Wedding ok £7k budget?

victoriamarie

I got engaged very recently and we are hoping to have the wedding sometime next year. Our budget is a max of £7k (not including honeymoon), which is a lot of money to us but small in comparison to the "average" cost of a wedding in the UK. I think we could probably save a bit more than this, however neither of us could justify spending much more on a single day and anything extra we'd rather put it towards the honeymoon.

I've had a good look through the wedding tips on here and whilst I don't have a cake-making aunt, DJ cousin or space for a marquee I've picked up a few ideas to save money:

Guests - neither of us have a huge circle of friends or really close families so we'd estimate 30-40 daytime guests and 50-60 in the evening.

Bridesmaids - I'll only be having 2 bridesmaids (my nieces). I've seen gorgeous short prom-style dresses on ebay (cost less than Coast), and I'm thinking of sending them both to the local salon on the day to get their hair put up on the day as it seems a lot cheaper than than having a bridal stylist come to the house. They can also do their own makeup and use their own shoes (if they have some that suit the dresses).

Pageboy - I'll be having my nephew as a pageboy. I've seen suits from BHS which are quite reasonable and actually cheaper than hiring.

Best man/Ushers - fiance hasn't thought much about this yet but I think there will probably be just a best man.

Flowers - I've seen some beautiful artificial flowers on ebay, really reasonable prices and from sellers with excellent feedback.

Venue decoration - I've picked up lots of ideas on here for DIY table decorations, favours etc. and will probably do without chair covers as well - my fiance isn't keen on them anyway, thinks they look like bed sheets with a bow on.

Ceremony & reception - I'm hoping to find a place (civil venue) where we can get married late afternoon and a reception venue that can provide canapes and champagne for the day guests to toast, then skip the sit-down meal and go straight to the evening buffet. The last time I went to a wedding I recall not enjoying the buffet anyway as I was still full from the wedding breakfast!

Cake - I've heard good things about the M&S cakes. I'd purchase 2 tiers and decorate myself with flowers.

Rings - will be spending around £300 on plain bands from samarajames.com where my engagement ring was purchased.

Dress - of course I want my "dream dress" but could not justify spending £800+ on it. I am going to make an appointment at a local wedding dress outlet store which sells last seasons designer dresses for £99-£299. I have also thought about buying from preloved or ebay, and even getting something custom made in China (although I've read mixed reviews on these companies and it seems like it could be a long, stressful process).

Accessories - I'm hoping to pick up some bargains on ebay/preloved.

Hair/Makeup - I hope to find a reasonably priced mobile hairdresser, and I do want a hair trial as I don't want to risk not liking it on the big day. I also want my makeup professionally done so will shop around for this. Hopefully I can find someone who can do both as a package.

Photography - This is something I don't want to scrimp on, I want beautiful pictures to look back on in years to come. Hopefully we will be able to haggle a bit after getting prices from various photographers. We also want to find someone who will just sell us the CD of pictures only as we both like the idea of making our own wedding album/photobook later.

Hen/Stag parties - we haven't thought about this much yet but for my hen party I will keep costs down as much as possible as some of my friends can't afford to spend a lot due to other commitments.

I know the next thing I have to do is call venues to get an idea of prices (they don't give much away on their websites), but from what I have listed above do you think £7k is a realistic budget? I don't have much experience of weddings - I've only ever been to one full day and one evening reception and have never been involved in the planning of one. Also if you have any more suggestions to save money that would be really helpful

jackieglasgow

£7k is a very good budget, and very do-able, especially with your numbers. Watch out for venues imposing minimum numbers though, far better to find a smaller venue in the first place. Congratulations and good luck.

katsmasterplan

I wouldn't listen to all that cost of the avergae wedding stuff. You can easily have a great day on that budget and it sounds like you got great ideas already. if you try and get a package deal with a venue you can save loads because you won'e have to buy loads of extras x

horse76

Hi, We managed to stick to a budget of around £5000 as we were funding most of it ourselves. This didn't include our honeymoon though. My Mother/father-in-law paid for my dress £600, and they also paid for someone to make the cake £200.

If we'd done the cake, I would have opted for the M&S tiers and decorated myself. Our venue supplied the flowers (burgh chambers) and we got some lovely cream and gold table decorations made by a seller on ebay. Also got my bouquet and 2 bridesmaids bouquets from ebay, all artificial.

We chosen venue was a local hotel. Can't remember the cost of the venue, very minimal if it was anything. I'm sure the major costs were the menus/drink. They had a choice of different set menus, with a price per head. We got to put 3 choices on the menu for each course, also price per head for evening buffet. It was all very straight forward planning it, only hitch was on the morning of my wedding day the balloon company who were supplying the balloons for decorating the tables, phoned to say they hadn't been paid for so they wouldn't supply them! I knew they'd been paid for, but receipt was in OH's wallet and he obviously wasn't with me. They eventually checked their receipt book again, and realised someone had written that it had been paid in the wrong place - no apology from them for getting me in a panic on my wedding day for nothing.

Horace

Go and look at a few venues - if you just go by their website and what they say on the phone then you may be disappointed. Always haggle prices where you can.

As for chair covers..think of using something else, I was reading something on the Net today about someone buying some turkish scarves in a market (you could buy brightly coloured Indian ones) and draping them over the chairs and then giving them away to the guests afterwards. Some chairs will need covering as they look so vile.

MrsManda

We spent about £6000 on our wedding without the honeymoon so it's perfectly doable. We had 40 people for the whole day plus another 50 in the evening. Had a BBQ (Tuna steaks, minute steaks, nut cutlets and a few other things plus salads and two different desserts) for our wedding breakfast which cut the cost quite a bit and it was novel having a BBQ in October

We started with the budget, created an Excel Spreadsheet of all the things we wanted, priotising which ones were most important to us, put in estimated cost for each item, making sure the total didn't exceed the budget then as we decided on things, the actual cost got factored in which gave more leeway for other things.Worked well and we came in under budget.

As with all these things it depends on what's important to you, it's one of the best days of your life so you don't want to end up in twenty years time wishing you'd done it differently but also it's not worth bankrupting yourself over - the most important thing is you get married to the one you love and your family/friends can share your happiness

salesadmin

Ours in coming in at about £4500 excluding the honeymoon, we have 70 day guests for a three course meal and have caterered for 70 in the evening too as most of the day guests will not be hungry enough to eat too much! We hired a venue and got outside caterers as we were getting quotes from hotels etc at about £3000 just for the day guests, no drinks or buffet!

We have been very lucky and found a photographer that is capturing our day for free as she needs to update her demo books

lindaatno9

Photographers. Your side of the coast I can highly recommend Emma Case. http://www.emmacasephotography.blogspot.com/ She gets loads of recommendation from Rock 'n' roll bride and she's shot one of my clients vintage weddings. She's willing to travel (I think lol) but defo give her a call. She also has a FB page http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Emma-Case-Photography/87839202025?v=info&ref=sgm

xx

Queen_B_3

Our budget is £7k excluding honeymoon, it's ample enough. We have the same attitude as you in that we don't want to spend ££'s on our wedding day. We are having 42 to the wedding breakfast and then 60-70 to our evening do. Luckily our venue isn't commanding minimum numbers but a lot of the venues we looked at were.

hayleythedaisy

Your budget is a tiny bit bigger than ours and you've got a few less people and we are having a very similar day to yours :-) You should be fine. Good luck and enjoy the planning.

mellymeep

lindaatno9 wrote: »

Photographers. Your side of the coast I can highly recommend Emma Case. http://www.emmacasephotography.blogspot.com/ She gets loads of recommendation from Rock 'n' roll bride and she's shot one of my clients vintage weddings. She's willing to travel (I think lol) but defo give her a call. She also has a FB page http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Emma-Case-Photography/87839202025?v=info&ref=sgm

xx

I love emma case so much, I was gutted she was booked up for my wedding day though

OP - that is a completley workable budget, like everyone else has said don't bother thinking about the 'average' cost of a wedding.. our budget is about 5k!