Have a Big wedding 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!!)

I also meant to say about my wedding favours, I purchased 500g of black jelly beans and 500g of turquoise jelly beans off the internet along with 50 black net bags and 50 turquoise net bags, I put approx 10 black jelly beans in each of the blue bags and the same amount of blue jelly beans in the black bags, I then cut out heart shaped name tags (blue for the black bags and black for the blue bags) and tied them onto my favours....they all looked amazing and the total cost was £20!

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!!!:)

bubbles0169

well done kimig it all sounds great especially the £300 profit!
we'd love to see photos too

kimig

this is the best pic i have of the back drop atm, I am waiting for my friend to bring me more pics as soon as i have them i will post.



My bargain dress!



Bridesmaid dresses! The ushers all hired thier own suits.

Minimoo24

wow please can u post some more pics of your hall, i just love the curtain! x

Minimoo24

how did the chari cover thing go, and how much did it cost you in total? ive got a qoute for £142.00 thanks x

candygirl

You look fab, and the hall does too:D:DWell done on not falling for all the rip off wedding gubbins:T:T:T

Hollie84

wow well done to you and your helpers.it looks stunning you wouldnt believe that it was a school hall.i look forward to seeing more pictures.you looked stunning by the way

kimig

My mum made all of my chair covers for me (bless her it took her about 3 weeks!) we made them for approx £100 and that included the bows around the chairs. I am selling them on ebay now for £299! You can hire them for around £1.50 per cover but i didnt want to throw money away, I thought if i made them/bought them at least I could sell them on and make my money back )

ThinkingOfLinking

It all (you included) look stunning. Many congratulations for both the achievement and of course for getting married.

Hadley1

Congratulations.

You all look amazing and so happy.

Can I be nosey and ask when you got married?

Absolutely love the bridesmaid dresses.

Well done on all your hard work.

kimig

14th May this year