How Did You Afford/Pay for Your/Your Daughter's Wedding?

74jax

My parent's paid for the family on their side to attend, exH's family paid for those family members on their side and myself and exH paid for our friends to attend. This worked out quite well.

*BigBird*

My parents contributed around £1500 to my wedding, but I certainly didn't expect them to. They are both retired and that's a lot of money to them. However as they'd paid for my sister's wedding 25 years earlier, they wanted to at least contribute towards mine.

Aside from that, DH and I started planning our wedding 18 months in advance to give us the time to save up to have it how we wanted it. It cost about £10k in all, even though it was quite a small wedding :eek: We didn't have our "honeymoon" until the following year as we'd spent our budget on the wedding and I didn't want to be in debt just for the sake of a glorified holiday.

candygirl

My DD is expecting baby no 2 anytime now, and says she will never get married;)If she does I will contribute towards it, but in now way can I afford to pay for it all:o:o
My parents paid for my 1st very small wedding, and contributed to my 2nd slightly larger one, but i'd never have expected them to fork out thousands:D:D

tesuhoha

marywooyeah wrote: »

I got married on saturday and we paid for everything ourselves, not a single penny from anyone else.
We (I) spent a lot of time trawling through preloved.com and ebay for things, got y bridesmaid dresses of there, my veil (£8) and our wedding favours. we found a lady who makes cakes in her spare time, she did us a 3 tier wedding cake and 30 cupcakes for £70! if you shop about you can get better value for your money, not everything has to cost the earth!
It may be a good idea to set up a bank account and give her a wad of cash down the line, or when the time comes and she gets engaged follow tips above and others from the weddings board.

I've just been over to the wedding forum and have seen your lovely photos. Congratulations. Feel quite tearful.

Well if and when it happens i will definitely be looking over there so many tips and ideas

LilacPixie

we paid for our own wedding in 2007. in our opinion it was OUR Wedding, OUR day so OUR responsibility to pay for what we wanted.

euronorris

My parents contributed about 1k to each of my siblings weddings. They each covered the remaining costs themselves. And all were lovely in their own way.

As OH and I don't intend to get married, they've already told me that they will give us the 1k towards baby stuff when the time comes. Which will be lovely and very much welcomed.

The total value of the weddings in my family ranges between 3 and 20k!! But....no one got into debt with the weddings, and a lot of things were wedding gifts, so didn't actually cos them anything. For example, the band at my sisters was a gift from her DH's mates as they ARE the band! lol. And the photographer at my brother's wedding was his DW's best friend, so again free).

VfM4meplse

tesuhoha wrote: »

I have decided I am going to start a wedding fund

You might be pleasantly surprised...my parents have been saving for our weddings (there are 3 of us) since the day we were born it seems - and haven't had to spend a penny so far, with one in their early 30s and two rapidly heading towards their 40s. Even if we were looking to get married and have lavish weddings, we are all financially independent, childless and earn more than they could ever have dreamed of without having the constraints that they encountered. Conicindentally, they too had a very simple registry office wedding over 40 years ago.

So now they have a stash of investments that that should have been spent on their own enjoyment, but hasn't. I've advised them to enjoy the fruits of their labour on umpteen occasions but they still live in hope!

Why don't you ask your daughter whether she expects to get married in the future, and how she is planning for her dream day? That way she will know that you support her, and will focus her mind on working towards what she wants.

Kandboys

Also you may find that people offer services as their gifts. For example, my sister in law made the cake, bridesmaids paid for half their dresses, friend did make up etc etc. People can be quite generous

Kitten_Pie

We paid for our wedding however we were given £5,000 from my mother and PIL who gave us the option to have this for a once in a lifetime honeymoon or premium bonds. (we still have the bonds)

seafarers_wife

my parents paid about 7K towards our wedding, which if im honest was all the reception cost, the flowers and the evening part, plus their outfits, and mum made all my stationary and they both did a LOT of organising and jumping through hoops to get things sorted for us. They could afford it, but at the same time they gave us the choice of having 3K cash towards whatever we wanted to do i.e go abroad or get married elsewhere in the country or have the wedding where we had it and they pay for the reception.

We budgetted to pay for it all ourselves anyway, but are grateful that they paid so much as it ment that we had the extra for a house deposit and all the incidentals that came up along the way with buying a house.

all in all our wedding cost about 12 - 13K with everything included except a honeymoon as we were buying a house and that has to wait as we are now pregnant so will be a few years yet before we get to go on holiday just ourselves.