Get Married on a Budget

kimig

I wanted to share my budget wedding with you all. I had the best day of my life without breaking the bank!

I have watched many people get married and spend £15,000 + They were always very nice but I couldnt help think of all that money wasted on just one day.

When it came to my turn I was determined not to spend a small fortune . It became problamatic as both my fiance and I both have large families and the invite list was over 100 people, however I was determined that everyone was invited (I didnt want to spend a fortune, but I still wanted my fairytale wedding!) so this is how I did it for a grand total of £3000.

1. 'The Dress' I went wedding dress shopping and found my perfect dress. I noted down the name of the dress and style number and went home and searched ebay. Low and behold the dress was for sale (allbeit second hand) for a whoppong £1700 cheaper than in the shop. (Worn once only!) Im not proud and was more than happy to have a second hand dress, it fit perfectly and in 'as new' condition. Beautiful .

3. Bridesmaid dresses: I found 4 amazing dresses on the Jane norman website £19 each - Bargain, my girls looked amazing! I also bought 4 little bags in black and sewed a turquoise flower on them (my colour scheme) which were practical, looked brilliant and cost a fraction of the price of flowers!

2. The Venue. As my fiance and I are not religious we opted for a civil ceremoney. I wanted something special so didnt really want to get married in a register office. So sfter much trawling of the internet, i found a beautiful hall in our local area which were offering 'ceremony only' packages. The room where we got married was amazing, so much nicer than a register office or hotel conference room. We paid for bucks fizz drinks for our guests after the ceremony and could stay there as long as we wanted following the ceremony. It was perfect and I am sure that we had alot more than the 2 glasses each that we paid for (well I certainly did! :rotfl:) This was the most expensive part of our day at a cost of £950


3. The Photos. I could have died when I saw the cost of photographers - as far as I am concerened they do nothing but ruin your day by making you stand round for photos for 3 hours!! I enlisted the help of all of my friends with cameras. They all took photos for me all day (1 friend in particular who had a very good camera was my 'official' photographer she did it all for free!) the result being that i now have over 1000 photos of my special day, all natural shots and no jaw ache!!

4. The Reception - I found a local villiage hall, ok so school hall not everyones cup of tea, but with some decorating it looked amazing!. my mum, bless her made me 100 black chair covers for the chairs, I then bought some kingsize bed sheets from Asda which were on offer 2 for £9 cut them to size to make table cloths. As the reception was in a school hall they had very ugly looking monkey bars, we stapled the spare bed sheets to the monkey bars, plugged in some twinkling christmas lights behind them and then covered the black sheeting in turquoise netting - it looked stunning! I also bought some white sheets, dyed them turquoise, cut them up and made napkins!! (I have photos if anyone is intersted in the result!!)

6. Food - I flatley refused to spend a £40+ a head on food for my guests so instead I ordered a hog roast from my local butcher. The food was amazing, we had proper plates and cutlery so it was still a civillised sit down meal. As for puddings, I went to my local iceland the day before the wedding and bought loads of gatueax all for £2 each. They went down a treat! Total cost per head £6.50

7. The Cake - Again I was not going to pay £200+ for a piece of cake. I went to my local tesco and bought some very fancy cupcakes all different flavours (again the day before the wedding - I was very busy lol) i bought 70 of them and bought a stand of ebay for £20. My cake in total cost around £40. I had a lot of comments about how good it looked and how nice the cakes were - Thank you tesco!!

8. Music - My fiance and i spent many a painstaking day choosing music for the reception.. We hired lights again a fraction of the cost of hiring a disco and played the music from our own laptop. The result no cheesy wedding music and a bloomin good night dancing (i dont think i was off the dance floor much!!)

So there you have it, there were many other things I did to cut the cost of our wedding (my friends always laugh at me as I am always bargain hunting!!) but my arms are aching now!! oh and the joy of making all your own stuff..........I have just sold the majority of my wedding things on ebay (chair covers, centre pieces and table cloths) and am now in profit by around £300!!! :j

Thanks for reading......happy money saving!!!:)

Pee

Sounds like a fantastic wedding and with lots of your personalities involved.

Think getting fiancee to help with the music selection is a brilliant idea as it can be hard for men to have an input and that is something many men would like to be involved with.

I hope your marriage is as lovely and as economic as your wedding day! Many Congratulations.

Pollycat

Glad to read you had such a lovely day.

The tips sound excellent, did you know there's a specific wedding board? You might want to either have this moved or post on there.

Lotus-eater

That's brilliant stuff, my ideal wedding will cost £212. And that seems expensive

Someone I know got an old jukebox for their reception, nice idea and everyone loved it. They chose all the records in it themselves.

gillypkk

thats fantastic! sounds awsome!

i would love to see pics! i love looking at people wedding pics!

~Diamond~

Really great thread! I totally agree. Too many people get themselves all wound up over that one day and in the grand scheme of things it's just one day out of your whole lives together.

I see people arguing, getting stressed, in debt, just to have the wedding they 'think' they should/want, or for show to everyone else.

I would much rather when my time comes spend a minimum on the wedding day and put all the rest of the money we have into our future fund, housing and our lives together. What is one day worth 25,000+ if you are going to have years of stress and no money/debt after it.

I have told my partner if I ever get married it won't be big, only close family and nothing too fancy, but it would involve something we both love to do that would cost hardly anything. I'm not that kind of person and don't need to do things for show. Marriage is about love, not material things. As long as it's nice and the memories are there it will be great.

Cookiee

Your wedding sounds fab! We got married for the pricey sum of .... £982 all in yay.
We didn't want a big do as we already had been together 13 years. We only invited immediate family on the day at a beautiful registry office (used to be an old victorian house). We didnt even have to put flowers etc in there as there was already beautiful flowers in there from a big reception they had earlier on in the day :-D
Because the date was more important to us (1st July when we got together) it was on a Wednesday so it was really cheap. Our photographer was starting out in the industry (and she is AMAZING!! Assassynation check her out for unusual pics) she did it for free as she wanted to test her equipment and use it for practice editing etc. My mum actually paid her in jammy dodgers and red bull for the day ha ha.

We took all for a meal at a restaurant which had been converted from an old railway station (made lovely pics) and everyone had a fab time.

We went to Barcelona for our honeymoon curtisy of hubbies work and everyone just gave us euro's for our pressies.

If we were to invite everyone then we would have upset one person or another and we thought this is our day so we will do it as we want.

When we came back we threw a BBQ at our house with a bouncy castle and big sumo suits for those who did want to come to the wedding. It was a fab time and it again was really cheap and very relaxed.

It really cant understand why people spend £15+k on a wedding. I know it is a very special day but one day should not give way to a life time of stress and debt (as echoed in above posts).

On the downside for our wedding, it was the hottest day of the year (32 degrees plus) so poor photographer got sunstroke :-(

nickyhutch

That sounds brilliant - glad it all went so well for you.

Just a note, though: register office does not mean a wedding isn't special.

January20

I am very interested in your photos of the village hall... since you offered it would be rude not to take you up on this offer lol!
Can you post some on this thread?

ThinkingOfLinking

There are some really great ideas there. Well done on being so shrewd and congratulations on both what you achieved and on your wedding itself.

desperate+determined

This is an amazing post! Can i see the pictures?

After 5 long years I was debt free last month, so my partner thought he'd propose. Of course I said yes (love him loads).

But it has sent me in to a panic about costs and debt again. I want the perfect fairytail wedding all women dream off but i dont want the picetag that goes with it. You've given me hope.

I've come on here looking for inspiration, ideas and budgeting.