Am I being unrealistic? Budget vs Wedding ideal

bushbaby22

Hello

I am hoping someone can help.

My OH and I have been engaged for a while now and I really want to get married. I have been putting it off for a while but I now need to sort it out!

My ideal reception would be in a tent/marquee surrounded by friends and family with possibly an afternoon tea/snacks and then hog roast while we all dance the night away. Ideally we would like all the guests to be at the ceremony and reception - not some at ceremony and then some coming later for the reception (total approx 100) I understand that the size of the venue where we have the ceremony will depend on whether this is possible.
We are looking at having a a late ceremony and ideally would like to have it at the same place as the reception but are more than willing to be very flexible with this. My OH has a large family some of which have no access to cars or have Cash to splash so the venue would either need to be near or have some cheap accommodation on site and fairly easy to get to. Unless I manage to find a venue near where they live!! My OH has said that if need be he will reduce the numbers on his side (he has a large family)

we are looking at spending 3k for this - is this completely unrealistic?
I have found so many amazing venues but the hire charges are astronomical - before we have even factored food into it. I am beginning to lose hope that I will find somewhere that we both like. We have been looking near Redditch, Aylesbury and Salisbury.

If anyone can help or point me in the right direction, I would be ever so grateful!

firebird082

One thing I have picked up on is that marquees tend to be very expensive. Also, stop looking at 'wedding' venues. If you need the ceremony to be in the reception venue, try checking local councils for their list of registered venues in the county. Also - town halls - council-owned, so at the cheaper end of the spectrum, and some are pretty spectacular. They also tend to be located in towns or cities, so transport should not be a problem.

We are doing much the same route as you, and looked at many, many halls before we found a suitable one. Our food costs (afternoon tea and hog roast for 100) are a max of £2500, though that should be a bit cheaper I think (afternoon teas around £15/head, hogroast about £800).

If you are having a late ceremony, you can easily forego having 2 meals...

Edit: For example, the list of registered venues in Wiltshire: http://www.wiltshire.gov.uk/communityandliving/birthsdeathsmarriages/marriagecivilpartnerships/wiltshireapprovedvenues.htm#salisbury-Wiltshire_approved_venues-Anchor

bushbaby22

Thanks for your reply firebird082.
Yes you are right that the marquee/tents are expensive......I was so hoping that we could do it though!

Will have a look without using the term 'wedding' - in regards to halls etc (& your own reception), is there help clearing up afterwards or best to hire someone to do it/ask for volunteers?

goggle

it all depends how "fancy" you need that marquee to be, and the sort of environment you have in mind ...
I think it could just about be done for a bit over £3K if you use somewhere like a scout campsite or farmers field, get a basic marquee without the fancy chandeliers, drapes etc, borrow/hire tables from the local scouts/church etc and draft in an army of volunteers to help you setup/clear up/probably bake the scones for afternoon tea & make the tea!
You would be unlikely to find such a cheap venue licensed for weddings though, so this would need to be taken into account

Don't underestimate things like toilets too - are you/your guests happy with a couple of the little blue tardis type portaloos or will you need access to fancy facilities for your princess dress? Also think about mud - will your guests be ok walking through the field to the marquee in wellies if it's been a wet week or two, or do you need fancy pathways putting down?

Realistically £4-5K would give you what you want, but 3K is not going to happen

Another option could be a traditional church hall/church lawn type affair where you could cram into the hall if it's wet, but have the option to spill out to the lawn if it's nice - maybe a couple of gazebos etc?

firebird082

Just to check - do you mean £3k total budget, and if so, have you written out a budget and considered which things you are happy to skimp on/miss out and which are essentials? £3k total would be very tight, whereas £3k for venue and catering is perfectly possible.

I suppose the other thing about marquees, is if you can tag your event on to the end of something else, where someone else has paid the major cost of erecting the thing...?

With halls, you have to do all the clearing up yourself. We get ours for 2 hours Friday night to set up, and 2 hours Sunday morning for clearing up. I'm not entirely sure how this is going to work, but I expect we'll get family involved on Sunday morning with the cleaning. The lady I've got doing decorations will do the putting up and taking down of that, but there is extra cost to that...afraid I'm not much help there as I'm just trying to figure this our for ours at the moment! (we're only just booking the hall now - wedding is next May ).

sl_jones

Hi,

Having been in your situation i understand, I budget 10K for my wedding and now it's creeping up to 15K.

I had a quick look and i thought this place might be of interest to you as they do both the wedding ceremony and the reception on the same grounds. http://bordesleypark.co.uk/faq/

Best advice i can give you is to not get married on a saturday or friday. A day in the week can save you thousands,we are getting married on a monday and it's savings us around 4K. It also makes a difference when you book the registrar too! Near where i am getting married it cost £600 to get married on a Saturday but only £430 to get married on a Monday.

I have also found a few photographer and makeup artist that will do a cheaper deal in the week.

Another thing is caterers, if you drop the dessert and serve the cake then you can save a few bucks per head. The view i mention above does allow you to use your own caterers which means you not tied the ones the venue uses. Also watch out for stuff like corkage if they say you can bring your own drink

Sometimes venues will also give you a cheaper rate if you take a spot that they have left this year, or you could try something like cancelled weddings to get a real bargain http://www.cancelledweddings.co.uk/late-availability-wedding-offers.html#venues

But i think if you squeeze you might be able to get a wedding for 5K, bare in mind that most of these places don't want the full deposit until like 2 months before which gives you a long time to save.

Gloomendoom

If you can sort a suitable venue I think you could do it for 3K but you will have to be creative and be prepared to make a few compromises. A family that is willing to muck in will help too. Village halls can make excellent cheap venues if you are prepared to put some effort in with the decorations. Some have a licensed bar too. Ours does.

We were under tight budgetary constraints when we arranged our wedding which, incidentally, was very similar to the one you want... a big(ish) relaxed garden party. If I remember correctly, ours cost just over 6k in total but that did include the honeymoon. We were lucky with the venue too.

Ways we saved money:

Late ceremony (2:00pm) guests had fed themselves saving us money. Also meant many guests could travel up/down on the day saving them money.

Church decorated anyway with flowers so no extra cost to us.

Ceremony close to reception venue: No wedding cars needed. After the ceremony. We were able to walk down through the woods to the reception venue followed by our guests.

Bought marquees and sold them afterwards. Cheaper than hiring. Family helped put them up and take them down.

Bought cheap cutlery on ebay.

Hired in crockery, chairs, some tables.

Glasses came from Sainsburys (free.)

Guests contributed food for afternoon tea.

All wine and bubbly was bought very cheaply in France. Beer and soft drinks were stocked up beforehand whenever we saw an offer.

We didn't hire any clothes.

We didn't have any bridesmaids, flower girls, page boys, ushers etc. We both have largish families so it was a lot simpler... and a lot cheaper.

Mrs G bought her dress in a sale. £200. Two sizes too big but my mum altered it to fit.

We didn't do a formal sit down meal so we didn't need chairbacks, favours or table decorations.

We designed our invitations and had them printed up.

Perhaps not everyone's dream wedding, but it suited us perfectly.

King_Slayer

Does the 3k include dress, cake etc or is this solely for the venue?

bushbaby22

Thanks everyone for your responses.

The £3k is for venue and catering only.

There are a few things which we are going to do to cut costs as mentioned is one of your postings ie weekday wedding / cake for dessert etc

Thanks for the link sl_jones - we had looked at them before and thought they were ridiculously exepensive - but that was before we upped the budget for the reception

Thanks firebird082 for your link too - some fab venues on the list

Gloomendoom - your day and run up to it sounds like it was perfect!!!

Goggle - thanks for the point on toilets - hadn't even thought of that!!!
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