If you had a beautiful wedding under £15k please tell me how

[Skiaddicted]

We have 80 people who we genuinely want with us on our special day (actually more than that, the 80 is being incredibly tough). Im happy to get a Wed2be dress and get a friend to do my hair and make up. Costs locally, however, just seem to be insane for wedding venues!
The best we've found is marquee venues who charge circa 3k for the land hire......then a marquee is 8k ish.....catering seems to be around the 6k mark somehow......it just seems madness

If you're doing a beautiful wedding cheaply please help!!

People will be travelling a long way (some over 6hrs) so we want them to have a lovely time too

[OlderthenYoungerNow]

I spent £3k 8 years ago for a Saturday

£500 venue (an old brick barn)
£500 for registrar
£1k food
Dress was £200 from John Lewis
Shoes from ebay, £10
Rings £50 for husband's, mine was my nan's
My dad did the cakes for free
Family friends band played and we had an ipod playing for the disco
£500 in booze stocked from Calais, including the crossing
Bridesmaid dresses were £10 each from peacocks

Grooms suit was a wedding gift from my brother in law
Flowers were wedding gift from husband parents
Decorations my friends and I made ourselves on my hen do
My mum did my hair and make up
Cousin did the wedding video and photos
Had wild flowers picked from the venue gardens on the tables

Everyone said what a brilliant day it was! But then I like the shabby chic look luckily😂

[baffledbeyondbelief]

Consider getting married later in the day?

We had our ceremony at 4pm then straight into a hog roast, dessert and party. Feeding people once saved us quite a bit of money.

This would also save people staying for 2 nights if they had to travel.

[Saharafordessert]

We got married in our local church then hired out our village pub.
I think the key is to avoid traditional ‘venues’.
Why not go for something completely different.....much more memorable!

[Saharafordessert]

Oh and we only fed people once too......definitely helps.

[SweetNorthernRose]

We saved loads on ours by getting married later in the day (3pm) and not having a sit down meal. Saturday wedding, about 60 guests, in a lovely country inn type place. Came to about £7.5k all in, and that included 2 dresses as I ended up hating the first one

[Sleepyquest]

We got married on a Friday in October. We found a venue with no hire fee.
I did all the decorating myself, got arts and crafty. Didn't have a DJ, just a playlist on my phone through the PA system. Kept the alcohol to a minimum, there was a bar if guests wanted more. Rented suits. You could do your own flowers.
Shop around!!!! Haggle

[BunloafAndCrumpets]

Can you hire a pretty church hall? Much much cheaper than land and marquee hire. Hope you find something fab. X

[blackcat86]

2 yrs ago we had a cheap but lovely wedding. We found a beautiful local barn with a wedding licence and hired it for the day for £5k including food - 50 people for the ceremony, 100 for the evening. The package included drinks on arrival and after the ceremony, we put £150 behind the bar for toasts and people could buy more drinks if they wanted to. We actually got married at 4:30pm so didnt have a formal dinner just a buffet which worked well. My dress cost £400 from a local shop and I paid £160 for a hair and makeup lady on the day. She also did my nails and spray tan the night before. The only other costs were DH and DSS's suits at £200 each and a wedding camper van for £300 which transported both me and DH. DH was at home 30mins ish away and I got ready at PIL about 5 mins away so it worked well. I had no bridesmaids but my brother was my wedding party. He had a suit so we got some cheap ties off of ebay so everyone matched. FIL was photographer (free) and the cake was M&S for £60. We bought a few decorations for no more £50. It probably cost around £8k in total, maybe £8,200.

[Skiaddicted]

Ive just sent DP all your tips, he was resigned to spending silly money but i said i was going to prove him wrong, thanks again

[NamelessNinja]

We got married on a Saturday as I wanted to make it easier for guests but saved lots of money by getting married in March.
Rented a beautiful venue and had a band and excellent food but saved money by being sensible - No cars as ceremony and reception in the same place, got married later in the day so just had one normal timed evening meal and didn't have an evening buffet, took a risk and chose a new florist (who actually turned out to be excellent) as wasn't that bothered by flowers, oh and a relative (professional photographer) kindly offered to do our photography as our wedding present.
I think our wedding came in about £13k for approx 100 guests and I made sure we prioritised on food, drink and entertainment for our guests.

[ThePurpleMoose]

We did our own flowers and it cost as much for bridal bouquet, 3x bridesmaid bouquets, 2x flower girl posies, about 6x buttonholes and about 10-12 medium vase arrangements as it would have done for about 2 professional bouquets. I'd never done flowers before but we got them from a warehouse and they advised how much of everything we'd need based on the bouquets/arrangements we wanted. Then I just got Pinterest for ideas and tutorials and the bridesmaids, my mum and I spent a few hours the day before putting it all together.

Another way I saved money was having my mum's wedding dress chopped up and reimagined by a seamstress for £250 - way cheaper than a typical dress, really special for both of us and fun to show a photo of the original as it was a real transformation (the original was very much of its era ). Bridesmaid dresses all off the peg with a couple of minor alterations where needed.

See if there's any way you can make the food cheaper - instead of canapes we had an old-fashioned ice-cream tricycle which worked out cheaper and everyone loved it.

[crosser62]

Didn’t tell a soul.
Picked a week day at registry office.
Hired a dress, £90, dh wore his interview suit, I had a small posy.
Met our friends and family at the pub that evening. Invited them the week before... this caused about 80 people turning up at the registry office!! Fabulous!
We just said to every one, if you are not doing anything next Friday we are getting wed, meet us at this pub in the evening for a drink.
My dad paid for about 15 close family for a meal at the pub. (Insisted)
Less than 1k.
Great day!

Sounds very different to what you want though

[SandAndSea]

Call up your local Registrar's office. They should be able to point you to a list of all the registered venues in the area.

[AmbitiouslyFit]

Total of 8k.

Venue was spacious and nice but not too expensive (3.5k)

Food was from a small restaurant caterer. 3 course meal. Buffet style. So less waste!

Didn’t offer alcohol.

Decoration was simple but nice. Negotiated lots.

Cake was a small caterer who ended up making beautiful and yummy cake for a rand total of 300 pounds! And everyone was impressed by the actual cake.

Caterers and cloak men and so forth were hired privately for cheaper rates.

Invitation cards sent out by email.

Photography was only for the couples photo shoot before the wedding. Videographer wasn’t hired and instead I asked a friend to do it (I might’ve regretted this part tbh).

No DJ or musicians, instead I picked a playlist and gave the remote controller to a friend.

We had 200 people though

[Madvixen]

Hired a beautiful campsite for the weekend. Outdoor ceremony (think sunflowers and hay bales) followed by an afternoon tea from M&S. Disco in the evening in a marquee with a hog roast dinner.
Guests camped overnight so we had S'mores at midnight over campfires and bacon butties in the morning.
Dress and bridesmaids dresses were from EBay. Biggest expense was on flowers and decorations

[AmbitiouslyFit]

Oh yeh did my hair and makeup at a private salon, but I told them I’m a bridesmaid 🤣. This reduces my cost to a minimal :D. Bridesmaid prices a lot less than the bride.

Turned out really nice !

[Ohyesiam]

Last July for about 130 guests

Town hall registry office £400

Local village hall for 48 hours £300, with a meadow for camping, whole thing had a festi vibe

Flowers from local WI market, 12 buckets for £50, enough to do my bouquet and decorate the whole hall. It looked awesome.


Ceilidhband £400

Buffet £1300

Drinks , great offers from Tesco , really good prosecco half price etc, plus you can return anything not drunk) about £800

Dress £300 NancyMac

DJ Spotify playlist free

Breakfast for those who camped )40

It was a fantastic weekend, I wouldn’t have done anything different if I d had a spare £20 000

[TheLovleyChebbyMcGee]

We were around 14K, that didn't include a honeymoon, it was a Saturday in May 2 years ago. You will have to make major savings, but its definetly possible.

I think food and drink are the 2 big things you can save money on. Definetly not worth scrimping on though, just don't get tied into using certain caterers etc because of the venue. We had a barn venue that was pricey, but then saved money by having fish and chips delivered by a local award winning chippy. We had a free bar, we could afford that because we bought it all from asda when it was on special. I made loads of flowers from paper, so total flower cost was £60, compared to potentially hundreds. I used pages from my favorit book, they turned out beautiful.

[Ohyesiam]

Oh and no photographer. A friend set up a google photos page for me. We put the link on a blackboard and people photographed it , then sent all their images and videos in.

Really lovely way to do it,

[GettingPdOff]

It's the venue... £250 for local hotel. No need for £1000s....or village hall x

[LarryDuff]

You must be in a very expensive part of the country, we had similar numbers and had the full day in a 5 start hotel in central York, big dress & bridesmaids the full shebang, on a Saturday, fully catered including wedding breakfast and evening finger food for about £12k and we had live music. This was only 2 years ago.

[TwattingDog]

Do you want to get married and have the evening do at the same place?

If you can get married in a registry office, then throw a party afterwards, you'll save a fortune. Some registry offices are beautiful and often have larger rooms than you'd think.

[BendingSpoons]

A lovely golf course near Reigate. We paid about £70 a head to include food and some drinks (a few years ago). No venue hire cost as long as you had at least 50 guests. This was a Saturday wedding. Costs were lower as not exclusive but still very separate from the golfers (separate toilets, bar etc). PM me if you want the specific venue, vaguely in your neck of the woods!

[TwattingDog]

Example of lovely registry office - Hastings

www.eastsussex.gov.uk/community/registration/offices/hastings-register-office/

[AskMeHow]

We were lucky with our venue, it was relatively cheap (£1500 all day) extra costs for bar hire and we got outside caterers, and a DJ, they did do food but it wasn't what we wanted. Look at more artsy/community type spaces rather than 'wedding venues'.

No paid photographer - a friend who's good with a camera did a few family pics for us
No wedding car - we got taxis
Cheap dress - my whole outfit head to toe was less than £300.
A friend made the cake as a present
Another friend did flowers for me
No favours/name tags/table decs - there wasn't room and the caterers said not to. We handmade invitations out of basic supplies and created a table plan similarly.
No bridesmaids, I didn't want them
We had ushers but asked them just to wear smart trousers and bought them a matching shirt and tie.

Lots of the stuff you think is essential really isn't.

The majority of our costs was food - a renowned restaurant did it for us but discounted as we had a good relationship with them.