weddings on a 3k budget...ideas??

kazaroona

hi girls,

we have set aside a budget of £3,300 for our wedding because I feel that as much as we could probably save more and certainly spend more on our wedding, I dont particularly want to... im having a baby this week (if it ever comes out) and we are also saving for a house. The best wedding I ever went to was on a stricter budget but didnt seem cheap and was so much fun and informal.
Anywaaaaay, the point of this post was that I am confident that with some creativity and planning and using the fab posts on here, I can do a majority of the wedding cutting a lot of costs but the one thing I am struggling with is the venue and catering so I was wondering if a) anyone has advice on sussex venues that are less than 3k incl catering as I am only coming across the 'favourites' and b) how u set out your 3-5k budget?

Thanks everyone! Its so exciting, cant wait to start making my invites! EXCITING!

ps- I know that some wedding sites I have been on are a little sensitive and I am in no way slagging off anyone who spends 20k on their wedding- everyone deserves the wedding they want and I am just keen to try and get mine the way I want it :-) xx

maggie111

The best way of getting your wedding in at a good budget I think is to try not to make it too traditional. If you try and follow all the same as everyone else at half budget sometimes it can look cheap. That's not to say it has to but it's harder work.

For example, our wedding isn't the sort of traditional elegant wedding - meaning I could save £300 on the cost of a car for the day as the price of traditional wedding cars can start off high. Do enough so you don't feel like you're missing out but try and unlearn everything you think a wedding "has" to have and start from scratch.

PS - congrats on your engagement!

Bluespirit

I've found we've saved quite a bit by making the most of contacts through family and friends, e.g. my sister is making our wedding cake as her gift to us; one member of our band is related to my brother in law so we got a discount there; I go to a pub quiz every week and the quizmaster is coming along to do a quiz for everyone for free, etc.

I would also suggest looking at what you can do yourself - e.g. making your own stationery or favours. Sign up for vistaprint emails too - they send loads out with so many free things on them, all you need to do is pay postage. We got our Save the Date cards from them already, and I've also seen invitations and brochures which we might use for the order of service. I've also got a guestbook pen, wedding planner notebook, tshirt for one of my bridesmaids and some wedding mugs from them, all for free, so definitely worth a look

ticklepenny_2

Below was my original budget plan for our August 2011 wedding before we just decided (in October 2010) to get married in December 2010, our new budget is £1500 so we have just reduced the amount of guests and "extras" such as decorations and flowers.

Ceremony............£400.00
Venue.................£300.00 Country club (same room for ceremony and meal etc.)
Foam Flowers.......£130.00 Myself
Decorations.........£250.00 Myself and Friends to decorate venue
DJ......................£350.00
Bouncy Castle......£140.00
Food and cutlery.£1,200.00 http://spit-roast-hire.com/html/wedding_catering_company.html
Stationary............£25.00 Myself
Wedding Cake.......£75.00 Myself
Rings.................£210.00 Betts Metals Palladium
Suit and shoes....£100.00 - Skopes (special suit package offer)
Dress................£150.00
Bridesmaid dress..£100.00
Shoes..................£70.00
Total...............£3,500.00

Lexxi

Would definately suggest roping people in, tell everyone that you are getting married, I felt weird but loadsa family wanted to get involved and do things, they're sharing the buffett between them. And check out gumtree for photography offers!!

ticklepenny_2

definitely check gumtree for photograhers... as I have found some one offering to do free coverage so he can build up his portfolio. Or ask local colleges if they have a talented photography student

bonar

my daughter paid a fortune for a photographer, and actually the best pictures were taken by guests on their digital camera. ask your guests for copies of there photos, theyll be great my sure.

mimosaurus

We too found the price of venues and food restrictive. We found our evening venue before we found the daytime venue - the prices near our house were too high for us to even consider so we looked further afield and ended up getting married 40 miles from our home and having the venues 11 miles apart - most of our guests were travelling anyway so this wasn't a problem for us but i'm sure it wouldn't be ideal for many.

Our evening venue was a pub function room - we had a 2 course sit down meal with tea and coffee for 50 guests, arrivals drinks and fantastic service for less than £800. We spent an extra couple of hundred on wine and bubbly.

Lots of people commented on how nice and relaxed our wedding was, and how much fun they had. There were also lots of comments about how good the food was - nice simple pub grub, it was fantastic!

I think we were lucky to have such a fantastic manager who went over and above for us, but definitely consider pubs - and particularly village pubs who might be overlooked by most events!

kazaroona

wow thanks everyone, thats so so helpful!! its good to hear how everyone else has done theirs.... I know the biggest proportion will go on venue and catering and I can do as much as possible my self/with family on the rest.

Mimosauraus- Thats a GREAT idea about the pub as a venue, being in sussex I'm thinking that there may be a lot of village and country style ones which are still beautiful and classy. I'll have to ask around and see if people know of places... we havent lived here that long, I think thats part of the problem because using Google gives a lot of the popular choices...read 'more expensive!' I dont mind if its a bit further out as we could work around that. The wedding I mentioned in the first post was a little restaurant and it was fab.

Bluespirit- am a new fan of vistaprint, that sites a bit of a gem isnt it... I've already ordered free business cards for my new business so thanks so much, I've signed up....

I've made lots of notes from all the posts, thanks so much...any other tips (or venues that u know of!) are much appreciated, hopefully I'll have some new tips I can share soon! xx

ticklepenny_2

It may be worth checking your councils registered venues list for some random venues you may not have considered before. Or make sure that once a month you go for a nice drive around the local villages to search out village halls and nice pubs

Lexxi

Put your postcode into google or late rooms to find more venues nearby, I put the church one in late rooms to find my hotel