Our Wedding Budget

MrsMGtobe

Hi all

I am new here and thought I would start posting.

Me and my partner moved in together in September this year and on the day we moved in, he also proposed. We have been dating since 2010 and we are super happy.

We originally set the date for May 2015, but after seeing how much we had budgeted I baulked. I would prefer to invest our money in a marriage rather than a wedding, as would my H2B. We want to get married as soon as possible. We decided that the longer we would wait, the longer we would save and the more we would spend which isn't what we want.

In a crazy bid to get married sooner, we have decided to reduce our budget and hopefully bring our date forward. :j

To keep me motivated, and to hopefully increase my money saving technique, I thought I would publish the budget and the actual spend. As I start to spend I will keep updating this post. I will also add additional posts breaking down my costs and budgets. I would be happy to accept any criticisms or advice on further ways to reduce our spends.

Item: (budgeted spend) actual cost
Hotel ceremony & meal: (£750.00) £0.00 yet
Registrars fees: (£550.00) £0.00 yet
Photographer: (£600.00) £0.00 yet
Cake: (£50.00) £0.00 yet
Clothes: (£1000.00) £0.00 yet
Decorations, stationery & flowers: (£300.00) £0.00 yet
Picnic/Reception: (£300.00) £0.00 yet
Rings: (£200.00) £0.00 yet
Hair & make up: (£140.00) £0.00 yet
Stay at hotel: (£200.00) £0.00 yet
Honeymoon: (£4000.00) £0.00 yet
10% contingency: (£809.00) £0.00 yet
Total cost: (£8899.00) £0.00 yet
Total spend to date: £0.00 yet
Total remaining spend: £8899.00


Thanks for reading!

MrsMGtobe

Stephb1986_2

MrsMGtobe wrote: »

Hi all

I am new here and thought I would start posting.

Me and my partner moved in together in September this year and on the day we moved in, he also proposed. We have been dating since 2010 and we are super happy.

We originally set the date for May 2015, but after seeing how much we had budgeted I baulked. I would prefer to invest our money in a marriage rather than a wedding, as would my H2B. We want to get married as soon as possible. We decided that the longer we would wait, the longer we would save and the more we would spend which isn't what we want.

In a crazy bid to get married sooner, we have decided to reduce our budget and hopefully bring our date forward. :j

To keep me motivated, and to hopefully increase my money saving technique, I thought I would publish the budget and the actual spend. As I start to spend I will keep updating this post. I will also add additional posts breaking down my costs and budgets. I would be happy to accept any criticisms or advice on further ways to reduce our spends.

Item: (budgeted spend) actual cost
Hotel ceremony & meal: (£750.00) £0.00 yet (How many is this for?)
Registrars fees: (£550.00) £0.00 yet
Photographer: (£600.00) £0.00 yet (Are you having it filmed also or just photos?)
Cake: (£50.00) £0.00 yet
Clothes: (£1000.00) £0.00 yet (You could get dress in a sample sale say £500 and a suit for hire at £100)
Decorations, stationery & flowers: (£300.00) £0.00 yet (Real flowers or foam?)
Picnic/Reception: (£300.00) £0.00 yet
Rings: (£200.00) £0.00 yet (Might need a bit more on rings)
Hair & make up: (£140.00) £0.00 yet
Stay at hotel: (£200.00) £0.00 yet
Honeymoon: (£4000.00) £0.00 yet (An awful lot of money for a honeymoon!)
10% contingency: (£809.00) £0.00 yet
Total cost: (£8899.00) £0.00 yet
Total spend to date: £0.00 yet
Total remaining spend: £8899.00


Thanks for reading!

MrsMGtobe

Congratulations on getting engaged

Steph xx

MrsMGtobe

Stephb1986 wrote: »

Congratulations on getting engaged

Steph xx

Thanks Steph.

The meal is for our immediate family only, so a three course meal for ten people (inclusive of a drinks package). We have met a few venues, and this is they type of number they seem to quote.

We are having just photos, we have had a look through our favourite photographers packages and are hoping we can barter to less than £600; this will only be for a digital package.

In terms of clothes, I have found a dress company which I love, all dresses are under £400. We are also buying our bridesmaid dress and hiring suits for the Groom, best man, father of the groom, father of the bride and another grooms man.

No decisions made yet on the flowers, hadn't really thought of foam before!

We have checked a couple of local jewellers and I will only want a 2mm white gold plain band to match my engagement ring, and my partner only wants something very thin (but also indestructible) too, so we are hoping this will cover it. If not, there is the slight contingency fund!

The honeymoon is the one thing we really aren't compromising on. Travel is important to us and our aim is to get to the Maldives (albeit at the very beginning of rainy season!). It sounds awful of us, but the way we see it, we would like to invest our money in time for us together and not on feeding the 5000 aunties we have never met. :rotfl:

Thank you so much for your feedback Steph, it really helps to have other people's input and advice. I really truly appreciate it.

Trixsie1989

Hi mrsmgtobe, we are getting married in 2015 and are finding that we have the same problems as you with the cost :-) have you thought about getting married out of season? We are having our wedding in jan and have saved thousands on venue and photographer so far. Also have you thought of making your own invites or doing your own flowers? Even if you had someone make you a bouquet of artificial flowers they can be quite reasonable, I've seen some from £30 on https://www.thebridesbouquet.co.uk host are lovely. Also could someone make your cake as a wedding present? Or is there anyone you know who could do your hair and make up as a present? Try ebay for your decorations and any favours if you were wanting to do the,. You could also get some good deals on bridesmaid dresses and wedding dresses on there. Sorry for the essay I'm tryin get o think of what we've done to bring our costs down so we can have a nice honeymoon :-) are the registrars fees set at a registry or other venue? Xxxx

Stephb1986_2

MrsMGtobe wrote: »

Thanks Steph.

The meal is for our immediate family only, so a three course meal for ten people (inclusive of a drinks package). We have met a few venues, and this is they type of number they seem to quote. Seems a fair price

We are having just photos, we have had a look through our favourite photographers packages and are hoping we can barter to less than £600; this will only be for a digital package. I'm using Greystone Photography (based near Carlisle) very reasonably priced and fantastic photo's.

In terms of clothes, I have found a dress company which I love, all dresses are under £400. We are also buying our bridesmaid dress and hiring suits for the Groom, best man, father of the groom, father of the bride and another grooms man. I've managed to buy morning suits for £70 each on My Tuxedo, I'm only having child bridesmaids so got their dresses in BHS with a discount code bringing them in at £20 each. Keep an eye on the Christmas sales/summer sales

No decisions made yet on the flowers, hadn't really thought of foam before! If you want real flowers try your local college floristry department.

We have checked a couple of local jewellers and I will only want a 2mm white gold plain band to match my engagement ring, and my partner only wants something very thin (but also indestructible) too, so we are hoping this will cover it. If not, there is the slight contingency fund! Tungsten carbide might be the way forward for your h2b that's what mine has got.

The honeymoon is the one thing we really aren't compromising on. Travel is important to us and our aim is to get to the Maldives (albeit at the very beginning of rainy season!). It sounds awful of us, but the way we see it, we would like to invest our money in time for us together and not on feeding the 5000 aunties we have never met. :rotfl:Don't blame you! Keep away from Buccament Bay in St Vincents it's awful.

Thank you so much for your feedback Steph, it really helps to have other people's input and advice. I really truly appreciate it.

I hope some of that has helped a bit, Also if you don't want to pay a company a lot of money for your invites do them yourself. TBH Tesco have some really stunning invites I wish I got them instead of making my own because so far they have been the biggest stress! Not even the guestlist was that stressful.

Keep an eye on Facebook for competitions I won our wedding cake on Facebook £500 worth :cool:

Steph xx

ellesbellesxxx

Hi and congratulations!
Just saw what you said about your ring - do you have any Tesc0 clubcard vouchers? We had been saving ours - I wanted a 2mm plain white gold ring and from G0ldsmiths this was 119 - with 30 pounds of tesco vouchers = free!!!!
Worth looking into x

katydo12

hi! congratulations on your engagement! very exciting time.
on the rings.. I got mine from h Samuel. just plain white gold band. and for hubby we paid 6.99 from argos for a titanium band because he really didn't think he would wear it!
good on you for doing it your own way and I agree with you about the honeymoon! we got married in Greece and for the wedding/holiday we paid around 7500 for everything.
theres a website called 'hitched' that you can use a budget planner online and has links to different vendors. also 'confetti' is a good resource too.

BlueMoo

Congratulations :T
Welcome to the wedding board!

Agree about honeymoon and creating memories being very important. Maldives is so beautiful.

We have a very similar budget so it's interesting to see the differences.

Relocationrelocation

Won't the hotel offer you a bridal suite as part of the package? Might be worth asking...

MrsMGtobe

Trixsie1989 wrote: »

Hi mrsmgtobe, we are getting married in 2015 and are finding that we have the same problems as you with the cost :-) have you thought about getting married out of season? We are having our wedding in jan and have saved thousands on venue and photographer so far. Also have you thought of making your own invites or doing your own flowers? Even if you had someone make you a bouquet of artificial flowers they can be quite reasonable, I've seen some from £30 on **had to delete link** host are lovely. Also could someone make your cake as a wedding present? Or is there anyone you know who could do your hair and make up as a present? Try ebay for your decorations and any favours if you were wanting to do the,. You could also get some good deals on bridesmaid dresses and wedding dresses on there. Sorry for the essay I'm tryin get o think of what we've done to bring our costs down so we can have a nice honeymoon :-) are the registrars fees set at a registry or other venue? Xxxx

Hi, the hotel we are hopefully booking don't seem to change price based on seasons which is a shame. We are looking at early September because the H2B really wants to get married outdoors.

I shall keep an eye out for those flowers! Looks like it could be a great bargain!

In terms of the cake, we are hoping to get a house style cake from choccywoccydoodah! There will only be ten of us, so it's a nice treat without being OTT.

Good thought about the hair and make up! The make up is definitely something I can talk my sister into. My hair, however, is far too wild for anyone to have a go with! It's very curly so needs a pro! :rotfl:

Will definitely try ebay for crafty bits! I quite like making bits and bobs anyway so it could be useful. Will also try ebay for the bridesmaid dress. I thought I had found a lovely wedding dress and for under £400 it seemed like a bargain (in wedding terms, in real terms I just want to baulk at it!) but my mum hated the dress! I was quite disappointed. Can't please everyone though.

The registrar fees are for giving notice, and an 'enhanced ceremony' at our venue. I have no way of talking my H2B into marrying at a registry office...

Where are you planning for your honeymoon? I think apart from the obvious 'being married & saying vows ', planning and having a honeymoon is my favourite part of the wedding process.

Thank you for all your help so far. xxxx

MrsMGtobe

Stephb1986 wrote: »

I hope some of that has helped a bit, Also if you don't want to pay a company a lot of money for your invites do them yourself. TBH Tesco have some really stunning invites I wish I got them instead of making my own because so far they have been the biggest stress! Not even the guestlist was that stressful.

Keep an eye on Facebook for competitions I won our wedding cake on Facebook £500 worth :cool:

Steph xx

Hi Steph, thank you so much for the feedback. Will keep that all in mind. I am definitely a creative type and find it semi-therapeutic so I am aiming to make those bits myself!

Ooh, that's fantastic! What is your wedding cake like?

Thank you again for the help & tips.

Xx