The cost of marriage!

sophscottx

DigForVictory wrote: »

Looking just at the cost of flowers, for example, I'd be chatting with my & his family & asking who has the gardening skills & the plague of ivy, and would they have the generosity/capablity/nerve to make a bouquet? And who cooks a nice cake, and who's really frighteningly good with a camera - so many Vital Wedding Expenses can be dispersed amongst the family if you're ready to ask.

His mam and her pal do flower arranging, that will come in handy, she's also an amazing baker! My cousin is fab with a camera, I've also always liked the idea of disposable cameras, never heard any feedback from people who've done this to see if it actually works!

AndyBSG

Without knowing exactly what you are after it's really hard to put a figure on it.

Most of the figures are going to be driven by the number of day and evening guests but the costs can vary wildly.

My wedding was a pretty pricey one but we had a huge number of guests(my family is huge) and went for a plush venue with lots of extra's.

Costs for my wedding were as follows which was for 105 day guests and an additional 50 evening.

DJ - £350
Magician - £245
Bridal Party Hair & Makeup - £260
Wedding rings - £400
Photographer - £700
Flowers - £259
Venue hire - £1,500
Meals - £4,226
Table Wine - £379
Evening buffet - £120

So, all in just under £9,000 but that doesn't include the wedding dress, free bar, gifts for best man, bridesmaids etc, table decorations, wedding cake, suit hire which all added another £4,000-5,000 to the cost with it finally coming in around 15K.

If we had gone for a simpler venue such as a town hall or social club, got outside caterers in(we had to use the venue's ones which pushed the price up a lot), scrapped the magician, etc then we could have easily done it for half that price.

All in all, I'm quite confident we could have done the whole thing for around 5-6K without it feeling 'cheap' if we had been working to a budget.

Only thing I would say NOT to try and save money on is the photographer.

Once the day is over you soon forget it so the photo's really do become more important.

DigForVictory

What I've heard of disposable cameras is *blasphemous* - have one Official relative & an email address for all the camera snaps? As there will be fleets of photos taken, (many good, some excellent & some justabout) and it would be a shame to miss out!

And I agree that sometimes a pro is worth it. Depends on family & confidence/competence & there Not being Any Second Chances.

lippy1923

I agree, not to cheap out on a photographer.

I personally didn't want to burden a family member with picture duties all day because lets face it even though they say its no problem and they would be honoured blah blah, they really want to enjoy and relax on your day, have a few drinks and dance with you, not have the huge pressure of getting the best pictures.


I didn't try the disposable cameras on the table, only because my research told me 9/10 the photos were crap and not worth the money buying them/getting them developed. Everyone has smart phones, so you can be sure there will be plenty of selfies/ videos taken.

[Deleted User]

Won't most people have a camera on their phone that's better than the disposable camera you'd put on the table?

How about making a frame like this (https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/336503403391184435/) BUT use a hashtag (e.g. #BobAndJanesWedding) on the frame, so people can put it on facebook/twitter and you can collate them?

Alternatively, create a Whatsapp group where people can send the photos to. There are apps out there but a mainstream product is easier.

Go to the Poundshop/fancy dress shop to buy a load of fun props to go with it. I'm sure there are proper services you can hire and book, but you could do it yourself.

anto164

We got married early Autumn, and ours broke down to; (not exhaustive list)

Venue + food + some drinks + nights stay B&B for 12- £7,000
Photographer - £1050
Wine + Beer (i bought half a bottle each + keg of beer) - £300 (M&S 25% off - all from vouchers from past christmas) + £66 local brewery
Wedding dress + bridesmaids + shoes - £1500
Suit hire for the boys (inc buying shoes) - £750
Rings (using gold we provided for hers from her late relative) - £920
Decorations - we made all of ours - Wood from the garden + jars + ribbon - £15
Invites & order of services - Made all of ours - £30
Flowers for bride + 3 bridesmaids + floral decorations (roses and gyps) + buttonholes / corsage for 9 - around £260
Church - £680
Car hire - £550
Band for evening - £750
Cake - We made our own + asked all guests to bring some as a 'wedding bake off'.

+ other costs - Came in all in around £14,000 (we self funded 90% of this)

then add in honeymoon which was £6,000, it was a lot of money! Oh, and we bought our first house 4 months before too!

Beans on toast for christmas dinner perhaps!?

I would say that it's a brilliant day, and we could justify paying the amount that we did for it. We did a lot of the work ourselves which saved us a fair bit of money, however, things like making your own cake, making invites etc yourself will save you lots of money. I gasped when i read how much wedding cakes costed - and that was after we made the fruit layer 3 months before our wedding!

The main thing is, spend what you are comfortable spending. We were lucky that we had saved up prior to getting married, and we only put the honeymoon on the ccd, like we would any other holiday.

I will however mirror what others have said - Don't skimp on a photographer. I've heard many tales of poor photos that cause anguish many years after the happy occasion.

mcmanlyn

I never wanted a big/formal wedding - always just wanted small ceremony & pub do afterwards. But after pricing it all up we couldn't beat a Groupon deal at a local hotel. £1999 all in - ceremony, 3 course meal, evening buffet & a few drinks.

It's not what I initially thought of, but it does means we can do it next year & I think it'll be much less stressful to coordinate as it's all in one place & the menu is set to keep the cost down.

We've also decided to not have best man/bridesmaids, no speeches & no first dance - the hotel coordinator was puzzled, but we really want the least fuss possible

Now I just need to decide if I should fork out for a DJ, or go cheap option of a laptop playlist...and the stress of planning a 6 hour playlist :eek:

Slinky

I had 10 disposable cameras, I've got 2 photos I kept and those were only because of the people in the photo, not the skill of the photographer. I stupidly bought some mass produced no-brand name cameras, cost a fortune in processing and were a total disappointment. I've got no decent photos from our evening do as the photographer had left by then and the disposables were carp.

sophscottx

I'd never thought about peoples camera phones (how stupid and obvious!) Would be a good idea to get everyone to send them to an email to choose some more.

Someone I work with paid over 2000 for a photographer, please someone tell me this is more than needed?!

Such a relief to hear other peoples planning and ideas! Thanks everyone!

We've definitely decided on registry office with about 10 guests, then a party with more (not sure of an exact number right now!) So we need to find the best hall/venue! That's one of the hardest things I think, trying to think of a party venue that's cheap, easy to decorate and easy to get to for our elder relatives! As we don't want to pay for accommodation. As for bridal suites and things I would be happy just to go home together, I do love my own bed!!

I've got a wedding ring that has been passed down through generations, my partner isn't keen on rings as he can't wear one for work so it'd just be a cheap one for him as a thing for the day and occasions I guess.

Props also really good idea! You have no idea how helpful you are all being! I'm currently making notes and scribbles from all these ideas and thoughts

AndyBSG

sophscottx wrote: »

Someone I work with paid over 2000 for a photographer, please someone tell me this is more than needed?!

It definitely is as price is in no way indicative of quality.

We paid less than half of that for ours which included the wedding album and a CD of all the photo's.

Someone who is good with a camera is not necessarily a good wedding photographer. Our wedding photographer was very experienced so he knew how to organise the guests with minimum fuss(group photo's of both sides of the family, important relatives, etc take a lot of organising).

In contrast two weeks after our wedding we went to a friends and the photo's there were really painful, very staged and cheesey with the photographer re-positioning arms and legs and silly poses that just made people feel self conscious(She actually said 'You look less fat if you stand side on and your chin rolls show less if you look up slightly' which upset a few people!)

We basically looked at review websites and read testimonials etc to make sure we got a good one.

We didn't go for any video and i'm happy with that decision but my one regret is that we don't have the speeches so i'd see if someone has a camcorder they can bring just to film those.