MoneySaving Weddings Article Discussion

Our wedding was not at all a budget wedding (approx £20k for 55 guests) but we were both entirely happy with how much we spent and wouldn't have done it differently. We saved up for it in advance, no debt.

Saves
-My dress, £100 from ebay, a sample from a bridal salon. I thought it might arrive a bit dusty on the bottom but it was perfect! I spent a further £100 on a custom cape to go with it and alterations were about £120.
- Flowers. Flowers are sooo expensive and they die. We used a mix of dried flowers and paper book page roses which I made. It took a long time but worked out very cheaply compared to 'standard' flowers cost - about £60 for all the table decor and centrepieces etc. I had a florist who works in dried flowers make the bouquets and boutonnieres for £200 incorporating paper roses I made, they were beautiful, glad I didn't try to DIY the bouquets.
-Car. Do not understand the point of wedding car. Spent £5 on decorations for his parents' car, his dad drove us to the ceremony.
-Cake - one of my BMs made it for us as a wedding gift, it was perfect.
-Decor - I made it all myself using a Silhouette diecut machine and a laser engraver. My husband made willow 'LOVE' letters which we decorated with left over dried flowers - free as we already had the willow (he makes baskets as a hobby) - looked identical to these: https://www.artisandriedflowers.co.uk/design-20129841/handmade-willow-love-letters.htm

Timeconsuming but saved a lot of money relative to how much we would have paid to have these things made for us! NB. DIY doesn't always save money if you are making unnecessary things...
-My ring - had my granny's wedding ring remade into a curved band to fit my e-ring.
BM dresses - ASOS on sale and they were perfect. Can't believe how much BM dresses in bridal salons cost...
GM suits - just told them to wear their own navy suits.

Splurges
-His made to measure suit- but he can wear it again and again unlike my dress!
-His ring - had the jeweller who made my e-ring make him an awesome palladium/gold custom band, again it will last forever
-Alcohol - we provided an open bar using really high quality booze (£30 english sparkling wine, top shelf spirits, wines from vineyards we like). Don't regret this at all, it was super personal and guests loved it! Probably one of the causes of 'that was such a fun wedding' comments we've had since.
-Invitations. Spent rather a lot on letterpress invites.
-Photography. Spent about £2k on photography not including album but it was so worth it, it was a 2 person team. They were so friendly and easy to work with and the pictures are absolutely amazing, a mix of fine art and photojournalism.


The other expenses were fairly standard for a wedding - venue hire came in cheap but the stretch tent/marquee was expensive (it looked awesome though). Catering was good value and they also provided the bar staff to run our DIY bar which my husband made!

Although we spent probably close to the UK average for a wedding (the figure seems to vary depending on where you look!) we tried to make it look very special and have our guests feel well looked after (not cold, thirsty, hungry etc). Had loads of lovely comments about the wedding and we had an amazing time so it feels like money well spent

If you've got plenty of time, I'd recommend buying decorations from Aliexpress, it comes from China so it may* take 30 days to arrive, most stuff is within 10 days, but you can get some real bargains on there.

I'd never use Etsy ever again since so many people are buying goods from there and flogging them for 100x the price!

In case this helps anyone else, here is what myself and my sister did to save money on our wedding days.

Venue

After reading Martin's article, we chose to get married on Friday the 13th. Now, I know that's not for everybody but we saved £800 on the venue price as nobody else wanted this date!

Cake

We simply didn't have a cake. And you know what? Nobody even noticed! Everyone had pudding during the meal so nobody even mentioned it. One to think about when cakes can cost £500.

Dress

My sister wore an evening gown instead of a 'wedding dress'. She found one exactly the same as the original dress she had wanted, but because it was a pale gold colour it was considered to be an evening/cocktail gown so she snapped it up for £310! The shape was that of the popular fishtail dresses that everyone loves at the moment and due to the colour, everyone thought it was very unique.

Cars

If nobody is going to see you get out of the car at the church/marriage venue, then why do you need to hire posh cars? Get a relative to take you or take a cab. Honestly, you'll be glad you saved on this one.

Invites

I know a lot of us make these ourselves (I did and so did my sister), but with the old t'internet being so freely available, why not email everyone instead? You can create something quite professional-looking using a free service such as MailChimp.

Hope my two penneth helps someone

Over 20 years ago we got married on a budget. Our parents didn't have much money, and nor did we.

We agreed 1 or 2 priorities. My wife had been married before and just wanted a nice car. I'd seen rubbish photographers ruin things so I wanted a good photographer. So here's what we did:

DAY
We got married on a Monday. Nothing was booked by anyone else, so we had complete choice, and EVERYTHING was cheap. All our guests could make a long weekend of it.

PHOTOGRAPHER
We got a brilliant photographer who was hardly noticed and EVERY shot was perfect. (We met them before and saw some wedding albums where every shot was great and we were assured that we were looking at every shot. They looked like full-on goths when we met them but toned it down a lot on the day!). They said we had them for the whole day but we only used them before & after church.

CAR
My wife chose a lovely classic open-top car with a driver who reminded us of Mutley from Wacky Races. He was happy to drive us around our suburb for ages so we could smile and wave a lot.

VENUE
Our terraced Victorian house was the venue. Enough room. Zero cost. A few years later my sister did it better by getting free use of a friend's huge garden and had there been rain then their huge conservatory and dining room would have been fine.

FOOD
We did a buffet. Our sisters helped prepare and tidy. We went round the supermarket and bought loads of stuff. Then decided it wasn't expensive enough so went round again and got more unusual foods.

CLOTHES
All hired. Not a brilliant fit but good enough. In hindsight I wish I'd bought a waistcoat because the hired one gaped a bit. Suit was fine, though.

CAKE
My mum got a simple 2-tier from someone she knew.

AFTER ALL THIS TIME, WHAT I WISH WE'D DONE BETTER
Put more thought into the speeches.