your thoughts if you wouldnt mind..........

clearing_out_my_pockets

We spent about £10,000 on our wedding and a further £2,000 on our honeymoon.

rachbc

getting married costs about £60 if I remember correctly - the rest is just window dressing so entirely optional - I think the average cost is £10-15K but we had a lovely day for around £3k -could have done it for a lot less if we'd wanted though.

VitaK

We spend £3k on our wedding and we had an absolutely amazing day.

victory

It is very sensible of you to be debt free, congrats and well done for thinking like that, excellent, as for the wedding it costs whatever you want it to, to go to the registry office, invite some friends back to the house, I know some that all the guests offered to bring something food wise or alcohol wise and that is how they had loads and it was effectively free, others that buy the wedding dress off ebay for a lot less than on the high street, someone else would know a gran or friends that could make the wedding cake, go to Asda for the flowers as the couple did on the tele the other night, email your invitations, all those little things can be done very cheaply and with planning not put you in debt:D

Lara44

Hi Chloo

Weddings come in all shapes and sizes, so you need to think about the following to make a decent budget plan:

How many people?
How would you like to feed them? Sit down 3 course meal / buffet / hog roast etc.
What would you like the venue(s) to be like? Prices for venues range from £3500 ++ for a few hours' hire to £35 for the local village hall. This is usually a decent chunk of the budget, so look around your chosen area to get a feel for what\s around and what prices things cost. You may or may not need 2 venues, depending on church / registry office wedding / licensed premises wedding.
Do you like decorations? A lot can be spent on flowers, lighting, balloons etc.
What do you want your wedding clothes to be like? - Dresses come cheaply second hand or in department stores / online stores, but shopping from bridal boutiques can be expensive. Most of the dresses i liked were around £1k so I shopped in a sample sale for huge discounts.
Where are you in the country? - Prices can be both higher and lower in major cities depending your choice of popular or non-mainstream wedding venue / caterer.

We spent £9000 on a London wedding for 80. Everything cost much more than I expected, like x 3 more! When I realised what type of event we wanted we were able to get loads of quotes in and cut costs a lot. We could have spent about double the cash had we gone for the most expensive supplier. It took a huge amount of time to get each element for the money we had available, I didn't expect that either. However, I *loved* my wedding. I wouldn't have changed anything (apart from getting stressed by my Mum's constant naysaying :rotfl:)

thorsoak

It's very hard to project figures so far ahead ....we're talking about Sept 2016 - which is 5 years 2 months away, people!!

My crystal ball isn't working any better than any of the financial/economic experts out there at the moment - all I can suggest is whatever figure you think about - you'd better double it for inflation!

My suggestion would be to concentrate on clearing your debts, but at the same time, of the amount left over from that - whatever it might be - save 75% towards the cost of your home, and the remaining 25% towards the cost of the wedding. Then, after 3 years, look at the figures and then work out what you can afford!

clearing_out_my_pockets

thorsoak wrote: »

My suggestion would be to concentrate on clearing your debts, but at the same time, of the amount left over from that - whatever it might be - save 75% towards the cost of your home, and the remaining 25% towards the cost of the wedding. Then, after 3 years, look at the figures and then work out what you can afford!

Very good point - you will need somewhere to live!

I've also realised that I only answered half of your question. Yes, in *my opinion* our wedding was worth every penny of the £10k we spent. My friend spent around £5k and she'd say hers was worth every penny and she wouldn't have changed a thing. Another friend did it on the sly and wouldn't change a thing - there isn't a 'one size fits all' with weddings.

Acc72

chloo wrote: »

i have a 20 grand car loan and a uni degree to pay back and i dont want to start a marriage and babies with a massive debt hence the saving now.

Why do you want to save ?

Unless you can get a rate of interest that is greater than what you are paying on your loan, your first priority is to clear your debts (starting with the one with the highest rate of interest).

When you are debt free, you can then start thinkng about saving.

lostinrates

Congratulations OP. fwiw my dh and I did it on the cheap...and like those who spent more, ours too was a wonderful day (cost around £100 quid for the licence and register office ceremony )

I'd just like to say its one day, five years in the future, don't put too much prssure on yoursef, you partner or your friends and family about it. five years is a lot of time to get excited and to build up a little bit of tension over getting things ''right''. Ultimately, the five years between now and then, and the lifetime after then is what really matters

Counting_Pennies_2

chloo wrote: »

hello!!!

we got engaged 3 weeks ago whilst on holiday now we are home i would like to start saving for the wedding.

we dont want to get married till im 25 so it will be september 2016 a long way off yes!

i have a 20 grand car loan and a uni degree to pay back and i dont want to start a marriage and babies with a massive debt hence the saving now.

we dont want a overly lavish day just close family and a few friends neither of us are in any circles we both have a couple of very close friends.

one how much should we aim to save and two how much did you spend on your weddings and was it worth it?


xxx

I would focus on a special place for you all to have a nice meal and a drink. I am afraid I couldn't give you a budget wedding figure, but I think an amazing day could be had for well under £10k My wedding cost £25k, it was amazing, very special, and I have amazing memories. However I had just come into some money (a sale of my first ever flat) and that gave me some left over equity that I decided would make a fantastic day, if I had not I wouldn't have put myself into debt for it.

On two different occasions, two of my neighbours (small gardens) covered their entire back gardens with a marquee and had about 60 guests in their garden, and hired caterers to do a meal, then went inside as the evening went on. It was a fantastic atmosphere.

In terms of savings, definitely worth paying debt off first before saving, not to be boring, but interest rates are so very low to save, but much higher to pay back debt.

Cars also depreciate enormously, by 2016 you will be ready for a newer one.