Wedding on a Shoestring budget?

onlyroz

£1500 is certainly plenty to have a good wedding, but by the sounds of it you might have to cut back a bit on your expectations. E.g. do you *really* need flowers and decorations for the venue? And do you *really* need a traditional white wedding dress?

I got married in 2001, and the wedding itself cost around £600-700 I'd say. That included venue hire (around £300, I think), my dress (£55 from Soho), hubby's suit (maybe £150) and lunch - we gave sister-in-law £100 to make us a picnic.

Caroline73_2

Don't pay for a disco, hire or borrow some lights and speakers and use your ipod. We made a wedding disco playlist and went from there.

I didn't have flowers and had a one tier celebration cake instead of a traditional wedding cake. It was a 14 inch sponge cake with white decorative icing and cost about £40.

We got married late on in the day (4pm) so that we only served one meal at about 5.30pm, rather than the traditional wedding breakfast and evening buffet.

Grimbal

We had a wedding cake from M&S - we bought a couple of individual tiers and decorated them ourselves. The cakes are excellent and very good value, definitely recommended!

sponge M/L/XL: £12/£25/£38
fruit: M/L/XL: £22/£38/£55

pink_princess

We got married on Friday :j if we minus off the cost of the rings and honeymoon (as we are /have gone way way over board on these ) then we did the whole thing for 1k.My mum did the flowers/amazing boquet and cake.Sister in law made the ring cushion,hair do s etc ,reception was a meal paid for with vouchers etc.Favours we made scrools and wrapped around lottery tickets .
You don t want to start married life in debt ,concentrate on the marraige not just a few hours.Becoming his wife will be priceless no matter what you spend or don t spend.:)

llh189

I would probably not think to much about getting your guests to give vouchers or money towards a honeymoon.

I am not being funny but there is still a bit of a stigma / cheek about doing this, most people I know don't tend to mind too much, if they've had a really good time at a wedding, good food, free / cheap drinks, good entertainment etc.

It is the day that is supposed to be the important thing, not the presents or to be fair the honeymoon.

I would instead think about the things your friends are good at and get them to get involved on the basis that they then don't get you a gift!

Things to think about, do you have friends who might not be qualified but a girlfriend good at hair, someone with a fairly decent camera, someone good at cakes, maybe someone who is good at sewing, maybe someone who at work has access to table and chairs, a friend of the family with a large garden, get three mates with BBQ's.

You can be inventive!

I recently took all my cousins wedding photos, never done it before but they pictures were really good and the were pleased, I didn't buy them a gift, and I didn't mind that there were no free drinks or the food was a bit naff, as I really felt in the end that I had played a part in making their wedding day special, and by way of the photographs a gift that would truly last for the whole of their marriage!

Think inventively!

You can have a night away somewhere, or a honeymoon another time!

somethingsgottogive

I got my size 22 dress from Debenhams Debut range http://www.debenhams.com/women/debut

If you see one you like, you can sign up for a Debenhams card and get something like 20% off.

Also, weekday wedding will slash your costs by about 1/3

Good luck

Oh and to the lady who suggested Gretna Green... it's something like a two year waiting list now! No more spontaneous eloping for us lot!

sueeve

You say you can't afford a church, but this might be offset by the use of the church hall for a nominal fee, and close relations and friends could bring things for a buffet.
If you know anyone going to France with a car they could bring back the drinks. We use Sainsburys near Calais, because you can choose before you go and they have it ready, use pounds to pay, and get it much cheaper. But you couldn't do that with a pub room! And don't try a church that doesn't permit drinks on the premises.

nickyhutch

We did it on a budget. Register office, taxis, and a meal for close family afterwards in our favourite local restaurant. We asked everyone if they would pay for their meals rather than give us gifts, which of course they were more than happy to. Then the bu99ers gave us cash and vouchers too!

We had a fab day - back to the pub next to ours in our village after the meal - perfect.

barbiedoll

We did the cake from M&S, I got some wedding decorations from a local cake decorating shop and blinged it up for extra £5! did get a bit carried away though, looking back, it was more tat than cake :rotfl:

My wedding ring cost £12 from a local jewellers (9ct gold)
OH's cost around £30 from the same place.

The only flowers I had was a small bouquet to hold, £30 from the local florist.

Got my dress in a sale, £90, reduced from £299 :eek:
Got the shoes for a tenner in the market

Had a buffet at home, stocked up on drink during the few months before and my mum and sister helped with the food, everyone had a freezer full of stuff for me for a couple of weeks before the wedding!

Next-door neighbour did the photos as a present. They're not the best pictures ever taken but they're still special to us.

Stepson (who was an aspiring DJ at the time!) took charge of our meagre record collection and got everyone up dancing.

It wasn't exactly a big fat Gypsy-type wedding but we're still here after 12 years so it was well worth the £500!

catieeb06

I've been looking on ebay. Some of those dresses are amazing. Does anyone trust the one's who promise to custom make them from China?

They just seem a little too good to be true.