How much did your wedding cost? (Simple, low budget)

[WinterRose92]

Hi, just looking for advice and tips please!

My fiancée and I have been together for 11 years, engaged for 8 years and have not got around to getting married yet. But soon we’ve got a bit of money coming our way so we want to finally tie the knot. We’re looking at the end of the year/ early next year.
We want a simple, no thrills wedding on quite a low budget. There will be around 55 guests for the ceremony itself (that’s after whittling down, we have a lot of family between us) and then we just want to have a bit of a party after (buffet, DJ etc) and possibly invite a few more people to that.
If you had a wedding like this or similar, how much did it cost? What were the breakdown of the costs?
And what do I have to do? I’m a bit clueless about sorting it all!
Thank you for reading, any help will be appreciated.

I should say as well, our local registry office is closing soon so we won’t be able to have our wedding there as I originally thought we would. That would have taken up to 60 guests but the new one in its place only offers a basic ceremony with 4 guests allowed.

I'm planning a wedding atm. We want 40 people. sit down meal and then a buffet/ DJ later. We're aiming to do it for £5,000 but we know we'll have to do things ourselves and make savings (my mum will buy my dress so that's not in the budget and neither is our honeymoon).

whitershadeofpale what kind of venue are you looking at?
Quite exciting to finally be thinking about it all now and starting to put plans in place!
We’re thinking of just skipping a sit down meal and just doing the ceremony a bit later in the day then having party/buffet/DJ etc.

Ours was as follows:

Wedding at hotel incl 56 day guests, 3 course meal, welcome drinks, 1 alcoholic drink with the meal, toast drink £3000

Additional evening guests and hog roast and sides £750

DJ - £150

Photographer - £750

Bridesmaid outfits and hair/makeup - £250

My dress, accessories, hair and makeup -£2500 (I had a custom gown that was extravagant but I wanted to treat myself)

Men's outfits - £1000

Transport for evening guests - £300 (totally optional - we decided on this as a last minute treat)

Evening drinks as guests arrived -£400 (not needed but a last minute treat)

Total wedding £8.5k roughly.

We were gifted flowers but the quotes we had were about £800 for that.

Ours is about £8k. 50 people, but no more coming to the evening as that put the cost up! Wedding breakfast, alcohol on tables, DJ, buffet in the evening, canapés and drinks while we’re having photos. My dress was more than I wanted to spend but I couldn’t find something I liked in the cheaper styles, and we’ve covered everything ourselves. Suits for six groomsmen. Two bridesmaids. Rings, cake, everything.

It would have been about a grand and a half cheaper if we’d gone for a week day but we wanted a specific date, which is a Sunday this year.

I reckon £5k might push it unless you’ve got parents who will help or know people who will do cakes/photos/etc for cheaper, but it’s probably possible!

Let me see if I can remember everything -

Wedding package for 55 at hotel with meal, drink for toasts, evening buffet, table decoration, chair covers & DJ - £5k

Kilts for men - £200 (my dad refused to take part so that reduced the cost here)

Bridesmaids - £350

Favours - £30 (DIY boxes with sweets)

Car - £150 (we only needed one)

Hair for me and bridesmaids - £130

Fixing a wedding day nail disaster - £30

Flowers which was 3 x bouquets, 3 x button holes, table arrangement and a topper for the cake - £100

Photographer - £250

Things we were gifted -

My dress and shoes £1100

Wedding cake £200

So around £7.5k and it was the wedding of my dreams and I didn't scrimp on anything

We did it for about 6k, included the church, village hall, car, some decorations, dress, flower girls, suit and food. Tips: We bought a buffet from Costco's, made a lot of the decorations myself, ebay is your friend for flowers and ivy, and fake flowers as just as good as real ones. Bought his suit in the sale, flower girls dresses from ebay, jewelry in sales. Our cake we bought pre made MnS ones and decorated them ourselves from cake toppers from Ebay. (In case you didn't notice, we are ebay fans).
The DJ was a family friend. I enrolled help for the kids corner from a vicar friend who is used to doing messy church. My sister and BIL have degrees in stage management so were able to help set the room up.

Doing everything ourselves took a lot of time, but it saved us a lot of money. I understand why people pay for it though, to lessen the stress.

Depends where you are as well, our church and hall came out just under 1000 pounds, but were in the NE so things would be cheaper than say london way.

If you need any tips feel free to PM me. Weddings can be beautiful and inexpensive, it's a fallacy that they can't. Best of luck xx

Oh also forgot, we hired the photographer for an hour for the ceremony which came to 200 pounds. I found everyone's photos were just as good and more candid of the reception afterwards

Whole thing for less than a grand

Amazing, thank you for all the replies - it’s great to get an idea of costs or it’s there’s anything I hadn’t thought of.
Biochemistree how did you do it?

We had 60 for the ceremony and meal, then another 20 or so in the evening.
Registry Office ceremony, we are really lucky that our local one is beautiful, followed by a pub reception.
Food for a wedding breakfast and buffet in the evening. Wine on tables and for the toast. Clothes were eBay or high street, I did my own flowers and DH made the cake. DJ in the evening. Didn’t bother with things like wedding cars or favours. Came in at just under £5k.

It's probably not everyone's dream wedding but we managed to keep the cost down by just not giving a shit about details!

My mum drove us to the registry office in her people carrier, we didn't have any table dressings, chair covers, centrepieces etc, got married on a Thursday (cheaper) and had the night do on the Saturday.

Wore my mum's dress, did my own hair and makeup, husband bought a primark suit (knew it would never get worn again, 50 quid) had a friend take photos in exchange for food (not professional, just hobby), went to the local pub/restaurant and everyone paid for their own meals (I know this is a MN cardinal sin but I made it very clear well in advance and took no offence if someone couldn't make it).

Only had our 2 daughters as bridesmaids, got their dresses from TKMax, 20 quid each. Son didn't want to wear a suit so came dressed as iron man!

My dad got flowers and a dj as a wedding gift. He used to run a garden centre and was a dj in the 90s so has useful friends 😂

Me and my mum did all the party food ourselves, bought banners and balloons on the cheap from card factory. So the only things we actually had to pay for were official wedding costs, dress alteration/cleaning, a couple of outfits and room hire/food for the night do.

We got enough in cash gifts to go to our favourite city for a couple of nights so that was our honeymoon (wasn't planning on one originally)

Just depends what you want out of a wedding, its doable on a very low budget but it's not fancy.

Just to add, we didn't put a wanky poem in the invitations asking for money! It was not expected at all. In fact we didn't even send invitations we made a Facebook event and text the ones who aren't on fb 😂

Biochemistree that’s amazing! Love that your son came as Ironman! 😂
I’m not worried about having a fancy wedding, just want to get married and have a bit of a party to celebrate it!
Wanky poem 😂😂

It worked really well and was very stress-free. All the oldies came to the ceremony and then all the fun relatives and our mates came to the party. Nobody got left out, it was fab. Doesn't matter if anything goes wrong cos it's cost you fuck all 😂

Top tip for keeping costs down is to have a late ceremony. Ours was at 4pm (50 guests, registry office on a Friday) and then we had a few photos and champagne on the lawn outside and all went straight off to the evening buffet/band/DJ at 5. We had the reception in our favourite pub, all really casual and lots more people turned up throughout the evening and had a good dance and plenty to drink! It worked really well for our guests as there was no hanging around waiting for the evening do to start, and most of them were able to travel on the Friday morning so stayed in our city on the Friday night to make a weekend of it.
Think the whole day cost around 2.5k. Good luck with your planning and have a lovely day!

Ours was about £6k with 120 people, food and booze was the biggest outlay and we went budget on venues, did decorations ourselves, clothes were simple etc. Basically no real frills and friends and family helped a lot by growing flowers, making the cake etc.

I think you can save a lot of money by splitting off the legal bit from the celebration, we got formally married the week before then had a celebrant for a little ceremony on the wedding day.

I think having a 'perfect day' type ethos causes lots of stress, if you just look at it as a party and recognise that no one really cares much about the finer details, you'll be ok.

I went to a good one in someone's back garden, marquee with high tea sandwiches and cakes made by the family and then a chip van came round later.

£347 which included a weeks holiday/honeymoon...we eloped.

Ok so I started off planning our wedding exactly as you have described with a budget of around £5k. Now somethings I have managed to get at bargain cost, other stuff is more expensive than I had budget for. I'm currently looking at about £7k....
I had no idea the registrar was £500 alone, this includes the admin fee and the fee to give notice!!
Our ceremony venue cost is extortionate (IMO) £600, but hey ho we need an approved venue.
We're doing something similar late afternoon ceremony, then buffet with background music, for 55 guests, welcome drink and drink for a toast included. Then evening do with DJ and light bites later on and probably an extra 20 or so guests, I think the total will be around £2k.
Managed to get a good deal on photographer and car hire.
Flowers have come in a bit more than I expected at £300 as this is for only 2 bouquets,a small posy and a mixture of 15 button holes and ladies corsages. Although I am having quite a large boquet as I saw a picture and just kept going back to it.
Dress including alterations £600.
Got my shoes for £25 ! And they're gorgeous.
Spent about £300 more on our rings than planned, but we liked them!.
So some of my costs have increased because i wanted professional hair and make up. Had to have minimum numbers so this has bumped up the cost, total £400 for both.
I'm only having 1 bridesmaid. Found an absolutely bargain of a dress just need to get her try it on. Still need to buy 1 flower girl dress. Hoping this will be no more than £50.
Accommodation night before and night of wedding has bumped our cost up as were not having a hotel as a venue. This is £440.
Oooops still need to sort a cake.....
Dont think were bothering with favours.
Will be ordering invites on Ebay.
Mens suits is looking at about £900 including footwear. More than we budgeted for but ... hey ho. I think I have now budgeted for everything so I'm hoping were not going to be much more over the £7k figure.