How to make a wedding not cost £10k!

[BrideOnABudget]

Hello
I am recently engaged and planning our wedding for 2026. We are thinking months April-September, not too fussed which in between that period.
I've been looking around and everything seems to be costing around £10,000+ which is just so much money and not something we can afford!
We are looking at around 80 guests and like the idea of a barn wedding, tent weddings, castles, hotels etc. but a lot of this is obviously extortionate!
Any suggestions on how to make it cheaper?!

Our budget was about £5-6k - but to achieve that it was more of a DIY wedding and lots more work for us than my friends who had a more expensive wedding. We hired a beautiful village hall near us with nice grounds surrounded by fields. We decorated the hall ourselves the day before the wedding, I did flowers myself. We had friends DJ and play in band, my brother and cousin took photos so no photographer. We actually got officially married at the registry office a few days before and then on the day itself one of our best friends did the most gorgeous ceremony for us. My dress was about £250 and my husband just got a nice suit from next, no bridesmaids etc. Rather than sit down dinner we hired a company to do a BBQ in the afternoon and then we'd bought loads of samosa and pakora from a local Indian shop for evening snacks, we had cupcakes rather than a big wedding cake. We hired a bar in the evening and had bought lots of wine and beers from Aldi for afternoon drinks.

April- September will be the most expensive months. Would you consider having your wedding in winter (avoid Dec as Christmas weddings are also popular)?

Would you consider a weekday wedding? It means people will leave early and some won't be able to get time off work. But they are cheaper and a reduction guest list means cheaper food...

You are looking at the type of wedding venues that are expensive. If that's your priority, then there will be large compromises elsewhere tbh. Weddings are very expensive!

One of the more important things which impacts the coat is headcount since food is charged per head and 80 is a significant number of guests. Having said that there are some things you could look at:

• venues - a less typical venue that is not churning out weddings every weekend of the year might have lower costs and/or be more flexible about what you can have and what they might throw in for you
• flowers - I found a local florist who grows her own flowers and offered a service where she delivered buckets of flowers and I bought vases and arranged them (with help). The flowers were beautiful and we saved a lot on having them arranged.
• band. If you have a local music college which hires out students for events you can save a lot compared to hiring a proper band

-dress. Go for a non-typical dress ie not a proper bridal gown. Or find a shop which sells bridal gowns second hand

It sounds odd to say, but remember that none of the details of your wedding will matter to anyone else, so feel free to do a cheap option or even miss things out (as long as they don't really matter to you). I didn't bother with favours, my flowers were the cheapest option from the florist and I didn't do any decorating of the tables/chairs etc., wedding dress was off the rack from Monsoon, and I got the simplest cake from a local baker. I knew I wanted to spend a little more on food and drink, so that's where the budget went.

Go for a weekday. Unless a lot of your friends are teachers.

If you manage to do it for 10k that would make it quite a cheap wedding for 80 people.

I was going to get married in 2020 - it got cancelled due to Covid and then we started having kids so haven’t got round to it yet.

We were going to -

hire a marquee (we have a few acres at home)
organise Nepalese food via a local guy who had a food stall in a market (this was still going to be about £20 a head)
pizza van for later in the evening
drink - kegs of beer, wine and bottles of spirits with mixers
hire tables and chairs
string quartet from the local music college
second hand dress

this felt about as ‘cheap’ as we could make it but I think it was still coming in at about 10k and we only had to hire a marquee, not an actual venue.

I don't know what area you live in but we have some wonderful village halls in our area with lovely grounds and views - they are often used for weddings at a fraction of the cost of the barn venues.

You have to decide which components of the wedding are of most importance to you and take it from there.

We got married years ago and I wanted a particular venue, so we kept it to family and closest friends for the day time/meal, and invited everyone else for an evening party which kept costs down (this is very much frowned upon in current MN land, but was very common back then)

I did my own invitations, we got someone we know who was a keen photographer to do the photos at a discount, someone else we knew had fancy cars so we got them discounted, I hired my dress.

There's lots of ways to keep costs down.

Fewer guests, different time of year, not a Saturday, fewer "frills", no "evening do". All you need is a Register Office or church (few hundred pounds). Then take a small group of people to a restaurant, or have a buffet in the church hall. If you start thinking of castles, of course it will be expensive!
Start with the essentials, then scale up, rather than beginning with the full Disney production number and trying to scale it down.

For the type of wedding you're talking about for 80 people in the summer months, that is just what it costs.

Barn/ festival type weddings are often mistakenly thought of as a budget option, but they're really not, unless you DIY, which is a massive undertaking - and can also end up being expensive!

You're out in a rural place that isn't necessarily geared up for 80 guests, and you can end up needing to book portaloos, wet weather alternatives, caterers who need to bring an entire kitchen set up, etc. Sometimes you even need to provide your own tables/chairs. All of that is expensive.

Castles and hotels are obviously also expensive options.

Sorry to be blunt but if you want a cheaper option then you need... a cheaper option... like a village hall or a pub/ bar after the ceremony, or consider fewer guests.

We did it for around £8k but that was 8 years ago so costs have gone up. We had it in a hotel rather than tent/castle/barn so was cheaper to start with, then did a lot of diy with flowers, decorations, place settings. Wedding dress was from a sale at a nice wedding shop so only cost £300, suits were hired not bought.

I did a pretty DIY wedding which was hugely time consuming to organise.
Still very expensive as we needed to hire the marquee, catering equipment, generator, caterer with staff etc.
Obviously saved money on buying our own booze and making own decorations, invites and so on.
If you think about it, 80 people at say £60/head including drinks is already almost £5k, without any of the other stuff.

Alternatively if you want a fancier option, pick a Tuesday in November or January.

Not April to Sept - that is the most expensive time.
Go for a weekday - we got married on a Friday (10 years ago so not a popular day then) and it was about 30-40% cheaper. Mon to Wed are cheaper now I think.
DIY as much as you can - invites, table decorations, place settings, favours.
Got for a non traditional venue - barn wedding are extremely popular now so expensive. The others you list are likely to be expensive too.
Book as far ahead as you can - we got some massive discounts by booking 18months -2 years ahead. Our photographer did half price (which he admitted he regretted) to secure a booking so far ahead. Wedding cars again were half price due to booking so far ahead and a Friday booking.
Shorter day - I know people who cut out the wedding meal and did late afternoon wedding, snacks for day guests then just the buffet at night.
Fewer guests is the big one. No additional evening guests. Ive been to alot of wedding now that only have day guest no additions in the evening.
Take advantage of sales for your dress / bridesmaid dresses.

Decide what is most important and work from there. Ours was venue/food and my dress. Those we spent the bulk of the budget on our venue and food. Had a high budget for my dress then spent 18 months DIYing everything I could.

Why don’t you and your partner, and closest family, just get married in a registrar office - costs £56. And then after hire a venue, - pub, barn, restaurant, field or similar and have the best party ever? You will save your selves so much money, and events like this are relaxed and fun, a wonderful way to celebrate your marriage.

What do you want from the day? Is it a party vibe, nice sit down meal or more focus on the ceremony? I would say focus on the element that matters the most and spend your money on that instead of doing the whole big bonanza which realistically cost way way more then £10k.

We did it for about 5k in august. A lunch for 40 guests with wine and welcome drink, pizza in the evening at the campsite attached to the venue. Monsoon dress (professionally altered) no attendants, I made my own cake and my mate did the flowers. M&S suits for DH and DS. Professional photographer and venue/food were the big chunks of money.

Oh and it was a weekday!

First post nails it. Do DIY.
Not only is it cheaper (if you do it right) but it means that you can really involve friends and family. It's lovely to look round the room, or look back at photos, and think "X did the cake, Y did the flowers, Z organised the bar", it makes it even more special.

If you want the type of venue you describe then £10k in peak wedding season seems about right to me for that number. I'm assuming that's for exclusive use of venue and catering, wedding reception and evening party, but not including flowers, dress, cars etc etc?
My son got married 2 years ago at a beautiful country house hotel, approx 70 guests. Changing the date to beginning of November and having it on a Sunday took £7k off exactly the same wedding if they'd had it on a Saturday in September.
Guests were happy to take the Monday off work, as pp said this could be an issue if lots of your friends and family are teachers. There were 2 teachers at my son's wedding, they went for the whole day including main wedding reception but didn't go to the evening party and didn't have much to drink.

I'm sorry OP but feeding that many people does cost a lot! Especially if you're looking at a castle. Hotels are probably the cheapest of your list of preferred venues, if you get a reasonable hotel out of season, it can be relatively affordable.

Can you trim the guestlist?

Other things - less bridesmaids and ushers - each one will cost you an outfit, flowers, probably a gift, maybe hair and makeup if you're doing that... just one or two is much cheaper.

As others have said, slash the 'nice to haves', such as invites, favours, photo booths, etc., none of it is remembered by guests.

I think that's pretty standard for a late spring-summer wedding for 80 people, I'm afraid - unless you want to DIY it very very hard or make it very low key.

My wedding was planned at a dry hire venue for 100 people with homemade dessert, food from a 'posh' fish and chip place, and everything else as stripped back as possible and that was coming in at 12k - and that was with stuff like no flowers other than my bouquet, photographer for 2 hours only, a £100 dress, friend doing the entertainment as a wedding gift, playlist rather than DJ. In the end we sacked it off because it felt like we were making too many compromises to the point it would look like a village fair and we were more bothered about not spending the money. (We took 20 people to the town hall and then went out for a meal and it cost us £1500, plus £1k in lost deposits for stuff we'd booked, and we had the best day - although I appreciate that's not for everyone!)

You either need to go smaller or accept these are the costs, unless you want to hire e.g. a church hall or nice restaurant and decorate it yourself!

Less people, shorter timeframes (I think I got married at 1pm, which also helped with guests travelling to attend), DIY venue where you can bring in affordable catering, off-season timings, off the shelf cake, sale shop for dress and suits, local flower farm and DIY centre pieces, small or non-existent bridal party - we had kids as bridesmaids, they enjoyed it more than any adult would have.

£10k is pretty good value for a Spring wedding. Try not to get swept up in box ticking a "proper wedding" sack off the bits that don't matter to you. It's easy to compare yours to others and the next minute you're paying £100s for chair covers, I can guarantee no one has left a wedding and thought "weren't they lovely chair covers".

We had ours in April in a local cricket club where the food was £11 per head (buffet but high quality). Venue hire was £400 and for 80 people cost about £2.5k. They offered wedding packages but we went with the party option as it was a twilight wedding and wanted to keep the costs down. Saved money by having rectangular tables rather than circular, no chair covers etc.

Simple church or registry office late in the afternoon

Hire village or church hall - one where you can bring ( lots of ) bottles

Late service means only one meal needed - have you got family or friends who can pull together an M&S buffet instead of a wedding gift?

Have another group of family or friends who can offer a clear up service instead of a gift

Splash out on the one thing you want - flowers, dress , disco whatever

Get married at 3 then you only have to put on one meal plus later night snacks