /halls have sufficient car parking nearby and cars aren't going to get stuck in fields etc.

Groupon and the like do vouchers for wedding packages. Might be worth a look.

One wedding I went to bride & groom didn’t have much. They asked instead of wedding presents that people bring a dish. Worked well & also a number of guests bought gusts/vouchers anyway.

For DD's 21st, we had an ice-cream van for 'pudding' - worked well, and he just charged me for what he sold.

I went to a village hall wedding once and it was the best wedding I ever went to! So personal and relaxed! Often a local pub will run a bar on site for free (they make their money from the drinks)

Gifts not gusts - I loathe spell correct

OP there is a Wedding forum on here too. It's under Fun and Games.
There has been a number of threads on weddings on a budget. Lots of good ideas there.

Ours came in about 700 quid for about 100 people. We had a buffet rather than meal in a restaurant/pub. We also saved by using a DJ instead of a band and a whilst we had a cake we decorated it ourselves.

We had a very similar theme to those suggested here.

Village Hall in a beautiful setting. Got married in the church 200m away. Afternoon wedding so we served a cream tea afterwards (we made the scones the day before). We bought all the beer and cider ourselves and my Inlaws provided the wine and fizz as our gift. We hired in caterers and told them our budget for the evening. They did the main course and guests bought cakes in lieu of gifts. We decorated the hall ourselve and did place settings ourselves. The hall was on the village green and we were blessed with glorious sunshine so guests spilled out onto the green with all kids (and some parents!) in the playground. Some guests nipped to the village pub for a drink after the ceremony. Ceilidh band for the evening and a play list we had put together for the afternoon. It was brilliant, and I think the total cost for the entire day was about £2500 including the church.