How on earth does anyone afford to get married?

[Orangetattoo]

Apparently the average cost of a UK wedding is £20,000!

I have no experience with these things, does this sound about right?

Venues alone start at £3,500.

This just seems totally impossible.

Anyone know of any much, much cheaper weddings?

It's under (well under!) £1000 for either a civil ceremony or a church wedding. You don't need all the other stuff to have a wedding.

£5k, 7 years ago. Gross golf club with some fairy lights, 120 people. I don’t have a breakdown. But it wasn’t “cheap” everything. We picked a band over a DJ for example. Think we just saved money on the stuff we weren’t interested in like fancy invites and loads of flowers.

Just get married. It's 'having a wedding' that people spend lots of money on.

If the wedding is more important than the marriage you're doing it for the wrong reasons.

Mine! 5K total. Beautiful historic venue for 30 guests, afternoon tea :) Coming up end of the year.
If we wanted to book at a restaurant for more people that would be another 2-3K.

There are loads of tips to save money. Book off season on a weekday, last minute packages etc but my top tips would be:

• DIY/Secondhand. I bought all my wedding flowers from someone else, FB marketplace and Gumtree are great places. Choose common colours.
• There is a lot of rubbish you don't NEED. Wedding industry will try to pressure you.
• Think outside the box, We are having a Brookie Tower instead of wedding cake with a topper. Much, much cheaper and more delicious!

Also OP, you CAN hire a celebrant and do the whole 'wedding' thing at an unlicensed venue. Which is often much cheaper.
It just won't be legal, so do that bit before.

Of course you can get married cheaply. It's a different kind of wedding but it's absolutely possible.

I mean, the minimum amount is a registry office midweek, in clothes you already own, and some witnesses.

We did a registry office, no flowers or photographer and anything wedding-y like that, and a high street restaurant. That was an expensive meal as it was for 15 people, but nothing like the cost of a more traditional wedding.

Our wedding cost £5000 as we got married on a Tuesday in February. The exact same wedding on a Saturday in August would be at least 4 times that.

My type of people in this thread. Nothing wrong with a big fancy wedding and all the trimmings but it was never what I wanted so didn’t even go down that road. Registry office with closest family, a big family meal afterward with some entertainment. No hen and stag do. I just wanted the marriage not the wedding. Don’t know how people can drop so much on one day but it’s each to its own I suppose.

FWIW I do think a 'traditional' wedding is still pretty cheap - depending on what you mean by that!
My parent's generation was church wedding then pub reception. Both pretty cheap if you're local, not one of those pretty places that have become official 'venues' and charge extortionate prices. We did price it up where DH grew up and venue, food + drink (the biggest costs) came to about 3K, for about 70 people. I reckon we could've gotten everything else in for 2-3K more.

Getting married can cost under £150, but if you want a 'do' with all the trimmings, then that is what costs thousands.

We spent about £6K 7 years ago and had jut over 100 guests:

registry office
village hall
hog roast buffet rather than a sit down
m&s cake with a personalised topper from Etsy
fabric flowers
I bought my dress second hand for £100, person I bought it from paid £800 for it and it was immaculate.

We’re getting married soon. Registry office with DS and a couple of witnesses then nice pub lunch with our DS, parents, grandparents and siblings. We’re in the hundreds rather than thousands for costs! 😂

If I’m dropping £20k in one day then I expect something much more exciting than a party tbh 😅😂

Each to their own though! I love a good wedding. Have what you want, and more importantly - what you can afford!! It’s really not worth getting into debt over in my opinion!

@Orangetattoo “getting married” and “having a wedding” are two different things.
The legal requirements are the marriage licenses and having a ceremony in a Registrar office - which involves paying for the Registrar themselves to do the ceremony and use of the room. I think we paid for copies of our marriage certificates too.
£300 tops maybe.

we eloped and it was perfect you don’t have to have a big expensive wedding

The average is meaningless. You can have a wedding at any budget - from just the cost of the registry office to a massive event.

Best $80 I ever spent.

I've been to a mega expensive wedding abroad (bride from that country), doubt they got much change out of 100k if I'm honest. 1000 guests, some quite prominent (politicians etc). It was fabulous. I know everyone here hates expensive weddings but if you're gonna do it, blow a house price on it 😂

Marriage lasted 5 years. In terms of ROI, pretty poor!

The most fun weddings I've been to were both casual - camping, hog roast, BYOB.

The most forgettable were somewhere in the middle - the standard wedding I guess you could say where the only differences are the colour scheme/venue/food. Been to loads of those.

I’ve got married in the registry office, big suit. BBQ in the in-laws garden afterwards for family and close friends. Disco in local community centre in the evening. £3k in total. Fantastic party.

Divorce is even more expensive! Don't bother!!

I agree with all of the previous posters. A wedding doesn't have to cost a lot. Yes it will if you go all out with all the extras, loads of guests and an expensive venue but they don't have to be like that.
I remember far more and enjoyed the casual, more unique weddings I've attended than the larger ones that end up all feeling the same. It's entirely up to you how much you spend and what you feel is important but I certainly don't remember the flowers, chair covers, wedding table decorations or even the cake of most of the weddings I've attended! I barely remember the details of my own. Just do what's important for you and don't be drawn onto the wedding bandwagon of having all the extras and trimmings that cost an absolute fortune.

Registry office and lunch after with the witnesses. Job done.

Don't ask on here. A mumsnet idea of a wedding is a very unromantic, zero fun, contract signing legal event!

Scotland has lots of package deals especially if midweek

Awww come on - you can have fun without splashing the cash.
The hype around weddings is unreal. I do think MN provides a bit of balance as every other place - wedding blogs, wedding forums etc are all pushing a perfectionist narrative.

IMO most 'forgettable' weddings are formulaic. Not all formulaic weddings are forgettable. Why?

I remember the weddings of people I'm close too - big or small.

Don't quite remember the weddings of those that I don't know very well (like DH cousins etc). Those tend to be big, and most big weddings are 'standard packages', hence why they had space to invite people like me. Unless it's a massive bash like @AHugeTinyMistake 's experience, all samey. In many cases I didn't even get to speak to the B&G (beyond a quick greeting!).

I did not want people that I hadn't even spoken to before at my wedding so i chose to keep it small. Especially as people marry later in life they realise how they didn't really enjoy other people's weddings and so make the same choices.

I hope my guests remember my wedding - not because of anything 'unique' but because it was MY wedding, not anybody else's :)

My wedding cost 10k in 2017 for 70 guests. We used our savings for it!
We got a cheaper package at the hotel for going off peak (March wedding).
My mum bought my dress, in-laws paid for the photographer. I saved in some areas - MIL made the invitations, sister made the table plan/table numbers. But spent more in others - spent a ridiculous amount on flowers and got a sweetie cart that we obviously didn't actually need!