Planning a wedding and saving money

keenlearner

Me and my partner have been together for almost 10 years now and we have 2 lovely children. Given the way relationships go these days it's surprising but we are still very much in love.

Anyway now at the age of 28 my thoughts have really started to turn towards the future and in particular retirement. At the moment we have no debts at all, live in rented property, and have almost nothing in savings. As of this year we really want to start planning for our future.

First off we need to save for a deposit on our own house [around £14,000]. We also want to get married and this is where I get nervous. We both agree that the kind of money being spent on weddings these days is ridiculous and wouldn't even consider spending that kind of money. We also have to contend with our parents. If we went off and just got married it would no doubt cause trouble so that's not an option.



Anyway I just wanted to post and get peoples thoughts.

Debtgonner

Hi

When we got married 4 1/2 years ago money was then, as it is now an issue!!

We saved some money by getting married on a Friday in a register office. This meant that the car we had was £50 cheaper than on a Saturday. Also, instead of signing up for a photographer package, we asked our local photgrapher to do a shoot at a location of our choice, and it cost us £30, we then just ordered the photos we wanted.

We had a buffet for the people that attended the wedding, really posh one, and then in the evening we went for a much more basic spread, but was still nice.

We had the reception at a local pub which had a really nice room, and I think cost about £25 deposit.

As for drinks, we had a couple of bottles of red and white wine for people as they arrived after the actual wedding (and orange for non drinkers!) I think that cost about £50. We didn't bother with drinks for the other guests particularly.

My biggest tip is do not let anyone else take over, the wedding we wanted and the wedding we had were at opposite ends of the scale!

Good luck

pinkshoes

Can't you just have a small wedding, i.e. registry office, dress from charity shop (! - have seen some amazing dresses in charity shops), and invite only parents and siblings, then go for a nice meal afterwards at a nice restaurant. You could then have a party in a pub (same day or later), where you can often book a room for free, then pay for a reasonably priced buffet, and invite all your friends to celebrate?

keenlearner

Thanks for the replies.

I've been looking at the costs and I think we could have a small event for less than £1200 at the local registry office.

pinkshoes

A friend of mine had the reception in their garden (in summer), hired a small marquet (with no sides,just roof) and a patio heater, and got the buffet from a supermarket, with lots of bottles of bubberly.

The advantage of having it in a pub is that everyone buys their own drinks, which is perfectly acceptable at a wedding!!

I hope to marry my OH in the next year or so, and we both have HUGE families, so it'll either be parents and siblings (& siblings partners), so 12 of us, OR over 200 if we have to extend to friends and cousins!! EEEK!

Violetta_2

Have a look at the Weddings & Anniversary section loads of great advice on tips on there. Congrats and good luck.

belfastgirl23

Agree with Pinkshoes - a small wedding with parents and siblings only and then a party afterwards if you want to celebrate with your friends. For the party you can make it as elaborate or as simple as you want. Best wedding I went to was a buffet, plenty of inexpensive but nice wine (Calais!) and a playlist selected carefully by the groom I'd guess it was pretty cheap for weddings these days and there was no formal stuff. People will appreciate it because they can wear their regular 'going out' clothes and don't have to listen to godawful speeches

Do it your way in any case. And have a plan before talking to parents etc, you may as well get all the bad feeling over at the start rather than in dribs and drabs. And they will come around to it.

Good luck.

t_obermory

Myself and the OH are getting married in March 08, we're not having a big wedding at all, we've booked the registry office which is a lot cheaper than having it at a hotel or somewhere similar. My MIL is paying for the photo's and as we're just having the photographer burn the photos to disc and we'll develop the ones we want as and when that's saving us money.

We're just inviting family and close friends and being cheeky we've asked that instead of wedding gifts if guests want to join us for a meal after could they pay for themselves, if they don't want to come we won't be offended (we're planning on buying the first round of drinks). Due to having a toddler we're not going away but we are planning on spending our wedding night in a local hotel.

All in all with my MIL paying for the photographer its costing just under £1000.

It can be done without costing the earth! HTH's.

shelley_crow

I recently went to my best friend's wedding (good title for a film don't you think?) who did theirs on the cheap.

All in all, they had 80 guests for a church wedding and a reception at their house. In all they spent about £1000.

The church was the most expensive, i think they said it cost them about £300. They got married before xmas so the church was decked out in flowers anyway. The bride bought a ball gown and shoes from high street for under £90. She had her hair blow dried and her niece did her make up. The groom used a suit he had anyway and bought a waistcoat at approx £20.

Flowers - a small bouquet and 3 buttonholes cost very little as we made them ourselves.

Bridesmaids and pageboys - children were invited to wear the colours, no cost of suits or dresses.

Buffet reception - her sister did this, spent approx £100 on nibbles. There was so much food left even after 80 people had eaten. Booze was on 3 cases for £20 at the time, and a lot of people bought their own too. Once they knew the date they picked up booze every week with the shopping to spread the cost.

A friend with a posh digital camera did the pictures, straight onto disk so no cost there either.

If you want to do a wedding on the cheap, look at your friends and family and try and think of what skills you could call in as favours (eg, best friend might be a hairdresser, so and so might get employee discount on food, someone might be good at decorations, someone else might have a nice car to take you to wedding etc). It was the best wedding i've ever been to, there was a lovely sense of everyone pulling together. Hope you work something out.