Our 3k budget wedding planning

spongybobby

dont want to hijack but 3K is easily doable
we spent:
evening due (£1k):
welcome drinks
sit down 3 course meal for 20
DJ
hall hire.

Getting married in registry office:£365
Room hire
paying to register
Paying the other registry fees

Rings:
I managed ot get these cheap
both rings for £490 (should have been £1.1k)

wedding dress: £300
Suit hire: £200
decorations £50
flower girl dress: £30
Flowers: £100
Photographer (fortunately family friend of best man) :£250
Brides hair & make up for the day including trial = £100
invitations £20

Hen & stage night (£150 each for day events & evening drinks)
Im sure there are things i have left of the list but that pretty much is £3k right there.

doesnt get you a huge amoutn but its more than enough for what we want .
Hope that helps your budget plan

74jax

spongybobby wrote: »

dont want to hijack but 3K is easily doable

Hope that helps your budget plan

Not hijacking whatsoever, I need all the help I can get, as several posts earlier I realised I wasn't including the MOH and Bm dresses :eek: so was getting an unrealist total.

It's fantastic seeing everyone's breakdown, and motivated me to do mine in such a way too.

madvixen

I've used the budget planner from here http://www.weddingideasmag.com/home/use-our-free-downloads.html

I've added some rows and removed others but I'm finding it really useful

Miss_woo

Hi,
This is a really interesting post and good luck to all of you who are planning to come in on budget, it' s really useful to see the breakdowns. I am interested to know what amount of the budgets you are allocating to photography though?

74jax

Miss_woo wrote: »

Hi,
This is a really interesting post and good luck to all of you who are planning to come in on budget, it' s really useful to see the breakdowns. I am interested to know what amount of the budgets you are allocating to photography though?

I know many people don't agree, BUT we decided against a photographer. We decided this from the moment we got engaged and set the budget.

I don't want any formal photos at all, and will take photos of all the details myself.

However, since being on this thread, I am really swaying towards having a photographer for the evening party to capture our friends enjoying themselves. We still don't want any of the ceremony or formal ones.

We are prepared to wait on this one though, we might approach the local college and see if anyone needs photos for their portfolio or my OH has many friends who are sport photographers and who photo him on the sea, we might see if they are able to photo a wedding for us.

So as it stands it's not in the budget because we don't want one, but are waivering 'a little' for the night time.

wanchai_2

Eeek, I'm so impressed with all your budget weddings!!!! I'm MSE through and through but our wedding is costing around £10,000! My dress cost £1,300 alone! :eek:

(still way less than Idiophreak's wedding though lol)

MrsDrink

Miss_woo wrote: »

Hi,
This is a really interesting post and good luck to all of you who are planning to come in on budget, it' s really useful to see the breakdowns. I am interested to know what amount of the budgets you are allocating to photography though?

Originally? - £50. Didn't want a professional photographer. Instead we were going to just give everyone who comes a writable CD (and a stamped return addressed envelope) to burn any snaps they take. But because we've done so well with our savings we've agreed to having a photographer for 2 hrs on the day of the ceremony to capture the ceremony, and take a few relaxed shots afterwards. Will still give everyone CDs as well. I have been taking still photos as I've been going along of all the little details that can go in the wedding album (which I'm going to make for our 1st anniversary). I have photos of our shoes, my bouquet, our rings etc.



(I need to reshoot MrD's tie and buttonhole shot - the levels of the red is wrong - looks too orangy)

lisajane8482

My spreadsheet is broken down in to the following (includes actual and guestimate):

Bride (includes dress, petticoat, shoes lingerie, nails, make-up, wedding ring etc) £454.82
Maid of honour (dress (sizes 12,14,16), tiara, necklace) £86.09
Bridesmaid (dress (sizes 8,10), tiara, necklace) £44.37
Flower girls (dress, tiara, shoes, necklace, hair x2) £265.21
Mother of Groom (outfit) £75
Groom (suit, cufflinks, socks, wedding ring, boxers) £233.34
Best men ( suits, cufflinks, socks x2) £230.90
Ushers (suits, cufflinks, socks x2) £231.96
Father of bride (suit, cufflinks, socks) £116.39
Ceremony (fees and certificate, need to add in notice(£67)) £378.50
Reception (drinks, afternoon and evening meals, chair covers and DJ) £2041.50
Decorations (Balloons) £130
Cake (cutting bars and cake topper) £42.48
Favours (lovehearts, wrappers, organza bags) £42.91
Photographer £400
Flowers (5x bouquets (1x extra large, 1x large, 1x medium, 2x small), 6x button holes, 4x coursages) £200
Thank you gifts (bridal party and a few bottles of wine) £293.35
Bridal Transport (7 seater Mercedes benz & Rolls Royce Silver Shadow + possibly Taxi) £370.00
Coach (for guests from ceremony to reception) £220
Stationary (invites, RSVP, Table Plan, Place names etc) £90.94
Postage £55.20
Insurance £29.99

I’m making my own wedding cake which my Nana is paying for the ingredients.

My BM, MoH and the men will be using their own shoes. My BM and MoH will be paying/doing their own hair and make-up.

We will be getting the grooms suit hire free plus a 20% discount but for the time being I have just priced each suit individually.

ATM the budget is just over £6000 which is £1500 less than my estimate but £1000 more than our budget :eek: (so we have some extra saving to do).

sugarwalsh

Miss Woo - our photographer is costing £500, which is the minimum the lady who is doing ours will work for. Normally that would only cover 5 hours but as she is a friend she is covering the whole day. I didn't choose her because she is a friend and will do us a good deal, I chose her because I really like her pictures. There is a thread somewhere with sub £500 photographers on, if that helps?

Ajax (I too want to call you this all of the time) you are doing brilliantly keeping to your budget. I guess the point is you can actually do a wedding for just the registrar, notice and room hire fees, if you really wanted to pare it down. Also, doing a sub 3K wedding is easy enough if you only have 20 guests but if you want 100 then you are going to struggle.

My main thought when it came to budget were - am I or others going to have to spend months, days and hours making things and doing us favours? If so I don't want it. We wanted a wedding where people just turn up and have fun - very much like yours Jax. The second thoughts were 'Does it truly reflect what we want?' If we were making a 'it will do' choice then I wasn't happy with it. In my mind we have waited almost 8 years to have a wedding which reflects us. I didn't see the point in compromising now! I don't actually know how much our wedding is costing (I bet that is freaking allyou spread sheeters out!) I have a rough idea that it's about £7000, including everything from 2 bands, flowers, food, clothes and the actual ceremony, for 64 during the day and 100 at night. I'm glad we didn't restrict ourselves, but we trusted that we would know what was acceptable and what we wont have, it meant we can have the wedding we have talked about for a long time now!
Megan
Ps It's ONE month today....

74jax

You might remember I was trying to find some wine/beer mats, I decided to try some postcards and cut them down to size.

This is the first try - think I need practice on cutting a circle, who knew scissors were so hard to use :rotfl:

The writing says 'may you life be filled with relaxing sunsets, cool drinks and sand between your toes'. really fitting for our venue.
If I can master the art of cutting then I'll have 100 which were free from vistaprint (friend added on to her order so don't have postage costs either).

We don't want a cake as neither of us are that keen (we like the odd bit, but not enough to buy a wedding cake). i thought about crispy cakes. This was my first attempt.

It took blooming ages :rotfl: I'm making them for my DD birthday, so will be able to do a costing then of how many I can make from one box of cereal and x amounts of bars of chocolate. OH isn't keen, but I have such a sweet tooth, I think I would like to have something - buffet doesn't provide sweets.