Reducing wedding costs without sacrificing what we want...

Horace

Firemunchkin wrote: »

I have spent much of the morning trawling these forums for ideas and solutions (and I've written down quite a few!) so apologies if this seems to run over old ground for some of you.

We are planning to get married in about 18/24 months' time - we have worked out VERY roughly that we need to save up around £20k and pay off our debts as well (totalling another £8.5k).

This is how is we have worked it out so far:

Venue: £2k-£3k (everything I've seen so far charges a LOT for day hire)

Food: £2k-£3k (with around 50-70 guests this is our rough estimate)

Drink: £2k (we want some champagne to start for toasts and then some money behind a manned bar)

Dress: £700 - £1,500 (I am getting a bespoke dress from a woman in Kent, I have yet to find out the exact price)

Suit: £700 - £1,000 (well if I'm having a bespoke dress, its only fair HE gets to have a tailormade suit!)

Car: £500 (approx - to bring his gran from Wales to London)

Entertainment: £1.5k (approx: we'd like a DJ, some face painting for the kids, possibly a cartoon artist)

Photographer: £1.5k (approx: I have only had one quote but am hoping there are some reliable photographers out there for less)

Honeymoon: £5k (the biggie, we don't get to go on holidays very often and if we're saving up lots and lots then we might as well save up a bit more for this, the holiday of our lifetime)

So, the way we're going to pay for it is thus:

His mum: £100 a month over two years = £2,400
My mum: £2,400 approx
We're getting a lodger: £450 a month over two years minus costs = £9,000 approx

After that we'll be saving the rest ourselves, and as you can see this is a considerable sum - £6,000 - £7,000.

We are going to look for venues which don't require us to use their preferred providers for flowers/food/drink, possibly hire a hall with an alcohol licence and get the rest ourselves. I understand from the forums here that this could dramatically reduce our costs.

The problem is we don't want a church wedding or a registry office wedding, we'd like somewhere we can have the ceremony itself. We love the idea of a converted barn - but the main thing is that we want something that doesn't feel sterile and impersonal. If I had my way I'd get married on a cliff overlooking the sea - but what about the weather?! We need to make sure we get somewhere that will be lovely if the weather is good, but also if the weather is bad.

If anybody knows of somewhere in the East London/close to M25 area that might be suitable then please recommend!

Food - we both like the idea of a BBQ or a paella and I've found a few on the web but so far have not gotten any quotes. If anybody has any recommendations that would be fab!

Drinks - provided we can get our own into the venue then we'll source these ourselves. However, we would like a manned bar, does anybody know of a company that does pop-up bars?

The dress I'm not budging on. That's the one thing I'm having the way I want. However, I haven't decided whether to have my hair or make up done professionally, and I have no idea where to start finding someone I trust for this. Recommendations would be very useful!

We have no idea where to start with entertainment or photographers really, so any recommendations here would again be very useful.

Thereafter, its the little things that will cost extra, like centrepieces, decorations, invitations etc and we'd like to limit the cost for these to around £1,000. We'll be trying to do as much ourselves as possible, and we don't need anything too fancy or posh.

I'll leave it there for now, hope this isn't too long, but really - any recommendations/ideas/suggestions would be most welcome!

Not wanting to be rude but do you want a grandiose wedding to impress your friends?

There are some lovely registry offices about and they are not all impersonal and this may well be an option than hiring a huge venue for around £6K+. Ditch the idea of a free bar too have a pay bar, instead of champagne have cava people won't know the difference (cava is cheaper).

If you are having a bespoke dress - ask your dressmaker how much it will be because you don't want a nasty surprise and find that you are forking out more than £1500. Your H2B could possibly hire a suit as this is cheaper because if you want the full blown works then is a suit with ascot going to be worn every day?

£500 for a car to bring Grandma from Wales - can Grandma get on a coach or a train?

I don't want to frighten you but the food budget is usually around 60% of the total wedding budget.

As for hair - try Lisa Shepherd there is a salon in London - makeup try asking at the makeup counters in Selfridges as the girls often have their own businesses as well - I know one lady on the Lancome stand in Birmingham that does although she tends to stick to Birmingham. You could ask on Bobbi Brown for instance for a make up lesson.

Wedding invitations - you can make these quite easily and that will cut down on the budget a bit.

Start going to wedding fairs (the season starts again in September) that way you get to see various photographers and they sometimes have offers on - you need to see their work and like it before you commit. I can recommend an excellent photographer who travels https://www.jamescrockford.com - he isnt cheap either and probably a bit more than you want to pay.

A decent DJ will cost you around £400 - to find entertainers look at entertainment agencies, you may be able to find charicaturists and children's face painters.

Remember that if you find a venue that allows you to take your own alcohol in they will charge you corkage and this can be as high as £15 a bottle.

Have you thought of getting married abroad? Gran Canaria is on the same time zone and 4hrs away but it is considerably warmer and you can get married outside and still have a fab time - then you could have a knees up for your chums when you got home. You cannot get married in the open air in the UK so a cliff top would be out - those are the rules I am afraid.

Flowers - buy flowers that are in season as these will be cheaper than 'tropical' ones that have to be flown in from around the world. You could even make your own bouquet and button holes...again this would save money.

You can still have the wedding you want if you are prepared to cut corners a bit and make things yourself.

With regards to be clearing your debts - have a look at the debt free wannabe board and post your statement of affairs up there (https://www.makesenseofcards.com/soacalc.html) the folks on there will be able to tell you what to cut back on and which credit card to pay first.

RainbowDrops

Horace wrote: »

Not wanting to be rude but do you want a grandiose wedding to impress your friends?

Actually, when I started looking at wedding costs I didn't think it was possible to get it lower than £20K for 100+ people.
The OP has looked at some generic budgets, but is asking us for MSE tips, which I've certainly learnt since coming here (I think I made a similar first post!)

:money:

Alyssa_C_2

Have you thought about hog roasts? I think that would cut costs and still be a very good talking point. I really want one!

Katie-Kat-Kins

Firemunchkin wrote: »

You've been most constructive, I really appreciate it!

No problem, just a word of warning about the money behind the bar, there is a slight danger that your friends don't see it as your generosity but as a free bar and get a little over excited/careless about what they are ordering. In fact some packages you can buy include a free bar for a set time (expensive packages) so don't bank on people thinking that what they order is coming out of your pocket. People naturally want to get what they can. I'd do tokens on the tables or something to keep a bit of a check on it.

With photographers it is a bit of a case of you get what you pay for but not entirely. If we think about the photographers fitting into three brackets:

1. The under £300 ones, these are the bottom end, they are bound to be cutting some corners. There are good photographers in this bracket who offer a budget service by cutting out extras but this price bracket is bound to be a compromise. You may well find the photographer lacks skills or experience, or his equipment and technical knowledge isn't up to much or he uses naff albums or whatever. If you go for this bracket be very careful and check back up provision, insurance, etc.

2. The £500 - £1000 bracket, there are lots of excellent photographers in this bracket. Look out for the cheaper packages offered by more expensive photographers and haggle them down. Our photographer generally charged more than this for all but one of his packages but we haggled! He was excellent. Beware that there are still some rubbishy ones in this category, often in this price bracket they try to cover it with special effects and fancy extras.

3. The £1000 plus bracket - This will be the top notch packages from the photographers in the lower brackets (think about whether you need everything in that package) and some really high quality photographers offering very bespoke designer type products. Some are amazing, we looked at a website one guy had done with lots of lovely arty shots but his quote was £5k. BUT be warned some of the arty ones are not willing to take direction, and some aren't as good as they think they are. We spoke to a lady who was offering an expensive package, she had some lovely shots that were used in publicity for our venue, but in all honest she had gorgeous albums, a handful of gorgeous shots and a lot of very average ones - not worth the money. She also had no back up photographer and did not stay all day. We got much more for our money with the chap we used and his photos were better.

You really need to spend some time looking at photographers as they vary hugely. Some are very arty, some technical, some do press or sports work as well, and some are hobby photographers trying to make money from their hobby. Some people want a basic record of the day, others want arty shots for their wall, you need the right photographer for the job.

Some great photographers undervalue themselves others massively over value themselves!

moneysavingideas

If you haven't already set the date for the wedding then I would suggest do a little pre-wedding budget planning.

You do this by decide roughly how much you can afford or want to spend on the wedding and honeymoon, then work out how much money you are able to save each week and this will tell you when you roughly when you should have the wedding in order to be able to have enough money saved up to pay for it all.

You don't really want to start out your new life together in debt so it is generally best to have it all paid for by good honest saving techniques.

As far as trying to save money on the expenses without it spoiling you special day you could check out some of the Wedding Saving Tips on this website.

Good luck and have a great wedding.

Chris.

talulahbeige_2

What struck me about your initial post was your plan to save the money, and it's alot of money

When i started planning back in 2008 i knew that I could save £xx each month but for the wedding budget we had i only needed to save £x in the wedding fund and by the time it comes to pay for everything (now) we would have more than enough.
Life doesnt work like that, life happens. We've had to move house unexpectedly, buy a new car, go to 8 weddings all away from home etc etc.
Consequently we are now not spending money on enjoying ourselves as we need every penny to pay for the wedding and we will still owe a small amount post wedding.

Also, what happens if your lodger situation doesnt work out as planned? Anything could happen, i've heard countless stories of them running up ridiclous energy bills because they dont have to pay them, you do. Again it's life and you can't plan for it completely.

lynzpower

Hi there OP

Just wondering if there is any update on any venues? Im/ were looking in the same area and finding the same issues with catering/catered/ velue costs. We'll have people coming from North and South so want to be somewhere near london where they can find cheapish accomodation and hopefully advanced train tickets etc as most of our guests are as skint as we are!

Would love to hear about anything else you have found

Lynz

Silaqui

Hi everyone,

I'm planning to get married on a very small budget (mainly because I'm tight!) and all your advice to the OP has been very useful!

You all sound so knowledgable, I don't know the first thing!

Silaqui
x

Magicboo

You could try searching for village halls in Hertfordshire? I spent a long time searching my local area for a pretty village hall for our reception...unfortunately they were all too far away, but there WERE some very pretty places.
The main reasons we wanted our own venue was as you've said, for the freedom in choosing the food and no corkage charge. We are having a "free bar" but not actuaully a bar, just wine on the tables and a couple of barrels of beer. I reckon people probably won't even notice they don't have the option of gin or vodka by the time they've finished eating!
We found a caterer just starting out who is doing our food for alot less than other quotes we were given (my favourite was £48.50/head for a hog roast and salad!!!) at a wedding fair.
I have discovered the best thing to do is take time to research everything and don't jump into making descisions. You've got some time, make sure you use it! Oh, and try on lots of wedding dresses-it's SO much fun!
Godo luck!