How much did you spend and for what?

Salome_2

My costs ~
Registry office & paperwork costs - £100
Wedding ring for me - £24
Wedding ring for him - £40
Outfit for our son - £20
Flowers - £40
Drink for the reception held in my nan's dining room - £40
Food for reception - my nan made it all and paid for it
Wedding cake - my aunt made it.
My outfit - £40 (I already had the shoes)
Hubby's outfit - Regimental Number 2's (so free)
My hair - my cousins girlfriend (who runs her own hairdressers) dressed it for me
Car - found a taxi firm with a car that was black, £15 to and from registry office
Photos - my friend took some on her professional camera and gave them to us
Meal at local Yankee Traveller after guests had left - £35
Didn't have a honeymoon.
Total - £334
Still married, 17 years later. (still haven't had a honeymoon either!)

debtmess

We were married nearly 2 years ago now, originally we should have been married August 2015. Our original plans differed to our actual wedding but in no way did I feel I missed out.

We did ours on just under 4K, church wedding, top hat and tails affair sit down reception meal, so this amount is very do able.

Our main expenses was
Church (I cannot remember exact amount)
Reception (sit down 3 course meal for 60 including wine, buffet and disco in evening) £800 our local pub did ours and it was every bit as amazing as the hotel we was going to stupidly pay 8k for
Suit hire £550 moss bros (groom went free)
My dress and fittings £350
Bridesmaids x 5 £167 bhs sale
Shoes £140
Flowers £120
Car hire £200 2 cars
Cake £175
Sweet cart £150
Invites £80
Photographer £400all day until evening reception
Rings £340 made for us


We had a February wedding in the end, I think that made a huge difference, we had only booked venue for original wedding and was rather lucky to get refund back as they had only just taken bookings for 2015 at the time.

hec2308

Dipsy, that is seriously impressive. How have you managed to get a cake for £100?! I can't find anything less than £300!

Andypandyboy

You need to ask around friends, there are some very talented amateur cake makers out there who will do it for that.

cashewnut

hec2308 wrote: »

Dipsy, that is seriously impressive. How have you managed to get a cake for £100?! I can't find anything less than £300!

We're getting a Waitrose undecorated 3-tier cake (think it feeds up to 85ish), jazzing it up with ribbon, fresh flowers and a cake topper. The cake is costing £146.

October17

Wow I can't believe how much weddings cost! I'm getting married next October and the total cost will be around £4,000. Our local hotel has wedding packages and for £2,000 we will have the ceremony, sit down 3 course meal for 50 people with a glass of wine, then a glass of prosecco for the speeches, a Master of Ceremony, all the table linen, chair covers fitted, DJ, tea and coffee plus evening buffet. In the evening up to 100 extra guests can arrive for no extra. Also we are getting the Bridal suite thrown in. Its perfect as the mother-in-law-to-be has MS and travelling will tire her out too much to enjoy the day if we had separate locations.

Our ceremony starts at 1.30pm so our photographer will arrive at 1pm and stay till 4pm for £425. We'll get every photo she takes on a disc and will own the copyright. Everyone will have their camera phone anyway.
I'm saving money by having candles in holders on the tables and a ring of ivy around them. We don't need wedding cars as its all in the same place. I'm very tempted to do my own flowers too. I want roses and just need to tie ribbon round the stems. We brought 50 favour boxes from eBay for £5.00 and will buy sweets for them at Christmas when everything is on bargain offers.
The cake will be 3 tiers of plain iced sponge from M&S. £8 for the small tier, £16 for the medium tier and £34 for the large tier. That is enough for 54 people!
My dress will be from a discount Wedding outlet. There is one near us and its amazing.
Even this amount of money will be a scrimping and saving affair but then we have a house to run, a car to keep on the road and a rail season ticket for the other half to get to work. I don't feel we are cutting any corners at all and it will be wonderful

catflap11

Our costs:

minister and venue hire £100
Wedding certificate £25
rings £50
Chinese takeaway £18


that's it, no guests no flounce, no showing off, just two people making a commitment to each other.

michelle09

Our wedding (end of 2015) cost £8600 in total. I didn't scrimp on anything, but we did make sure not to spend money pointlessly. A rough breakdown:


Invites: £80
Design: £0 (my SIL works in design and did them for free.)
Paper/printing: £20. (Did it ourselves. Might not look highend but it did the job!)
Postage: £60. (Not cheap. But a quarter of our guests came from overseas.)



Church Service: £891
Church fees (service, bells, vicar, marriage prep course, Banns in two churches etc.): £800.
Order of Service (SIL designed again - love her! and home printed): £30
Car: £1 (we asked a friend if we could borrow their nicer car.)
Rings: £600.

Outfits: £830
Bride (dress, shoes, underwear, new watch): £230
Groom (reusable suit, shirt, shoes, tie): £200
Bridesmaids (dresses, they paid for accessories): £300.
Bestman/Ushers (shirts and ties, asked them to wear any dark suit they already owned): £100
Haircut/style on the day for five of us: £100. (our normal hairdresser charged her standard rate).


Reception: £6340
Main package (welcome drink, two course meal, half a bottle of wine, toast drink for 100 people): £3800
Table plan: (DIY) £20
Table decorations: £70
Favours/place-names: (DIY) £100.
Wedding Cake: £0. (Donated by an amazing friend and doubled as our dessert).
Singing Waiters: £1000.
DJ: £500.
Photographer: £850


If we were trying to save money then we could have cut a fair amount of this - the reception venue I initially wanted was half the price. But my parents weren't happy with the original and offered to pay for the reception they thought was more appropriate.


The singing waiters were a last minute moment of weakness but I don't regret them. They were really memorable. But you could easily have a wedding that looked great for £8000.

cashewnut

catflap11 wrote: »

Our costs:


that's it, no guests no flounce, no showing off, just two people making a commitment to each other.

What bit of weddings in particular do you consider "showing off"? Just curious I personally hate being the centre of attention but I still want a nice day for my guests (and me and future husband!) to enjoy.

catflap11

I find the whole, white dress, Church, fancy car, rubbish disco, inviting people you don't like thing showing off. It's all just a big appendage waving contest.

Maybe I've missed the point of a wedding, but I thought it was two people showing commitment to each other? It's not (in my opinion) for anyone else. My wedding was for me and my wife, we aren't religious and we don't care if people approve or disapprove our our relationship, it was simply a day for us. We cringe when we hear about people spending thousands on an identikit wedding, not as much as we cringe when we see the photos! Maybe we missed the point?