Planning a BUDGET Wedding

Lollie79

Hi Ladies

I too am attempting to get married on a small budget! We are getting mearried 18th aug 2012. So far have booked the church and found our venue with is being renavated next month :j The owner is fab and is doing us a great deal. No hire charge and will cater at just £5 per head. We are doing very informal burgers/hotdogs and chips for reception and standard buffet for evening. DJ is £150. And my wonderful dad is gonna pay for this :j:j ive got people helping with cake and ballons and things. Hoping i can get a friend of my mams to do photos cause he is very reasonable.

Im having a black, white, & purple theme and wondered if any of you had any cheap ideas for centrepieces for the tables??

Im very very excited if ya havent guessed that already lol x

x_missymoo_x

See below

lollie79 wrote: »

Hi Ladies

I too am attempting to get married on a small budget! We are getting mearried 18th aug 2012. Date twin :pSo far have booked the church and found our venue with is being renavated next month :j The owner is fab and is doing us a great deal. No hire charge and will cater at just £5 per head. We are doing very informal burgers/hotdogs and chips for reception and standard buffet for evening. DJ is £150. And my wonderful dad is gonna pay for this :j:j ive got people helping with cake and ballons and things. Hoping i can get a friend of my mams to do photos cause he is very reasonable.

Im having a black, white, & purple theme and wondered if any of you had any cheap ideas for centrepieces for the tables??
For a cheap option as some have mentioned, you could save jam jars of different shapes and sizes, decorate with lace or ribbon to your colours and pop in little tealight candles or simple flower arrangement / feathers / glass beads etc.
Im very very excited if ya havent guessed that already lol x

desperate+determined

Thank you , you talk a lot of sense.

Thats another reason, i'm dtermined to do on a budget as for me, its not about the flowers, venues, cars etc its about showing family and friends how much I love my OH and i want them to witness that.

Gingermoneysaver wrote: »

Hi desperate+determined

I got married in May this year, and while it wasn't as budget as yours we did the whole thing on a tight budget, and were determined that starting married life would not involve starting new debt.

My biggest tip is to focus on the aspects of the wedding that are important to you, just because it is 'traditional' to have a cake / fancy car etc etc doesn't mean you have to. We got married in our local registry office and then took all our guests to a local pub that was willing to close for the day to the public. We chose the pub because we liked the decor, so other than some bunting (that my mum made from old fabric scraps) and some flowers on the tables (one bunch of roses cut really short and put in old jam jars we got friends and family to collect in the run up to the wedding) it needed no decoration or anything. We weren't interested in having wedding cars and things as it was only important to us that we got married, not that we did it looking like we were trying to get in to 'Hello' magazine! The one thing we really wanted was a good party, so instead of a wedding DJ we got friends to put together playlists on their MP3 players / CDs that we could put on through the day and evening.
Instead of lots of formal photography and a guest book we took our old mini digital camera to the reception and set up a 'photo-corner' - a few silly hats etc found in charity shops, a little blackboard for people to write messages on and then they get someone to take their picture. the photos are wonderful, didn't cost us anything and because of all the messages people wrote they are absolutely personal and completely priceless. not to mention very funny if they are from later in the evening when people had had a few drinks.
We weren't going to have a cake, but then my cousins offered to make us one and ice it as a present, and that inspired us to talk to a few more friends and family, so instead of gifts we had a few people 'gift' bits of the wedding - invitations, place names, favours (penny sweets from Macro in traditional pink and white striped sweet bags, £2 for 500 online) all came from creative and generous friends.
In the end, the things that we 'had' to do because of our budget were the things that made the day the most special, so I'm sure whatever you spend your day will be brilliant.

Good luck!

desperate+determined

Thank you, yeah i think my family and friends helping lots will be a god send.

My mum is growing the flowers from seed and wil be doing some arrangments.

My friend is doing my cake as our wedding present

Venue is our local cricket club, which is set in a beautiful grass/woodland surounding and costs a fraction of more favourable wedding venues. (think i may invest in a bouncy castle or outside kids activity just to keep the youngsters occupied)

Rachb2 wrote: »

My advice for a budget wedding is get your friends and family involved.

You must know people who can bake, get them to make your wedding cake as a gift for you.

Someone you know could do the flowers for you again as their wedding present.

If you have friends or family that can sew, why not get them to make bridesmaids dresses or even (shock horror) your wedding dress. If you don't know anyone who can sew then try the Oxfam wedding shop or eBay for a dress. It might not be perfect but will be cheaper than buying brand new and you can always take it to be altered or modified.

Table decorations/party favours and invitations, get someone crafty to do it or even do it yourself. I once made antique tea-cup candles for my friends wedding tables and they looked great.

In terms of venue and food, look at things like village halls that have a green space in the back so you can have an indoor outdoor wedding. Failing that do you know anyone with a big garden you could use? We have some friends who are having their reception outside on the practise green at the local golf course. There are so many options. For the food, do you know anyone who could do the buffet for you? We went to one wedding and the brides family friends put on a gourmet burger bar, where we could build our own burger & make our own salad and as silly as it sounds writing it down it was one of the best wedding breakfasts we've been to.

I think having a wedding made up of my friends and family's talents would be a wonderful day and way to show how much they love you. It would be truly unique and about you and your OH.

COngratulations to you both!

desperate+determined

Wow, congrats and good luck on your wedding day

Its nice to know that it can be done on budget.

I love ebay and plan to get majority of my things from there.

I'm with you regarding buying over hiring, hoping i can sell things on after the wedding.

Love the baby jar idea, may have to steal that off you just about to start weaning my lo (however, i'm quite MSE so prob wont buy many jars as homemade is cheaper lol ) but no harm asking mummies at play group o save them

Be sure to post me some pics of the big day x

roz84 wrote: »

Hi. I'm with you on this one - I'm getting married a week this friday (OMG!) and i think I could honestly say that we have only spent about £1000, we are on a serious budget, with no family members being able to help out, except for grandparents who gave us £250 which was spent on palladium rings, fabric for table runners, and candelabras.

The one, most important thing I could say is, if you don't mind buying used, don't underestimate the power of eBay...

I got a used, grecian style Maggie Sottero dress (over £800 new) for 50 quid, plus 50 to get it adjusted = bargain. Baby bridesmaid dresses, matching from Monsoon, £2 each. £30 for big bridesmaid matching dresses. Oh and £4 for my beautiful shoes!! Can I say yes all of it has been used, but for a few hours at the most, it all looks brand new and has saved me a fortune!

We decided to buy our own things rather than hire, with the thought that we can sell it on afterwards, and if you have a sewing machine you could knock up some lovely table runners and bunting? I have done this, again saving a fortune, and I found a really good website for shabby chic fabric at cheap prices. I have also made loads of fab tealight holders from baby food jars - just spray them with frosting spray and tie twine around the top (mine also have hearts on them), our poor little one has had to munch her way through LOTS of jars, but again we've got some lovely shabby chic decorations!

I got 10 cream candelabras for £25 quid.

I'd suggest you look at village halls as a venue? We are getting married at our registry office and found a village hall locally which is quaint and beautiful, which has only cost £80 to hire! We are cooking the food ourselves and just getting someone to heat it up and put it out on the day - a fraction of the cost of hiring caterers!

Good luck with your planning! x

Lollie79

Missymoo - how fab we are date twins!:j Ive decided to have a go at a couple of ideas for centrepieces and any i dont like i will sell on ebay. Speaking of ebay i have spent hours looking for ideas and have found some great things i didnt even think of. We have also decided to have a retro sweet table so im gonna have loads of fun looking for those x

slbhill

[QUOTE=Doooford;45968071
Just on the photo issue, we are having 3 "head photographers" who are friends who will be there who happen to be great photographers and have digital SLR cameras. They have the right to shout "Right get your cameras away and all look this way" whenever they please.[/QUOTE]

Love this - and may well "borrow" it! :beer:

desperate+determined

Anyone have any ideas how many songs we should put in playlist for evening reception?

Also, made my 1st h/made invitation yesterday, quite pleased with it, however i do what to do a bit of tweeking.

Scotsbride

Congrats on your engagement and good luck with the planning. I recently been looking at decoration for the reception venue and thinking about using vases that i already have. Just wondered if anyone else was doing this if so what are you using and how?

Owain_Moneysaver

desperate+determined wrote: »

Whe you mention BUDGET wedding to family and friends, they all go "gosh - its supposed to be happiest day of your life you cant do it on a BUDGET"

You'll be a lot happier if you aren't worrying how to pay for it afterwards.