Diy wedding - where to start?!

[GingerRodgers]

I'd love to have a late afternoon/ early evening wedding preferably in a barn style building doing decorations/ organising food myself but where the hell do I start?! What do I google? Everything costs so much and I don't want fancy, I want to just celebrate us being married.
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!
We don't have much money and the venues all seem to be in excess of 5000 which I can't justify (and don't have!).
Thanks.

We're doing the same. Biggest coat I'm finding is hiring the bloody furniture! Just get the essentials sorted- in our case: food, drink, music and a nice dress Not bothering with favours, colour scheme's, champagne, pricey extras.

Church hall or Scout hut are the places that spring to mind the would have a good size main room, a kitchen, enough loos, and possibly smaller side rooms. Plus likely to have a decent number of chairs and tables.

Literally just google "village hall lincoln" or wherever you want to get married. There will be loads there, and then have a copy and paste email you can send to venues to ask about having a look, prices etc. Be prepared to pick up the phone (esp in devon/cornwall) as many of the more traditional halls check their email once a month, if ever, in my experience!

A village hall won't look quite as lovely as a barn, but it will be so much cheaper. We were quoted £2,500 for a barn, where we'd still need to hire the furniture. Instead, we're now hiring a not-exactly-pretty-but-nice-views-and-very-useable village hall, for £200, including all chairs and tables. For us, that was a no brainer, as even with spending another £600 to get the hall draped beautifully, it's still loads less than a barn.

We're using the village hall in the next village along from us, as we're not residents in the village we pay £600 for Friday 6pm through to Sunday 12 noon. We have hired a caterer as we decided we didn't want the hassle of sorting food our ourselves. Drink we are providing and asking family and friends to help themselves. A good friend is doing our pictures as our wedding gift and a family member is doing the music.

only 5 weeks to go.. can't wait!

Brilliant idea about village hall! Hadn't thought of that so thank you.

Just popping in to point you in the direction of our DIY wedding checklist

Well worth hiring a wedding planner even if doing it yourself. For a relatively small fee they will take a lot of the stress off you they also have good contacts, can negotiate lower rates and may be able to lend you some decor at no or low cost

Thanks CatherineH, I'd never even thought to look there!