2014 Budget weddings

laughingcow81

For cheaper wedding dresses, try TK Maxx online - they have an outlet of designer wedding dresses. My sis-in-law (to be) just bought her dress from there and is over the moon with it.

I have yet to find one I like on there but I will keep looking as I want to keep my dress costs low too.

http://www.tkmaxx.com/wedding-boutique/wedding-dresses/icat/5678

Try also Kitty & Dulcie for cheapish wedding dresses, they look pretty funky too!

http://www.kittyanddulcie.com/

Selbyjay

My partner & i have just celebrated our Civil Partnership & the whole thing, inc stag doos, ceremony & reception cost about £2.5k (exc honeymoon).

We had a our ceremony at 1500 on a Saturday at the Registry Office (last service of the day, we were very lucky with the weather & it was still light for pics) - £385 inc fee to give notice (we hired the biggest room as had 60 guests, but smaller rooms are a lot cheaper)

We had our reception at a funky bar in town (1331 in York) - free room hire!

Canapes & cava for 60 guests - £272, but my mum paid for the Cava at £122, so only cost us £150 (buy by the bottle, not the glass, it'll go much further & ask about discounts for buying so many bottles - we saved 10%)

Evening buffet for 120 guests - £665 (we selected from a sharing platters menu, rather than their wedding buffet menu so the choices were very different & the quality excellent. Everyone raved about the food)

Note that we didnt do a sit down meal, saved us about £1800!

Main cake was from Sainsburys - £30, but bought by my partner's parents so cost us nothing. We decorated it ourselves for about £3 extra.

65 cupcakes from Waitrose - £60 (excellent quality & presentation)

Night time cocktails served in vintage teapots - £350 (this was our extravagance, but i hope to be able to resell the teapots & cups & make some money back)

Goodybags for 120 (inc pick 'n' mix, glow sticks, memento CD of the music from our day & small individual gifts) & sweetie jars - £134 (sweets were bought from an online wholesaler, jars from Home Bargains)

DJ - didnt have one! We have a lot of friends who are DJs so we asked them to pre-mix some sets made up of our fave tunes & created a play list for the bar to play. Cost us nothing!

We didnt do flowers but used iloom balloons instead - £20

Suits, shoes, shirts & rings for us both - £200 (suits & shirts from Next, shoes from TK Maxx, rings from H Samual)

Photography - a close friend did this for us for free!

Gifts for those involved in our day - £110

We also made about £800 in savings by:

**Blagging a free stay at the Hilton for the night before our wedding (i work in travel, so used my contacts!) - saved £105
**Asked for gift vouchers (Next, love 2 shop etc) for birthdays & christmas prior to the wedding - saved £140
**Mum paid for Cava - saved £122
**Partner's parents paid for caked - saved £30
**Catered for slightly less guests than expected - saved £50
**savings on honeymoon by booking in advance & industry discounts - £220

We're booked to go to Lapland for our honeymoon (Northern Lights, here we come!). All in, this should cost us less than £3k.

Again, i used my contacts at work to save money on train tickets to London - saved £150. Plus, i claimed for a rail delay & got rail vouchers for about £30 which paid towards the tickets.

We're staying at the Premier Inn at Gatwick before & after our flights & booked non-refundable rates costing £100 for both nights & we even get dinner on the first night. Bargain.

We're also doing a "year of fun" where we do something together (or with friends) once a month. We asked our guests to vote on the activities at the reception & much of the money & vouchers we got as gifts will pay toward this (you could easily substitute a main honeymoon for a "YOF", which was our first plan, and spread the cost & the love over a whole year!)

Our wedding wasnt flash, but it was what we wanted & many guests commented on how much they enjoyed it & how different it was to previous weddings. It was very relaxed, the bar were excellent & some even said it was the best wedding they'd ever been to! Result!

Paying for our day was massively helped by a large PPI payout (thats how we can afford the honeymoon), so if you havent claimed already, get a move on. Every penny counts!

Hope this is of help.

Blether

For cheaper dress buy a white evening dress. Won't get a train but have seen them quite cheap. Not heard great things about ones from China.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/eDressit-White-Evening-Dress-00100207/dp/B003EJIDC6

http://www.dressespro.com/white-strapless-aline-prom-dress-drp0036-p-3360.html

split_second

We tried to go for budget without compromise, and it's about 8k for us, roughly half is venue, they are decorating it, giving full sit down meal and we have full use of 3 rooms.

Wedding cars- £450 for two, they will also film ceremony and take pics.
Rings cost about £700 but that's an 18ct white gold for future mrs split second and a palladium one for me.
Suits and a bridesmaid dress is about £800 I have myself and 5 groomsmen in that (best man, 2 ushers, my dad and father in law to be)
We are having a cupcake stack and something small to cut for photos.
Church costs a small fortune but a lot of the costs are set legally

Squidgy66

The best saving we made back in October was on the cars. You are easily looking upwards of 300 quid a car in most places.

We contacted our local executive car company (value cabs in Belfast), who also offered wedding packages. We explained that things were a bit tight and could they give us a quote on just the executive hire as opposed to wedding package. After some deliberation with the manager they agreed. We got two 'baby' Bentleys for a half an hour journey for the meagre price of 60quid each as they only charge by the mile. Saved us hundreds - still chauffeur driven, they just didn't put all the ribbons on (like anybody notices) and we brought our own bubbly (half price at M & S!).

Squidgy66

PS - depends on personal taste - but I really can't see the point in buying a precious metal then trying to make it look like a cheaper one? Against my better judgement my wife got white gold for both her rings.

Having never worn jewellery before I wasn't bothered. The white gold rings I was looking at were 300-400 pounds. I got a chunky silver one (A new harder wearing silver alloy - argentinium?) in my desired design from Argos for 50quid. I don't have to get it re-plated and I won't have a nervous breakdown should I ever lose it (although I may have to visit my local A&E when my wife finds out).

dizzyblnd

I used a local company to supply me with foam/ silk flowers and this cam ein much much cheaper than real and they looked much better than I could have made myself.

NeverInDebt

Post 29 marked as :spam:

dhalliday

Selbyjay wrote: »

My partner & i have just celebrated our Civil Partnership & the whole thing, inc stag doos, ceremony & reception cost about £2.5k (exc honeymoon).

We had a our ceremony at 1500 on a Saturday at the Registry Office (last service of the day, we were very lucky with the weather & it was still light for pics) - £385 inc fee to give notice (we hired the biggest room as had 60 guests, but smaller rooms are a lot cheaper)

We had our reception at a funky bar in town (1331 in York) - free room hire!

Canapes & cava for 60 guests - £272, but my mum paid for the Cava at £122, so only cost us £150 (buy by the bottle, not the glass, it'll go much further & ask about discounts for buying so many bottles - we saved 10%)

Evening buffet for 120 guests - £665 (we selected from a sharing platters menu, rather than their wedding buffet menu so the choices were very different & the quality excellent. Everyone raved about the food)

Note that we didnt do a sit down meal, saved us about £1800!

Main cake was from Sainsburys - £30, but bought by my partner's parents so cost us nothing. We decorated it ourselves for about £3 extra.

65 cupcakes from Waitrose - £60 (excellent quality & presentation)

Night time cocktails served in vintage teapots - £350 (this was our extravagance, but i hope to be able to resell the teapots & cups & make some money back)

Goodybags for 120 (inc pick 'n' mix, glow sticks, memento CD of the music from our day & small individual gifts) & sweetie jars - £134 (sweets were bought from an online wholesaler, jars from Home Bargains)

DJ - didnt have one! We have a lot of friends who are DJs so we asked them to pre-mix some sets made up of our fave tunes & created a play list for the bar to play. Cost us nothing!

We didnt do flowers but used iloom balloons instead - £20

Suits, shoes, shirts & rings for us both - £200 (suits & shirts from Next, shoes from TK Maxx, rings from H Samual)

Photography - a close friend did this for us for free!

Gifts for those involved in our day - £110

We also made about £800 in savings by:

**Blagging a free stay at the Hilton for the night before our wedding (i work in travel, so used my contacts!) - saved £105
**Asked for gift vouchers (Next, love 2 shop etc) for birthdays & christmas prior to the wedding - saved £140
**Mum paid for Cava - saved £122
**Partner's parents paid for caked - saved £30
**Catered for slightly less guests than expected - saved £50
**savings on honeymoon by booking in advance & industry discounts - £220

We're booked to go to Lapland for our honeymoon (Northern Lights, here we come!). All in, this should cost us less than £3k.

Again, i used my contacts at work to save money on train tickets to London - saved £150. Plus, i claimed for a rail delay & got rail vouchers for about £30 which paid towards the tickets.

We're staying at the Premier Inn at Gatwick before & after our flights & booked non-refundable rates costing £100 for both nights & we even get dinner on the first night. Bargain.

We're also doing a "year of fun" where we do something together (or with friends) once a month. We asked our guests to vote on the activities at the reception & much of the money & vouchers we got as gifts will pay toward this (you could easily substitute a main honeymoon for a "YOF", which was our first plan, and spread the cost & the love over a whole year!)

Our wedding wasnt flash, but it was what we wanted & many guests commented on how much they enjoyed it & how different it was to previous weddings. It was very relaxed, the bar were excellent & some even said it was the best wedding they'd ever been to! Result!

Paying for our day was massively helped by a large PPI payout (thats how we can afford the honeymoon), so if you havent claimed already, get a move on. Every penny counts!

Hope this is of help.

This sounds really, really lovely. Exactly the kind of thing I would love to do, however, trying to find a reception venue in Edinburgh big enough is proving a nightmare!

Love your honeymoon suggestion

Ricky_Pascual

We had a wedding in Spain angled at the whole rustic village thing and it was cheap as chips and everyone loved it. Got married in a small church in Mijas on the Costa del Sol (free), reception on the roof garden of the restaurant next door (30 people about 600 pounds including drinks), no reception, and in my case booked the stag weekend with a company called stagmarbella.com which as really cheap and great fun (they do Hen nights too).
The great thing about doing it abroad is that the flights are cheap and only real friends can be bothered to make it! Oh and for the legal bit we did registry office in Gibraltar which was only 100 or so pounds.
Hope this gives you a different option...
All the best
Ricky :beer: