Saving for my wedding whilst planning it!!

nat82

We're getting married on a Saturday. 60 day guests and another 120 at night (180 in total). Our wedding budget is coming in at around 6k for everything. We should be able to stick to that. I'm cutting costs by getting the dresses from Milly/Land/Island Elegance, cake from M&S, using my Boots Advantage Points to buy my make up, looking in to using artificial flowers from here

We are saving as we go along too, so if you're crazy, then so am I!!!!

xxx

Poppy9

TugaGirl wrote: »

It will be here but we’ll have around 20 people coming from Portugal (that’s where I’m from) for the wedding. Again, I was hoping to pay for their flights and accommodation, but no idea how much that will be!

One idea might be to hire a couple of holiday cottages for a week or weekend that will accommodate the 20 people and they pay for their own flight as they are getting more than one night accommodation so effectively a free holiday for them.

xJayJayx

just going off topic for as sec.. i think sarah's flowers aren't as cheap as people think they are (all depending on what flowers you are having) as i said in another thread i have seen some made to order ones on ebay with 2 posies and a bouquet for about 40 odd quid and they're reputable too.

ruthie_2

We've budgeted £2.5k for ours. £100 registry office, £250 my outfit, £1k for external caterers, drinks, decorations etc for 40 people to come to reception at our home. £300 for both rings, £800 for honeymoon.

I'm sure you'll be able to have a fabulous do for £8k. I think people sometimes start talking crazy money for weddings, and you just have to shop around and make sure you are getting value for money.

shelovestobuystuff

if you use the budgeter on www.youandyourwedding.co.uk you can input your total budget,number of guests etc and it will give you the average spend for each item in one of the columns based on your budget.
I found it very useful as a guide but have ended up planning to spend much more on the venue and less on clothing than in their guide.Its very useful anyway.
What I did was first of all decide whether I wanted a big or small wedding,decided on the number of guests and then looked for the perfect venue.The venue is my biggest outlay.I then know what I had left for everything else and worked from there.

mrshaigh2b1987

were having everything we want for our wedding including a 3 course sit down meal for 30ppl the a buffet later on for 60ppl a disco and kareoke on the nite bouncy castle for the kids for the whole day my dream dress, full suit hire for all the men and fresh flowers and were not spendin no more than £2000 in total. so you will deff have a more than extravagent wedding for 8k! our honeymoon isnt includin that tho in total our honeymoon inclu spend is gonna cost us 6k eek! but were not havin that till sept 2010 so thats a yr after our wedding

Terri x

TugaGirl

:T Thanks for all your replies. I’m glad to know that I’m not the only one saving as I go along! xJayJayx, where are you getting married? It sounds like you are getting fantastic value for money!! J

Poppy9, thanks for the advise, I hadn’t thought about that! And those holiday cottages can normally be booked quite a while in advance!!

Even though we’ll have 8grand we will try to keeps costs down as much as possible, for example, my sister likes photography (and she is really good at it too) and was given one of those really good cameras for her bday, so we’ve asked her to be our photographer for the day. We’ve offered to pay her, but she asked if we could pay for one of her photography courses instead (£200), which we thought it was a great idea.
So like I said, I’ve got my dress and shoes so I just need to try and keep the costs down for everything else.

One thing that I have been struggling for ideas for is the evening entertainment!!!
The venue offers their in house DJ at £350 for the whole day – setting up background music during ceremony, wedding breakfast and will be there for the rest of the evening. Is this reasonable?
I don’t know if a DJ is what I want, but I cant think of anything else…

IWantToBeFree_2

In terms of saving whilst you are planning, its definately achieveable as it is what we are doing at the minute and have been doing ever since we set our date. Don't forget that a lot of things don't need paying for until right near the wedding, so you dont need the whole £8k before you even start thinking about it.

We've paid for stuff as we have gone along and put money into the savings at the same time and also then took it from the savings if we need to pay for stuff. As we have been buying stuff as we have gone along I've kind of lost count on how much we are spending.... We don't really have a budget, just will spend whatever stuff costs. I imagine it will come in at about £10k once we have finished, including honeymoon, but I have had the added expense of not buying dresses from Landy etc

shelovestobuystuff

Saving while planning is a good way to do it.Your not getting debt for the wedding and thats fantastic.
I am making the money I need for stuff as I go along and its working so far.The priority stuff gets paid first and that means if I do run out of money I can drop items or find cheaper options for the remaining stuff.
The DJ deal your venue offer sounds very good indeed.

'I don’t know if a DJ is what I want, but I cant think of anything else'
you could have the DJ for some parts and other musicians for ceremony.We are having a string trio just for the ceremony and little champagne reception immediately afterwards.Thats my entertainment budget blown so we are just using a cd player in place of a DJ for the rest.Background music on a cd player during the meal(a mix of easy listening/ethereal which I love like enya and enigma) and OH is doing the music on the cd player again for the evening dancing bit(rock).
What do you like?Do you love piano music or the sound of an electric guitar?You could find a live musician to suit your tastes.Loads of people use solely the DJ and use different sorts of music to mark different parts of the day.

Tigerlilley1980

TugaGirl wrote: »

:T Thanks for all your replies. I’m glad to know that I’m not the only one saving as I go along! xJayJayx, where are you getting married? It sounds like you are getting fantastic value for money!! J

Poppy9, thanks for the advise, I hadn’t thought about that! And those holiday cottages can normally be booked quite a while in advance!!

Even though we’ll have 8grand we will try to keeps costs down as much as possible, for example, my sister likes photography (and she is really good at it too) and was given one of those really good cameras for her bday, so we’ve asked her to be our photographer for the day. We’ve offered to pay her, but she asked if we could pay for one of her photography courses instead (£200), which we thought it was a great idea.
So like I said, I’ve got my dress and shoes so I just need to try and keep the costs down for everything else.

One thing that I have been struggling for ideas for is the evening entertainment!!!
The venue offers their in house DJ at £350 for the whole day – setting up background music during ceremony, wedding breakfast and will be there for the rest of the evening. Is this reasonable?
I don’t know if a DJ is what I want, but I cant think of anything else…

Hiya our dj is costing £150 and that is the inhouse one. Although we are just having the dj on the evening. The venue has said that we can find our own dj and i have already found one for £145, so maybe you can find one cheaper, if the venue will let you. Tiger x