minimum wedding spend

cupid_s

Hi all
Recently I have seen several posts on here regarding how cheap some people's weddings were - I personally just don't see how! When I got married 2 and a half years ago we spent about £5500 on the wedding and a total of about 4k on the honeymoon.

However now it seems likely I'll be planning and organising another wedding in about a year (in a different city to where i live as well). But with a much much smaller budget.

So what are the things you need for a wedding.

I was thinking you need:
suit hire for groom, best man and father of the bride.
A wedding dress and shoes
Bridesmaids dresses (not having a bridesmaid is NOT an option) and shoes
Wedding bouquet (nothing extravagant) and bridesmaids bouquets
Registry office/church fees
A photographer
Possibly wedding cars if you have to travel from chruch to the reception
An evening buffet
Wedding cake (i know this doesn't have to be expensive)
Wedding rings

But all this alone seems to go over the budget we have (about 3k).

How did everyone else manage? Surely these are the basics...?

Counting_Pennies_2

music for the evening?

cupid_s

Counting_Pennies wrote:

music for the evening?

thanks
also forget wedding invitations

the list just gets bigger and bigger!

Rachie_B

its not about the "things" you have though

its all about ( or was for us anyway lol) shopping about and getting the best you can for the least £££s lol
there are loads of bargains out there ............ end of line dresses ............ 2nd hand ........... sales etc etc

of course there are "extras" like favours / gifts for wedding party / balloons etc which you dont actually "need" but some people like to have / feel they have to !

and every couple is different regards to what is important to them

for us photographs werent hugely important so we had a small cheap videographer / photographer package

the best memories are those in your head not in a book gathering dust ............ IMO

ETA we spent about 9k in all and that was without having come accross this site at the time lmao

we didnt go without anything we wanted and it was a perfect day in our eyes

thriftlady_2

This is what we spent money on for our wedding 11 years ago;

Licence + register office etc

This is what my parents spent money on;

My dress (not a long white job -something from Monsoon big enough to cover my bump )
A meal at a nice pub afterwards for our immediate family-10 people + a toddler

Obviously this may not be the kind of wedding you imagine but it was really cheap.

thriftlady_2

Forgot to add that my mum bought a simple cake which was horrible I should have made one;)

Mumstheword

Our costs were:

Registry office licence
Rings


erm...
er.....

That was it!

I couldnt bear the idea of being the centre of attention and wearing a wedding dress! Each to their own, and you have to balance what you spend against how important each item is to you.

angeluk69_2

£60 Wedding Licence/Banns We paid
£95 Wedding Dress (actually had a Bridesmaids Dress from BHS that was in the sale reduced from £120) Mum Paid
£20 Invitations Mum Made
£35 Flowers Mum Made from silk and I still have my arrangement
£110 OH Suit from Next We paid
£330 Honey moon at the Seaside
£? My Mum and dad paid for a meal for all the family + friends and then we went out and got drunk later on
£37.50 Regitry Office costs on the day (we forgor about this cost and did a collection on arrival - cheeky I know)
£0 Photos, My dad did them all for us
£32 wedding ring for me
£0 wedding ring for OH his was his dads

Thats it, I think!!

It doesn't need to be expensive to be nice, it didn't rain the sum shone and last week we celebrated 4 years on being wed. I have known people spend thousands on a wedding and it tip down with rain.

You make the day into what you want.

thriftlady_2

Forgot the ring too :rolleyes: £50 from the jewellery quarter in Brum

And I'm still waiting for the honeymoon.

hobbesy_2

angeluk69 wrote:

It doesn't need to be expensive to be nice, it didn't rain the sum shone and last week we celebrated 4 years on being wed.

You make the day into what you want.

Did you get married on the 31st? We celbrated four years last week too!

Also a register office do. We are not religious and a lot of the offices are really lvoely old buildings, much nicer than some of the tiny licensed rooms in expensive hotels

Dress was £120 ish from monsoon
Invitations in the whsmiths sale (came to about £10 i think)
Disco £150 paid by mum
Buffet also by mum
Hall hire £25
about £50 on balloons, ribbons, napkins, bunches of flowers made into arrangments by us, table cloths, etc, etc

Used our own cars. We happened to have a white car at the time and so did my dad. Think hubby and dad both really enjoyed cleaning up their cars and putting the ribbons on, etc

Don't know what else but it came to about £1000 in total and was indeed a fantastically beautiful sunny day and we loved it

Keri -x-

angeluk69_2

Yes 31st 2002 such a lovely day, just a pity the MIL is is every picture but hey, you can't have it all.

Belated congrats BTW