Realistic Wedding Budget

gadgeteer_2

firebird082 wrote: »

Re wedding insurance - it depends how 'traditional' your are being - many of our suppliers are just individual people, and the amounts we would get back if we had to cancel don't at all fit with what we're spending, so we are going without. E.g. £1000 for cars - irrelevent!

Personally I would advise you to buy insurance. It's such a small cost compared to the overall cost of the wedding that it really should be a no brainer. You can get decent cover for less than £50. You'll probably spend more on stamps & envelopes posting invitations out to people!

Insurance doesn't just cover the failure of a supplier but lots of other scenarios that you never want to have to deal with. For example the death of a close family member. Freak weather. Your venue burning down the day before your wedding.

A couple of years ago I photographed a wedding where someone called in a bomb scare to the hotel. It was a hairs breath away from being cancelled by the police and in the end went ahead because the registrars kindly came back. The couple weren't insured and had the wedding have been cancelled then that would have been that. Every supplier would have expected paying again to reschedule.

I've seen on the various Facebook wedding groups where brides are frantic because a family member has been diagnosed with a serious illness and thrown everything in the air.

For the sake of £40-50 the peace of mind alone is worth it.

thriftylass

Sarahj1590 wrote: »

Hi All,

I know this is a money saving site so obviously a lot of posts are going to be about doing a wedding on the cheap but I want to know the costs of an 'average' wedding.

I don't find google very helpful for this as I find it just combines the extremely extravagant with what I would consider average.

I have a rough budget outlined below, we have chosen the venue so that is the only thing I am certain on price-wise, is this realistic costs for things? Am I missing anything out? Thanks in advance!

Venue £5,000 (had a victorian hunting lodge with 10 rooms to ourselves, including food and drinks)
Caterers £2,500 (not needed, but paid about £1400 for rooms for guests from far away)
Dress, shoes, veil, jewellery, beauty £1,500 (£250, vintage style dress from BHS and hair, costume jewellery just for the day)
Suits £500 (kilts were about the same)
Photographer £1,000 (free, cousin is professional , got him a £200 gift voucher)
Invitations, decorations, favours £500 (£300 made our own invitation, venue was ornate enough and provided flowers)
Drinks (via venue) £1,000 (included in price above)
Cake £500 Cars £500 (friend made the cake and we didn't need a car)
Music/band £500 (about the same)
Rings £500 (about 750)
Florists £500 (only needed the bouqets for £50)
Bridesmaids dresses £500 (she insisted on wearing her own which actually went with the theme)
Honeymoon £2000 (only about 1k as we stayed local)

It totally depends what you want, what I paid is marked in red next to your estimate (total under 9k)

The registrar cost money too. can't remember how much, depends on council and location.

cats_ahoy

My wedding cost about £2500 in total, including registry office wedding and pub reception with food for 50 people, I got my dress off lightinthebox (and it looked amazing), and we got a friend to make our wedding cake. We got a photographer for the reception only which cost £200. My shoes were £8.50 inc packaging off ebay, second hand but like new.

Sarahj1590

Thanks for the comments.

I'm actually trying to just get a realist cost of things (i.e. without scrimping but without splurging too much as well).

Gadgeteer, I will get wedding insurance and agree with what your saying.

lexilex

I think a lot of things you've mentioned can be done for less than you have estimated.

Flowers, you can do for a lot less than £500. We found a lady who worked from home (proper set up at her house) and was much cheaper than the florists working from a shop as she didn't have the same overheads. Same thing with our cake.

Photographers prices vary massively so it's definitely worth contacting loads of them so you can compare prices.

We shopped around a lot for a band and the cheapest we found was £700. That was just for a band, no DJ set. It's good to use sites like Warble to find bands and then contact the band directly to see if they can beat the quote.