Am I being unreasonable/bridezilla?

[on123]

Hi all just would appreciate a second opinion.

My wonderful partner proposed perfectly with the most perfect ring and we set the date for next July 2020 as we never wanted a long enegament period.

We initially, when we had no idea about the real costs of a wedding said we would only spend £5k as neither of us wanted any debt etc from the wedding.

I have spent hours and hours scrutinising every part of our budget and getting the lowest quotes and prices for every single element. Our list is JUST the essentials there is nothing extravagant on there - the only thing being a videographer which I really want as I would love for our children to be able to watch it back.

After hours and weeks and months of work and doing everything I can I cannot get the budget down below £7k.

I always wanted a tee pee wedding, with my favourite local band and a honey moon to Canada. I’ve put all of those beside me to save the budget and feel like I have sacrificed everything I ever wanted wedding / honey moon wise to try and make this achievable.

The main thing is, we CAN afford to spend up to £8k and we would still have no debt, plenty of other savings etc everything covered and I’ve even put this in spreadsheets and showed it to my partner but he just keeps saying no we said £5k - he is now asking if we can cut anything else out and can I scrap the photographer and videographer and can we have a honeymoon in Sweden because flights are only £60.

I feel totally upset and like I don’t even want to look forward to it anymore or plan. I’ve never wanted to spend a load or be extravagant but I’ve litrally got rid of every dream and still he wants to keep cutting, itl end up being a cheap and horrible wedding that will have just been so much about scrutinising prices instead of enjoying the planning and having a few nice elements.

Am I being a bridezilla??

I know all my sisters and friends spent at least £30k on their weddings alone. I cannot get it any lower than I already have!!

I'm with you OP, and I had the cheapest wedding going because I live in the Caribbean and got married on the beach.

The only thing I regret NOT paying for is a professional photographer. The pictures I did have were nothing special because they weren't done by a professional so I would definitely have splurged on that.

This is your wedding day, you're not trying to throw the cheapest party known to man.

But for the life of me, I can't understand how a wedding in a field with "no frills" is costing 7k? Can you list out what you've been quoted?

Who was it that suggested £5k as the budget and why? What were they expecting to get for that amount?

It’s just that if you say neither of you realised how expensive weddings would be - so if you know what you want your wedding to be and you are able to source that (after extensive research) at £7/8k then you’re not a long way off your ‘finger in the air’ guesstimate and it would be reasonable to go for it. If you had spent half an hour googling and thought it would be £25k minimum then that is very different.

Have you looked at dates in August as well for prices? And checked there are no big local events on the dates you want - you might find the loos are more expensive if loads are hired out to the local big house having a summer concert series/park having a summer festival/etc (along the lines of it being very difficult to hire loos the week of Glastonbury as they book loads of them in advance).

How much are the chairs costing? You might find it’s cheaper to buy basic new ones from ikea or Homebase or Wilko or eBay etc especially if you catch a good deal on a sale at the end of the summer. Especially if you eBay them afterwards and get some money back...

When I got married, we had a chocolate cake as our wedding cake which we used as our pudding - the caterers provided raspberries and cream to accompany it. Meant we saved on the cost of a cake as choc cake was much cheaper than fruit cake and we didn’t need to pay for a full pudding so overall it worked out a great way to reduce costs by killing 2 birds with one —cake— stone. Might be worth considering if you plan on doing a pudding.

How on earth is all that costing 7k?

There are 4 essential elements to a wedding.

1 couple
1 registrar
2 witnesses

Everything else is non-essential. It’s easy to have a wedding for less than £5k. You just have to limit non-essential expenditure to match your budget.

Registry office followed by hiring out a lovely local pub for the afternoon. If guests would be buying their own drinks the pub would make a fortune at the bar so that wouldn't cost thousands and they could lay on a buffet or you could get outside caterers to do the food.
I'm sure someone in your family knows or can recommend someone to do a wedding cake, it could be bought in lieu of a wedding gift, of you could just make one yourself? Delia Smith classic fruit cake is a super simple recipe, or even buy an iced one from M&S and some pretty wedding cake ornaments.

Give us a breakdown of the £7k-something doesn’t sound right!

So where exactly is the £7k being spent, if youre not paying for a venue and dress amongst other things that usually bulk out the price?.

I kind of think posters asking if you want a wedding or a marriage kind of have a point, you said you don't want to plan it and won't look forward to it if you have to stick to your agreed budget. It's perfectly possible to get married under £5k but if it's about the wedding and wanting everything that you'd hoped for before even meeting a man then it becomes about the wedding itself. Which while I get it's a massive deal to lots of women, it's still a small part of a marriage.

The holiday to Canada can be delayed for example, have a weekend in a posh hotel and save for Canada.

Have a guest or two record the wedding for free. You can edit it yourself or even have a media student do it for you much cheaper than a videographer.

Same with photos, there's some amazing photography students who don't charge a lot.

Or ditch the photographer and have photos made from stills of a professional videographer.

Whatever you do don't expect everything to be perfect and stress free. I've read so many women say their wedding was ruined because the cake looked wrong, or the photos were shit etc.

How you handle money issues over this is an I doctor for when you join your money together. It's not unreasonable to want to agree budgets and. It go over by several thousand pounds.

If you agreed to buy a house and set £200k budget, but then you see a three bedroomed detached is £500k and he suggests a two bed semi witching budget and you say it's always been your dream to have a detached with a garden etc stuff like this might keep popping up.

It could be he doesn't want to spend £8k because he doesn't want savings being depleted on a single day. You're planning children so maybe keeping £3k of that £8k for the many expenses that come with being a parent and giving some breathing space when there's only one of you working du to maternity leave etc.

I wouldn't bulk of my saving being used on a wedding, I'd rather have them for the expenses and stuff during our marriage.

Doesn't make either of you in the wrong. I like the suggestion of compromising and going to £6k.

Is he putting as much effort and spending hours getting quotes too and seeing things that can be cut too?

It would probably be cheaper and less stressful to find a country pub with a garden. If you are only having close friends and family you don't really need a field and it'll be way less stressful than sorting all the bits (chairs toilets etc) yourself and the clean up will be easier.

If you've got lots of money I don't really see the issue. Like I said before,what has he got the money ear marked for? You already have plenty of savings so what is it for If not for holidays wedding etc. I'm assuming you have enough saved to cover a job loss etc from description (e.g. 6 months salary or whatever it is they recommend having)

Hand the planning over to him. It sounds like it's stressing you out. Let him have a go.

I think £7k is massively cheap for a wedding - we spent £10k 15 years ago & our wedding wasn't particularly extravagant (we had 50 guests in total), therefore I think YANBU.

However, before you get married I would say attitude to money is massively important & you need to be aligned generally as otherwise there'll be much bigger problems further down the line.

Speakers £60
Lights £48
Mic £30
Food £1k
Bridesmades £300
Flower girls £200
Page boys £80
Flowers £200
Suits £400 ( joes price)
Rings £300
Toilets £600 inc vat
Licence £21
Bar and staff hire £500
Alcohol up front cost £1k
Decor £100
Make up £50
Hair £10
Registry office £250
Photographer £350
Videographer £700
Marque inc floor chairs and tables £1,400 inc vat ( cheapest anywhere I can find round here!)
Drinks on arrival and wine on table £300

That’s my list before I cut bridesmades

No honeymoon hasn’t even been considered / included yet

Right, but you don't need most of those things!

Op when you say youve considered venues.. have you looked at village halls / sports clubs etc?

Might not be trendy but usually cheap and have all the stuff youre paying £££ to hire.

Ex-wedding planner here!
It might be worth looking at venues nearby that do wedding packages and see if any of those work out cheaper.
Doing it all 'DIY' ie, your own bar, hiring tables and toilets etc can often actually work out far more expensive because you're paying for so many separate bits.

I got married in October and our very 'DIY' wedding was well over 30k. It's totally doable for less though, I'm planning a family wedding as a favour for this summer and we've got the budget down to £4K for absolutely everything.

The only thing I regret about our wedding is not having a videographer - we really wanted to stick to our budget, so cut that cost but in hindsight I really wish we'd just sucked it up as we could have afforded it too. A friend of my dads video'd it for us & it was rubbish - poor picture & sound quality & he cut out loads of parts, & also nothing recorded of me walking down the aisle. Needless to say, we've watched it once in all the time we've been married.

DDs wedding cost about £5k, registry office followed by reception at a nearby hotel. She bought her dress from a local discount shop.

A life partnership has to be built on compromise and pragmatism because life is not all black and white, nor does it run to a script. Things, and people, change. I'd worry about marrying somebody who seems completely unable to accept that. You've agreed a budget but now discover the budget is unrealistic for what you want, so there are two options: compromise on what you want, or increase the budget. I fail to understand why option 2 can't be at least considered. Imagine if he's the same way about other stuff: say you thought you would probably like 2 children, you can't possibly change your mind and stick at one or go on to have 3 - he just won't hear of it - but you said two (a few years ago) so two it must be, no more, no less. Just pray the second one isn't twins!

(Other options include sod the wedding. Elope, or don't get married at all.)

7k is not a lot for a wedding at all OP so you want to go to 8k and you can both do it without any debt so what’s the problem?

Not many are able to stick to an original sum, that’s so unrealistic.

You sound nothing like a bridezilla, your fiancé sounds totally unreasonable and tbh you’ve organised it all so least he can do is compromise!

It’s 3K over your agreed budget so £1500 each over, actual big deal!

Don’t like his attitude one bit.

the only thing being a videographer which I really want as I would love for our children to be able to watch it back

LMAO I take it you don't have children , would you watch your parents wedding video?

Hope you don't take this the wrong way, but you are spending £600 on toilets and £300 on rings.

The rings are forever, the toilets.. not so much?

I would really have a re-think about what you could get for your money in another way.

Don't provide the alcohol and let the bar company provide it as a paid bar, that will save you £1k immediately. Bar company may even come for free/less than £500 knowing that they'll be making money on drink sales.

For what it's worth, I had a marquee wedding on my own land and including honeymoon it cost upwards of £20k but that included a full sit down meal, ceremony at a hotel and transport costs. A marquee wedding is certainly not a cheap option but the cost of the actual tent is fantastic! Ours was around £8k including tables and chairs so that's a fab price you've got there.

Speaking as a wedding photographer who's seen 11 years' worth of weddings, it's pretty standard to have a paid bar and people expect to have to pay for their own drinks so cut the cost of the bar/alcohol if you can.

Before anyone gives you any more ideas OP, have you paid any deposits for this stuff? If you did come up with another plan would it cost you money to move to a pub/hotel?

Between the loos, marquee, food, drink, bar and staff costs you've met the 5k budget- your FH is being very unrealistic to think you can do better on those things given the amount of work you appear to have put in. You could cut the drinks on arrival and videographer, which would get you to the compromise figure of 6k. But only you can decide how important those things are to you and if it's worth the savings to cut them, and he could still stick at 5k.

How many people?
Have you thought about buying crockery etc from ikea and selling on afterwards? Or look on ebay for it?
Dresses for bridesmaids - local dressmaker?Again look on ebay for pre loved and sell on?
Again buying trestles from ebay could be cheaper and marquee being v basic without internal frills? (Had one for a party that was £300 inc fitting and carpet)
Hiring suits?
Where are you based? Can you do an overnight to France? Majestic usually have a great deal with crossing included.