£5000 budget - is it possible?

[TwittleBee]

Hello,

We have just come into unexpected financial difficulty (won't go into details) and shall have to cut our £10k budget in half if we want to meet our date in 2020.

How have people managed to be so savvy? I have already purchased my dress so that doesn't need to be accounted for but things we still need to purchase include:

Venue
Registrar fees
food
drink
flowers
bridesmaid dresses x 3
groomsmen suits x 5
rings
invites
photographer
MUA & hair stylist
Decorations / favours

The venue we have already fallen in love with and were planning on booking this weekend comes to £3500 including food & drinks! Leaving us only with £1500 left which was originally our budget for the photographer!

Shall we just give up? I mean, my family have already expressed how shit our wedding was going to be on a £10k budget, so maybe we should just wait 5 years before we marry (wanted to tie the knot before DS started school though)

Okay so my breakdown now looks like this:

Venue - £900
Registrar fees - £600
Food (afternoon tea + buffet) - £1500
Drink (arrival, table & toasting) - £350
Flowers (artificial – bride & bridesmaids bouquets & buttonholes)
Groom’s suit & shoes - £190
My shoes – £20
Suit & shoes for DS - £40
Rings - £200
Invites - £100
Decorations (including guest book, letter box, name places & cake) - £100
Photographer - £900
Taxi - £100

TOTAL - £5000

Does anyone have an idea of where I can get good cheap make up and hair stuff? I'm gonna need to start practising! Any good Youtube or books I can check out?

Just so you know op , our photographer was £300 , we got 99 prints on a usb. It cost us about £50 to print and frame our favourites. We have yet to buy an album for the remaining pictures but won't be spending too much.

I'm in London by the way. Our photographer was from North London.

I forgot to include the £200 on the flowers! Doh! okay so only £200 over budget.

Hmm okay maybe we will need to look around more for a photographer MagicFajita Just I really like the one who quoted us £900, her style is spot on for us and I am so nervous about getting cheaper novices

Where are you?

We are North East and Photographer is a fab one at £945, I can pass on a recommendation if nearby.

We did it. We didn't have bridesmaids/groomsmen. Arguably it's a tad but naff anyway so you really don't have to have them. If you feel like you must just give them an easy colour and tell them to wear their own clothes. Maybe buy matching ties or something. We held our wedding in December so the venue was already decorated for Christmas so we didn't need to pay for any flowers or anything like that. Most photographers are equally mediocre these days so unless you were planning on an award winning proper photographer just go for a cheaper option.

Oh also, try to haggle with the venue hire cost - or ask if they'll include the toast drink or arrival drink in the £900 :)

QforCucumber maybe I should fess up at this point that actually that £900 is for 2 venues... I couldn't resist getting married in a windmill (£250) and then the local hall afterwards is (£650). I really am not prepared to compromise on the venues

I guess I could go for the cheaper afternoon tea option which would save another £50 and perhaps just have tea/coffee/juice at the table instead of wine/beer as it is an afternoon tea anyway? That would probably save me another £150?

The photographer I am already in love with is only £900, thank you though

DairyisClosed I suppose you are right though maybe about photographers. Maybe I should consider getting my step dad to do the photos, he isn't bad at it. And have an instagram # for the photos taken by guests so I can collect them

We did it for £3000 which was registry office for 40, lunch for 80 people and then open bar for 100 people, wine and beer. Tapas restaurant midday, set menu, loads of food and cava. Instead of bridesmaids my best friends stayed the night with me and did my hair and make up and even dressed the chairs and tables at the restaurant - I bought £200 of ‘wedding toot’ from amazon (dried flowers, silk flowers, bows and drapery)
Dress £150, shoes pre-owned. Husband new suit. Flower girls 3x dresses, shoes & cape 150. Bouquet of silk peonies. Friends took photos and I bought a Polaroid camera. No cake, just an almond tart and sweets for the kids. No favours. Everyone paid their own taxis. Restaurant 12-6pm then off to the pub we had booked an area in.
It suited us and it suited our family and friends. We loved it but can totally see it may not be your thing. But I can advise just pick what you can’t live without (ours was lots of food, booze, and making sure we could have everyone we wanted there) and ditch the rest.

@inthekitchensink your wedding sounds wonderful, my idea if the perfect day for you and your guests

My friends used the app wedpics to save all their pictures. Wish I'd had it instead of scrolling through Facebook.

Do you really need to spend £200 on flowers?

inthekitchensink that is amazing! I don't understand how people are getting registry offices so cheap though! Mine wants to charge same price as my 2 venues combined!
Amazed by the open bar too, people must have really been respectful! Sounds like you had lovely guests.
Thank you for the advice. I think for me I have to stick with the venues & the afternoon tea style wedding breakfast. But I am now seriously considering ditching the alcohol (as we have like a million under 5 years olds coming to the evening anyway!)

The registrars will charge high amounts to go to approved venues, but a register office with just you and your DP and 2 witnesses is only £55 in a register office, and usually only £100-200 for a room for some guests.

We were looking at £450 for them to come out to a venue!

Thanks that’s nice to hear! Yes it was under £500 for the registry office as it was dead of winter. And lots of house wine - but Spanish white & red Rioja & cava seemed to go down well and was dirt cheap compared to other places.

You could book a free makeup session at a department store, take notes and photos and then practice loads at home . Bobbi Brown are good but you’ll probably be guilt tripped into buying twenty quid’s worth of stuff

Re use a wedding ring. When my gran died she left me her rings

Essex County Council show the price of the Register Office fees, and it is similar to the amounts quoted above: £35 notice and £46 marriage

www.essex.gov.uk/Births%20Ceremonies%20Deaths/Marriages-Ceremonies/Pages/Fees.aspx

I went up the road to the nearest department store and got one of the makeup counters to do my make-up - I bought one or two products which were handy for top-ups later bit still a bargain at about £25. I did have my own makeup as back up if I didn't like the job they did. Perfectly happy with the result.

I've PMd you... Happy to answer any Essex wedding questions by PM.
Good luck.

We are doing the South of France for ours. The venue is a stunning villa with pool, which is £1,800 for a long weekend. Flights are a shade under £100 each with a hold bag. Obviously favours/ chair covers etc aren't even needed.Celebrant is steep at £400

We are getting married first in the local registry office which has cost £35 each and the £46 ceremony.
We chose a pricey restaurant because they others had closed for Christmas and we wanted to crack on.
Even so you get good weather, a nice holiday and a unique wedding for the same price as renting a twee venue in my part of the world.

Hmm, I think you need to rethink your drinks apportionment of your budget. How much are you providing for £350?

You seemed surprised by a pp having a paid bar, it's not that unusual. You really ought to be offering some drinks for the evening do.

You're spending all our budget on venue and photographer and not on your guests. Which all feels the wrong way around.

£900 on a venue is best price I can get for what I want for my wedding. If i didnt have a venue then where would people drink....
£350 includes toasting, table and arrival drinks.
It's not that unusual to not have a paid bar for the evening. I'm providing food for them. But if it's a real issue I guess I can spend another £400 to provide an arrival drink when they turn up.
I just don't want my wedding to be all about bloody alcohol when there's a million little kids coming and it's more of a casual affair.

We did all our invites online to save money, designed one ourselves and then emailed them out. We set up a wedding email account to have them sent from and replied too. We're also having no favours and no cake because I honestly don't think people are bothered. We've got 55 guests for the day and around 120 on the night and ours in about 5.5k x

Our wedding was about £5000. I got talked into having a photographer, it was the one bit of the day I really wish I hadn’t bothered with. The guests took lovely photos, we’ve looked at the album twice, the only pictures we have up our from guests.

It was a v informal wedding and having to spend an hour of it posing for photos just ate into time i wanted to spend with people. And she was just there all the time.

Really wished I’d put the money behind the bar. And it wasn’t a booze fuelled wedding, just would have been nice.

I can't afford a paid bar in my £5k budget even if I removed the photographer. Like a glass of wine is at least £5.00 and a bottle of beer at least £3.50 Then soft drinks at least £2.50. I have 80 guests. Most I could afford to give them (if i still took a small loan out) would be 3 drinks.

Anyway I've decided the plan now. Thanks all for your help. As PPs have said it our day and I just need to work out what's important to me and then skimp on everything else that isn't xx