Ideas for cheap wedding?

supastar

Congratulations! Some of the best weddngs I've been to have been done to a tight budget- where family and friends have given their time and skills. It does help make them feel special and involved especially when every one is complementing 'auntie' on her cake making skills etc.
There are regular competitions on DELETED BY BG where suppliers offer something useful for a wedding so maybe worth having a look and have a go!

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Mrs_L

We got married Sept 05. 4pm Church wedding Bought the flowers wholesale and church arrangers did the displays. Relative did photos as a present, they are brilliant, another relative borrowed a friends car and drove us. Bridesmaids dresses where £10 each ex hire dresses. My dress was £200 in the sale. We used the local rugby club not the classiest of venues but it was great, we had a pig roast which cost us £300 and that was for over 200 guests. Cake was given as a wedding present by someone who did it as a hobby. We had pens and lighters as favours with our names and the date of the wedding I think they cost me £200 for 200.
We had a fantastic day and I think if we'd have spent more it wouldn't have been as good as there would have been more things to go wrong.
Oh yes nearly forgot we phoned for a taxi when it was time to go home and spent our wedding night at home in our own bed.
If I had a chance to do it again I wouldn't change a thing

caslates

Thanks so much everybody, I never expected such a good response. :T

Has anyone here ever had a really unusual wedding on a budget before? I keep joking to my fiance that we should have a scuba-diving wedding, but I think we'd lose half of our guests!

MrsTinks

caslates wrote: »

Thanks so much everybody, I never expected such a good response. :T

Has anyone here ever had a really unusual wedding on a budget before? I keep joking to my fiance that we should have a scuba-diving wedding, but I think we'd lose half of our guests!

That might not be such a bad idea - if your MIL is like mine

As for unusual wedding on a budget then a friend of mine had a pagan wedding on a VERY tight budget... It was lovely and very pagan but that I guess is partially down to how you wish to have your big day We converted the local village hall with lots of greenery from a local woodland (with the owners permission!!!) Hid Men fo the forest in the branshed (made from plaster of paris and painted) - the tables were decorated with fairy lights in amongst the greenery as was the top table. The bouquet was also the centrepiece on the top table so served two purposes. The food was a giant buffet that was put together in 4 different houses to make sure there was enough for about 80 guests and the cake was made by the brides friend and decorated in a "natural" theme in accordance with Pagan traditions. There were no wedding favours and the Dj was a family friend and I have to admit that it was probably one of the best weddings I have ever been to

sarah_skint

hi - i am getting things in motion but not really a clue where to start so I thought I would tag along on this thread!
We are going for september this year, registery office with a reception later in early evenish.

Where do I enquire about a wedding license and how much roughly will one cost?
thank you!

MrsTinks

If you contact the registry office they will be able to help you Not sure about cost personally as haven't gotten as far as that - we're looking at May 2008 lol

Having just bought my wedding invites I thought I'd share here...

50 cards and envelopes in cream - From the Works £5.
Handmade paper for decoration - 2 sheets total £4.40
Spacers £0.99
Gluedots £2.99 (for THOUSANDS!!!)
100 white paper roses £3.99 including postage
4 sheets of plain coloured paper to match my handmade paper for decoration £1.60

All I still need is the inlays where the actual text is printed on, I'll need to do this on the PC and print it out and cut them. But have managed to get scissors to do them myself with a posh pattern edge at no cost hehe

So for 50 invites I have spent £18.97

The cards my friend had for her wedding (which I'm sorry to say I don't like at all...) were £3 each!

So that is a saving for 50 cards of £131.03...

Once I have completed one of the cards I'll post a picture here. Just waiting for the roses to arrive

MrsTinks

Also for those near oxford...

I spotted some wooden roses when I was in Oxford for some bits for the cards yesterday. There are two stalls in the highstreet that sell them at 10 for £1. The cream ones look very nice and for 10p a piece would look very nice as either table decorations or maybe wedding favours?

Again I didn't think to take any pictures DOH!!! but if you are local and can pop in they are worth looking at

fruityslh

moozikgal wrote: »

for favors we have got everyone a tube of love hears, home bargains are doing 4 packs for 35p so less than 10p per favor. we are also putting these with something else like a tea light holder from ikea with everyones names written on them. the tealights are 9p each and a nice pen will set you back a few pounds.

Moozikgal,

When my mum got married a couple of years ago, I did lovehearts as favours too, except I scanned a label, made it a watermark, so it was pastel coloured then over the lovehearts label I put the guestname instead - place marker and favour in one.

Fruity

emujuice

Hi there,
There's a huge thread full of advice but just to summerise my wedding. We wanted traditional and had a budget of 5000, quite a lot compared to some people, but we saved on lots of things and splurged on others (like having lots of guests!)

Here's my summary from the other thread:

So we did it! We organised our wedding in around 5 weeks - and it was awesome! Truly the best day of my life. We had so much fun and in a way it was made all the better for knowing it didn't cost the earth - around £5500 for a church wedding, 6 bridesmaids, 2 best men, 4 ushers, sit down meal, live band and dancing till the wee hours for 120. Wow - it was so great!

Advice: try making as much as time allows - the tiraras were easy - give it a go twisting beads on wires.
get a hole punch in a relevant shape to make confetti and table decorations (we had buterflies)
we got little gift baskets for the bridesmaids and managed to find sheffield pewter tankards for the boys in Oxfam of all places, which we got engraved.

costing roughly:
church £370
special licence £70
order of service, place names etc... printed at home, just did an A4 sheet for the order of service and rolled it up as a scroll. £5 for card, paper, ribbon and ink
car £100 - black limo from the funeral home. Excellent service, had him for about 2 hours and he did the decorating.
my dress £25 - tx maxx in the sale
bridesmaid's dresses £10 each - tk maxx, had to go to 3 stores to find them all
flowergirl £20 - debenhams bridal stuff, cute and fluffy, we put matching ribbon on it to tie her in with the big bridesmaids
men's suits £385 - hired from Debenhams - a splurge, but they looked great. had them for the Dad's too.
food and wine for 26 (gorgeous food!) £840 - sit down meal for the wedding party in the afternoon
Buffet for 100 £1300 - had about 120 ppl, under cater!!! there was still so much left
Free room hire because of the food bill.
Ceildh band £360 - very highly recommended, it was so much fun, then we made our own mix CD with Nero with all our fave tracks, for a disco afterwards played over the Bar's PA system, worked brilliantly. Nero allows you to fade tracks into one another.
Invites £5 - from Dunell Mill, but actually Marks and Sparks (were 5p each
table decorations £15 - silk flower candle holders bunched up with voile material around the base and tied with ribbon.
shoes £35 his £7.50 mine - just cute sandals for me, his are his work shoes, so a good buy
underwear (bhs) £15 - just pretty and white, made him smile
Hair: paid for by friend, but around £20 - she came to the house as she does it on the side
tiaras: borrowed mine from friend, ask your married friends what they have, it can be your something borrowed, and lovely as they are no one will remember having seen it before, made others £15 ish with beads and wire, came out great, give it a go, there's advice online
gifts £20 - just looked around for cheap gift baskets int he sales with smellies in, did my sis and maid of honor a photo album full of pics of both of us through the years, a similar thing might work for your best girl
Flowers in church £60 - done by the ladies that do the flowers for the church the rest of the year - ask if yours do the same
Flowers for us £60 - a friend of a friend, retired florist - took her lots of hydrangeas from the garden, the colour was perfect
Flowers for mums £20 - same lady
Favours £10 got voile and sugary sweets, love hearts, candy letters etc.. from market stall and wrapped in voile and chocolate cigarettes for 25p a pack for the boys (a big hit!)
Lovely hotel in Sheffield after the wedding £89 on lastminute.com instead of £160
Cake: £65 in M and S and £10 to decorate, borrowed the stand, got ready made sugar paste icing, rolled it out and used a stamp to make lilac butterflies to put on the cake, worked well i think, then decorated the stand with same silk flowers as tables (cheap from dunell mill, look at candle holders etc...,nice and dainty flowers).
Photographer: £60 costs and donation to recent gradute - which was ok, but she constantly took out of focus shots, which was a bit disapointing, but there are some great ones, and we got 250 shots and she did all day
Video: everyone with one did bits of the day, it's still coming in, and looks ace, beg and borrow cameras for trusted friends to film portions of the day with. Friend's partners are good, as slightly less intersted in your big day but enjoyed being a bit removed from it all by fliming it.

Thanks you cards: sent a photo of us from the big day, with a message on the back.


Hints:

Talk on your local forum about your big day, there's one for Sheffield and sure they're are others. Got hints on photographers, venues, someone even gave me their veil. you'll get lots of help and advice.

I found ebay more expensive for lots of things, compared to sales in places that aren't geared up for weddings.

Go to charity shops and borrow mags from friends and get ideas from their. They're expensive to keep buying.

Make a scrap book of ideas from the mags, it's nice to show and refine your ideas :

All in all a truly fabulous day! Enjoy yours!

Some photos are here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chocola...7594263766205/

caslates

Thanks so much for those tips emujuice, your wedding day sounded fabulous. I tried the link for your photos but it doesn't seem to work - could you send it again?

Thanks