Funding wedding advice

dont_use_vistaprint

Alexland wrote: »

Our church wedding, pub meal & reception (including free bar tab that lasted all night) and long distance all inclusive honeymoon cost around £10k about 5 years ago.

The wedding dress was direct from China, the flowers were direct from Holland (the bridesmaids made them up the day before), the printing was done by an eBay trader and the photographer was related to someone at work. My wife made the cake.

Some things were bought on ebay then resold afterwards (eg the morning suit coat, cake stand, etc) and other things I used up as workwear (the shoes, shirt, trousers, etc).

We didn't really have to save as the money was committed over 6 months from normal income.

Alex

Ours was a bit longer ago! but cost just over £1,000, best day ever, all our friends and family helped out (flowers, photos, cakes, cooking, cars, garden & marquee) , loads of stuff 'borrowed' from Ebay that was sold a week or so later! We only really ended up paying for food/alcohol shopping , a dress and donation for use of a church, and we received over £800 in cash on the day and the offer of weekend babysitting so had an unplanned lastminute.com honeymoon, weekend in Spain ! :-)

Malthusian

Zero_Sum wrote: »

I struggle to believe these figures anyway, as most just couldnt afford anywhere near that

Doesn't stop them spending it

and for every person who spends £30k there'll be one who has the do at the local social club & honeymoon AI in Benidorm. I reckon the real average will be less than half that.

This is the funny thing about statistics. If Hitched's sample was representative (which it obviously isn't), then all the Darrens and Sharons having a wedding in a Royal Legion club for c. £0 and all the Tarquins and Cornelias having a hipster DIY wedding for £0 would massively drag down the average. So that anyone who didn't want a registry office wedding and didn't want to DIY everything would be looking at spending well over £28k on average. If you know that you want to spend at least some money you have to eliminate all the zeros from the set.

All surveys work the same way. Ask a silly question, get a silly answer.

Passiveincome

Thank you all for the advise and suggestions.

UPDATE:
Discussed this with my partner. Agree with the comments and 20k does sound excessive for the day. We are going to consider hiring a teepee and having a more laid back approached theme in a relatives garden to help keep the costs under control.

This approach is a lot less stress on the wallet and allows us to make it our own.

Many thanks!

Alexland

Great hope you pick a good day for a garden party!

justme111

The weather does not matter so much with gazebos and marques.
If I was to have a wedding that would my choice. Somewhere with enough amount of space for sitting area, buffet/boss and dancing area and a band/DJ.
Would need to put something on the grounds though to be able to wear high heels without them getting stuck in the grass.
In this way you are not constrained with numbers. Mind, may turn out to be quite expensive anyway !

Alexland

justme111 wrote: »

The weather does not matter so much with gazebos and marques

I have been to such weddings and they can still turn into mud festivals at the wrong time of year.

Alex