How to keep cost down for a small wedding?

[bells2810]

My fiancé and I are planning on getting married next autumn and would like a small wedding with maximum 50 guests. We would really like a rustic barn wedding, very intimate and informal eating arrangements etc.. We have just started looking at venues and have been a bit shocked to find a lot of venues start at £4K. My brother got married a couple of years ago in a village hall and has told me their wedding cost around £6k in total.

We would like to keep costs down as we are expecting a baby in spring, so will need to prioritise paying for childcare etc., as well as the horrific cost of living prices at the moment. We both work full time although I will be on statutory maternity pay for a few months at the start of the year.

Does anyone have any tips on keeping the prices down for a small wedding? I can’t believe how expensive it is just for the venue, and we don’t want anything over the top or excessive!

thanks in advance

I would really investigate village halls over wedding barn venues. Some are no good but some are high quality and much cheaper than a wedding venue.

Look on local Facebook groups for people selling on things from their weddings (signs etc), cheaper than buying new!

Rustic flower posies in jam jars rather than vases. Make your own playlist so no dj.

Good luck.

Is that £4 just for venue hire? That seems ridiculous. Barns are very trendy, aren't they, so you are going to be paying a premium for that. As PP said you'll get much better value in a church/ village hall.

Where in the country are you OP?

And what are your plans re the catering?

I’d fix a budget in mind, rather than just trying to keep costs down, as that makes it easier to keep under control. Even if it’s just ballpark figures plucked from Google at the moment, I’d start a spreadsheet and budget for each wedding related expenditure. Venue hire, ceremony fees, florist, venue dressing, confetti, cake, dress, suits, bridesmaids, groomsman, hair and makeup, rings, shoes, DJ/band, any gifts for parents and bridesmaids, stamps, stationery (invitations, menu cards, place-cards, guest book, seating plan). Maybe that will help you figure out what you want to prioritise and what you don’t (and so you can save costs on).

£6,000 for a wedding for 50 people is only £120 per person and with the rising costs of food, a large part of that will be taken by food and drink alone so I doubt you will be able to match your brother’s price though.

I think if you really are on a shoestring, separate ceremony and reception venues are the way to go as any licensed venue (hotel or licensed barn etc) is going to charge you a fortune for their 'wedding package'. Bit of a pain of course as you have to look at how people will get between the two venues and it breaks the day up a bit but even paying for taxis or a mini bus for people will usually cost less than a swankier venue overall once you consider the savings you can make on catering and booze. Or you can do what seems increasingly popular, do the legal bit quietly beforehand at the registry office (can even be on a totally separate day) then have a humanist or other non legally binding ceremony where you do the whole vows and exchange of rings bit (the advantage being you can then have whoever you like conduct the ceremony and it can be wherever you like inc. outdoors if weather allows). I know some on MN think this is 'cheating' as the part your guests are invited to is not technically speaking when you are legally married but I am totally used to it as in DH's culture/religion their traditional ceremony is not legally recognized or allowed so practically everyone does the legal ceremony seperately but everyone thinks of the traditional parts as the 'real' wedding...

For your reception I'd def look at non standard venues that don't particularly advertise on wedding sites etc, basically anywhere that will allow outside caterers and bring your own booze without charging corkage. Village halls can be cheap depending on the village but bear in mind the conditions that may be attached e.g. whether you are allowed to set a up a pay bar or some don't allow alcohol at all. It might be worth also looking into marquee hire if you have e.g. any relatives with a paddock it could go in although again the 'upfront' costs of hiring the marquee itself aren't the whole costs, e.g. consider if you will need heaters, an electric hook up etc. and where everyone will park and toilet facilities etc. Another cheaper option can be a pub function room and a buffet which could work well if you can find one walking distance from the registry office or you could book a licensed hotel just for the ceremony part which is typically miles cheaper than having the reception there as well.

Catering options are myriad once you aren't tied to expensive in-house packages - you can even self-cater a buffet or BBQ if you are brave enough, or look at something like a hog roast or fish and chip vans for non traditional catering. Definitely do your own bar or at least beer/wine to go with the meal (usually works out cheaper even if the venue does charge corkage) and then there are mobile cash bars that can come out with you for the evening.

Once you'e worked out venue and costs of feeding and watering your guests, everything else is pretty much optional so it's a case of working out how much of your budget is less and what you want to prioritise. E.g. is having live music or a DJ crucial to you or can you delegate the job of putting together a playlist and sourcing speakers/sound system to a groomsman or bridesmaid? How much do you want to spend on your dress and other outfits (I know people that have got super bargains buying second-hand or hiring if you aren't too fussy, or to save even more money choose a dress that isn't a 'wedding dress' at all). Can you hand-make things like invitations, favours, wedding cake, flowers, decorations (or have any talented friends/family that would do that for you in lieu of a wedding present) - or can you ditch any of these altogether? Any family/friends with a nice car and happy to act as chauffeur, or again can you just take a normal taxi or walk to the ceremony? For photos many people now only have a professional photographer for the ceremony and a few group shots after, which saves a lot of money compared to having them there for the whole day, particularly if you know some of your friends and family have good cameras and will take lots of good snaps of the evening/reception.

Good luck!

I agree with setting a budget and sticking to it.

As mentioned above, things like making your own table decorations and playlist can both really keep the costs down.

My DM was a bit miffed that I wasn't having a big wedding with speeches and a Wedding Breakfast but you are still married at the end of it, just not as skint

Have a look at Bridemaid's dresses as well as Bridal Gowns.

I've been to a couple of weddings where the bride wore a Bridesmaid dress and both looked utterly gorgeous.

Where abouts are you or willing to travel too? Maybe we can help with ideas.

Keep the number of bridesmaids and groomsmen as low as possible. We had 3 of each stupidly. 3 bridesmaid dresses cost more than my wedding dress, plus accessories, hair etc we spent a fortune on them! Same for groomsmen. Also we had no band, just a dj, no hire car, just a family member with a nice car, photos by a friend who likes photography. No special wedding album (800£!!) but a printed photo book (80£ for 3, two of which we gave to our parents later on).

We did a village hall wedding for £6k in 2016, for about 100 guests.

We saved by

• designing and printing our invites on vista print


• we got married in the church attached to the hall so no travel costs


• food was a buffet and dessert was wedding cake


• when I was dealing with florist and the caterer I said I didn’t want to spend anymore than £X and they worked with that.


• No extras- no favours, save the date cards etc that all add up and nobody misses them!


• I got the our bridesmaids infinity dresses from an Etsy seller from the Philippines for about £40 each- brilliant quality.


• Photographer was £500- he was just starting out and building up his portfolio, so about 1/2 the price of someone more experienced.

Was a brilliant day/night and very chilled. Because it was a DIY day we weren’t working to anyone else’s schedule, which meant we were able to have our ceremony at 3pm. the party was informal- guests ate their fill and then the music started, so no long gaps for photos or waiting for the next course of the meal etc.

Sounds perfect @FirstFallopians

Oh yes, don’t bother with a band!

Biggest waste of money ever- I’ve never been to a wedding where anyone was raving about the band. People just want to mingle and get pissed and you can do that just as well to a DJ as with a band, at a fraction of the cost.

We got married on a weekday which saved us a small fortune!
registry office ceremony followed by lunch at a favourite pub of ours. We hired the pub out for lunch (guests paid for their own booze though) but many places have their own function rooms now. Ours came in at under £4 grand for the entire wedding minus the honeymoon in 2016
Apart from the ceremony which is the legal bit, we just planned our wedding as you would a big party

We're getting married on a similar budget with about 40 guests. Registry office then we've hired a private room in a local restaurant for the afternoon/evening, which is costing about £2k. That leaves us with £1.5-2k for everything else. I'm quite crafty so have made my own dress and am making things like table decorations. Will do my own hair and make-up and will be ordering flowers to be delivered a day or two before and making my own bouquet.

When I was planning my wedding I used a website called Off-beat Bride which featured very non traditional weddings. Among the slightly OTT “ Star Trek” themed weddings were some beautiful ideas - some of them very quaint and homespun. I found it helped me separate the elements I wanted from the elements you tended to see . Bows on chairs and favours and the same type of dress endlessly repeated. You could for example have a pot luck family wedding with guests bringing a dish to share… very American idea and not one I’ve seen in the U.K. but thrifty. I have been to a couple of garden weddings. One had BBQ and one where the food served family style - pudding was a pile of strawberries. Dancing was from a play list and not a DJ or band. Flowers arranged by a talented friend. Decorations were candles in jam jars. Weddings can be low key and still gorgeous.

@seaweedhead

I love the sound of a home-made dress… gorgeous. There was someone on MN recently who had found her perfect wedding dress in a charity shop. Love that too. If my friend was getting married I’d be happy to help with any of the crafty elements.

@Divebar2021 I did look in charity shops as well-my local oxfam has a whole floor dedicated to used and ex-display wedding dresses. Worth a look OP.

We did it for 5k, 35 guests back in 2015.

ways we saved:

• by trimming down the guest list to family and very close friends only
• registry office for ceremony - v cheap and we were lucky there was one near where we lived that was VERY beautiful, but at council prices!
• DIY flowers. I am lucky in that I had a friend who was learning floristry so she did my bouquet and the 3 button holes but for bridesmaids and tables I just had bunches of hydrangeas. I used a company called Triangle Nurseries - you buy the flowers wholesale from the Dutch nursery and they deliver them to your door. Sooo much cheaper and also very fun to suddenly be surrounded by flowers to arrange the day before your wedding! Not sure if shipping costs will be more now because of Brexit but worth looking into.
• yes as PP limited to only 2 bridesmaids and a best man. Bought best man, groom and father of the bride coordinating tie and pocket square each (from tk maxx!) and luckily they all had a navy suit anyway. It helped that we weren’t going for “matchy matchy”. Bridesmaids had dresses in the same colour but different styles from high street shops so £50 each
• did my own hair and make up. I do every other day!
• made lots of things myself. Invitations, order of services, colouring books for the kids were printed from the net then hole punched and tied together with string, tin cans for the hydrangeas on the tables, made millions of tissue paper flowers to hang up, made confetti cones, made a guestbook… anything we could make basically
• yep no band or DJ just make some killer playlists
• biggest biggest saver was the reception venue. Again we were lucky in that our fave local pub is quite quirky, their upstairs function room is perfect size and they didn’t have a hire fee, just a £1,500 minimum spend. Once we’d paid for 35 x roast beef dinners and puddings, and a few drinks for everyone, we had topped that anyway. After the dinner we had a cash bar so everyone just bought their own drinks. I know some frown on this but we definitely couldn’t afford to pay for everyone’s drinks all night!
• a relative baked the cake. We went for a simple naked style cake and I decorated with leftover fresh flowers and made my own paper cake topper
• a friend who has a nice car kindly put ribbons on it and drove me to the venue

other keys things to think about are what things are really important to you? We decided to splurge on a photographer we both loved and spent £1,000 on that, so a massive chunk of the budget. We didn’t get the fancy album though, I just made a premium photo box one for £70 after.

anyway it can be done, you just need to be clever about where to spend it and on what!

It's absolutely possible to have a great wedding on a small budget.
Don't get a 'wedding venue' they charge the earth. But be prepared to do more of the planning and preparation yourself.
We got married in the registry office. Tiny number of witnesses. Then to local nice pub for (literally) wedding breakfast with close friends and family. Then booked a local community space for the afternoon/evening. Decorated it ourselves with some bunting and jam jars of flowers and tea lights.
Food was a buffet, with a late delivery of take away samosas and pakoras for the late munchies! Free bar, premises licensed but no actual bar, so we just bought a load of drinks from the supermarket.
We didn't do proper invites, I think we just emailed and texted friends. No favours, no big frocks or rented suits. I bought a dress from Phase 8. Kids were in Monsoon dresses.
We made a playlist and just had it on the PA and had a ceileigh.
We had a brilliant time and it all finished at 11pm so we could go home!

@seaweedhead your wedding sounds a lot like ours 😁 forgot to say I also made my own dress but sewing is my big passion so I was really excited to get to make it! It did save me a lot of ££ too!

We've booked a twilight do - cheaper and less long-winded.

We did similar to others up the thread - put money into the things that people remember (ie: food and drinks) and ditch all of the added "bits" that no one overly cares about such as favours, bands, sweet carts, fancy wedding stationery etc. Get a guest to make the cake and have that as dessert. Use in season flowers either from your garden or from a supermarket for table/venue decorations. I did my own makeup as I decided that I'd rather gain a skill and products than paying someone to do it for me for just one day. We paid for bottles of wine on the tables and also for glasses of prosecco for the toast then the venue had a bar where guests just paid for it themselves if they wanted more. I don't think anyone objected, or if they did, we don't know about it over 6 years on!

We booked ours "last minute" (ie: 5 months to go) and ended up getting a really good deal at the reception venue because they openly said if we didn't take it then they wouldn't find anyone else, so you might find that the prices drop as you get closer to the date particularly if you don't want a Saturday in summer but you may have to widen your search to include non barn venues as they're quite "in" now so might still be at the top end. We did get a Saturday but it was early March and paid around £35-40 per person which we then worked out was the equivalent of taking everyone to Spoons given what they had food and drinks wise, but better quality!

other than deciding how much you can really afford to spend, think about what you really "need" versus "want". The basics of "need" are the legal bits .... beyond that, its genuinely up to you.

if that's certain people / amount of people ... then maybe that comes at the expense of the kind of reception? or would you rather have fewer people but able to spend more per head?
think about the timings of the day - would that mean you could do different / cheaper catering?

I saw a beautiful picture of a bride today - she'd bought her dress from a "normal" store I use. She looks lovely - its a blue floral dress so certainly not traditional bridal. Knowing the store / range, I suspect she paid about £80 for the dress.

Avoid any venue that mentioned weddings! Village or church hall with outdoor space is your best bet unless you know someone with a decent sized garden (I used my parents garden, was about 40mx8m before anyone thinks it was huge). I did my own catering, stick to a buffet and avoid anything with the street food tag ... doubles the price. You can hire a cash bar or just provide some drinks and suggest people bring their own if unlicensed premises. Church will cost you circa £650 if you keep to the basics, less if you know an organist/use recorded music. Second hand or high street dress.

I've costed it for work - we are thinking offering a wedding package for £2500 inclusive of the church, organist, choir, hall, buffet and sound system (connect to iPad) with 20% discount if actually come to the church ... I think we are on to something!

@brainstories568

You see my must haves are different - the thing I remember is the music at weddings. A good band is a must! I will save money on the food by catering myself and hiring a hog roast