Wedding savings/saving

lazer

My advice is haggle on everything!

We had a similar budget to you and probably saved around £1k haggling.

The main place for this were

The venue - got £3 a head off, and got free accommodation for parents, and an extra nights accommodation for us for free.

Bridal shop - got my veil and shoes for free, and significant discount on bridesmaid dresses. I looked elsewhere for my bridesmaid dresses and found the one we liked and noted that it was the same designer that the bridal shop we got my dree in, so went back to them to get it too.

Photographer - saved about £200 on this.

Basically - anytime someone gives you don't accept it, ask for at least 15% off an negotiate from there.

Another thing i think is a must is Wedding Insurance - get it as early as possible, so it covers everything you book.

Make sure to budget for notice to marry, and registrar/priests costs etc.

happyinflorida

I'm a big fan of the TV programme "Don't tell the bride" - where the groom gets to plan the wedding in 3 weeks and gets £12,000 to spend.

One thing that always amazes me is how few people bargain.

One of the best of these programmes was a South African who bargained hard for every single item. He got so much money off almost everything. The only thing he failed to get much off was the rings but he spent hours in the shop!! I'd have given up!

Offer far less to the venue - bargain hard with them. Get the bottles of water removed for a start - if anyone wants water, they can have tap and if they really want sparkling, they can pay for it themselves. Cut down on everything non-essential.

Good luck, hope the day goes well.

dwibly

When I got married, I saved money by making my own wedding dress and bridesmaids dresses (got the material in a sale), my family made all the food for the wedding, my brother and his friends did the music and the cake was made by a local baker that my mother worked for. still had to pay out for flowers, cars and venue, but kept the prices to a level we could afford.

Fiona1984

Don't forget the cost of the ceremony. A Church of England wedding costs £451 not including an organist or bell ringers so this can be quite a bit of the budget. I'm not sure how much other denominations or civil ceremony celebrants cost.

lazer

Fiona1984 wrote: »

Don't forget the cost of the ceremony. A Church of England wedding costs £451 not including an organist or bell ringers so this can be quite a bit of the budget. I'm not sure how much other denominations or civil ceremony celebrants cost.

Wow, thats expensive - I got married in a catholic Church, and we had to attend a pre-marriage course costing £75 but the use of the church was free for parishiners (or £150 if you lived outside the parish). a voluntary donation to the priest is also recommended.

Andy_89

We are getting married at a county hall/hotel type place

I fully intend to haggle a bit more with the venue - the price is already £10/ head cheaper than normal, but I am gonna try and get my upgrade to the 'Silver Package' included.


I am pretty sure I can save on the DJ, Photographer and my Suits ( I can pick them up from Matalan all in for about £350)

My mother will be making the invitations, but I intend to pay for her 'materials'

I live 20mins from the Jewellry Quarter so I will be taking full advantage of the long stretch of shops there.

Our honeymoon has come in at £5,800 but that is Florida for you.

norfolkmum

Our wedding was brilliant and cheap! I will admit I am very lucky and have a very clever mum, who made my dress, the 6 bridesmaids' dresses, the wedding cake and the bridesmaids' flowers. We had the wedding in my local church (£99 but that was 20 years ago!), the reception in a couple of rooms behind a pub (£20). I had a live band (£150) and we made our own tapes for when the band wasn't playing. The car we went to church in was lent to us for the day by a friend who's brother owned a flash car for a wedding present, and my sister's boyfriend lent us his family's caravan by the coast for a honeymoon as another present.


We booked the service for as late as possible so we didn't have to have the (boring) wedding breakfast. We wanted the whole thing to be as informal as possible so that everyone could enjoy themselves, not have to sit still and listen to speeches etc (had a couple, but very short) so we did a massive buffet. We bought most of the food from the local cash & carry and did it ourselves with help from friends & relatives.


About the only thing I paid decent money for (other than my dress that still cost a fortune) was the photographer and he was rubbish! I've got photos with everyone's feet cut off, got an extra album of photos out of him as they were so disappointing, but not the point. If I did it again, I would just get lots of friends to take cameras.


I've had people coming up to me years later and talking about our wedding day, it was the best ever!

Angela_williams_1983

Our main bargains were:

Rings- mine platinum from the jewellery quarter for half the price high street shops were selling, OH was a titanium ring (he's an engineer, has a titanium watch and wanted it to match) was £65 from a high street place.

Bridesmaid dresses- I had 4 plus flower girl, so wanted relatively inexpensive. Ended up getting some from the Phase 8 sale, under £100 each. Plus the girls can wear them again.

Suits- we got a deal with Moss Bros, pay for 5 get the 6th free- came to £500.

Hair for 7 ladies came to around £250- a snip compared with some of the stylists. I saw some where that would only have done me. I bought some new make up and one of the BMs did it for me.

We also felt the best value item we paid for was the £1200 bar tab. A lot of money perhaps, but we were glad we sacrificed in other areas to be able to pay for this. It isn't normally expected by guests but we were keen to do this, particularly for the evening guests who I feel tend to miss out somewhat. We looked at buying our own wine in but the venue had high corkage rates.

We also negotiated the package so that instead of canopes we got extra champagne for the drinks reception. I don't think anyone expected canopes, so that's fine!

Stationery- we originally sent electronic save the dates. We ended up sending proper invites as the venue and date changed and we wanted people to be sure what the plans were, but I would have been happy sending full email invites. The benefits of this are numerous- save money, guests don't have to worry about remembering to take the invite with them (if they have a smart phone), can include links to hotels/ maps.

I am not a crafty person, but I decided to make the table plan, which cost about £20 including left over bits I didn't use. It looked pretty damned good though. The cheapest I found otherwise was £40 and there were many a lot more than that!

I had my Dad, who is a caligraphy pro write out our place cards, which were about 20p pp. That could have cost up to £1pp

I didn't intend on having favours, but in the end got some chocolate eggs from sainsbury's and put them in organza bags off Amazon- they cost about £1 per head. (we got married easter day)

Our cake was from M&S, I had hoped my Mum would make it but she was worried it wouldn't look professional enough! The M&S one was about £200 (150 portions), but we bought some extra cutting bars just in case we ran out (£14 for 22 portions). There were lots of very positive comments, and I don't regret one bit not spending the £400+ it would have been for a specially made one!

The DJ included in the package was great. I wondered beforehand if we should look into one with all the whistles, but was really pleased with this guy, he knew the venue well and the dance floor was full all night. We had put together quite a comprehensive playlist of pretty awesome tunes though!! Perhaps the fact we knew what the crowd would like to dance to helped. I think he was only £250 anyway.

Our hen/stag dos were very kindly paid for by those going, however, my bridesmaids were very savvy and did very well for their money- worked out £100 per head for 2 nights in a cottage in Derbyshire inc most food and activities and taxi into Derby. We made pizza and played some games the Friday night, on Saturday did a treasure hunt round chatsworth house, had butlers in the buff, went for dinner and a dance in Derby, and on Sunday made customised knickers! All of these activities had personal touches which made them special to me, but for £100 I think that was excellent. Perhaps you can get your MOH/ BM to think more along personal touches rather than grand ideas?

Best of luck anyway. I must admit at the time I found planning a bit stressful, but actually, looking back, it was blooming good fun!

labazs

ok this is my ideas and congrats on your marriage
for hen dos get a few bottles of cheap plonk and have a pamper evening face masks nail painting hand massages etc
stag do well why not crank up the sounds and get some beers in

the wedding
if there is anyone crafty in the family get them to make some invites as they can be very dear
also wedding favours pretty little jars with a band of pretty paper round with a few sweets in or voile bags you can buy them on ebay to fill with sweets ask at your local sweet shops for discounts for large amounts
also see if anyone in the family is good at flowers can save a fortune on bouquets button holes etc not that hard to do either
clothing check out ebay but also a lot of charities now do marriage sections which can save a fortune but also give to a good cause
ask if anyone in the family could either be a djay or play instruments

its amazing what you can do and people love to help out

gardengull

We had an M&S wedding cake and hired a posh cake stand from a specialist cake shop (£30 for the week) with 3 tiers to put it on. My Mum made a silk basic flower arrangement with ribbons, bows and beads, which looked great.
Good luck with all the planning, it's worth starting a scrap book for ideas. Remember, it's not just about the day, there's the rest of your married life together to look forward to!