My Money Saving Wedding

shazzer_67

I got married last September and as me and new hubby-to-be were paying for everything ourselves it had to be on a budget.

First off we used the local church. It was already decorated (the lady who arranges flowers even rang and asked what colours I would like!) and it was 200 hundred yards up the road - no need for a car! An old fashoined walk did the trick and pleased the old folk in the village.

We hired a hotel for the celebrations, only inviting immediate family to the wedding breakfast where we did splash out @ £45 per head. Bought our own wine and sparkling from Tesco (and got the points) as it worked out cheaper to pay the hotels corkage than take their wines. We got back all of the £4.5K for hiring the hotel (exclusive use) by renting out all the rooms to our guests. In the evening we had a ball - everyone was in evening dress. We cut the cake (Marks and Sparks) which was eaten there and then, had a disco (got a discount by booking at a local wedding fayre, a choc fountain and fireworks. Sounds extravagant but...! We had bacon butties after the fireworks. Fireworks, butties and a choc fountain worked out at almost half the price of the hotels standard buffet. They were more than happy to make these changes.

Photographer was a friend who had just set up his own studio. I gave him lots of advice & motivation and he repaid me by giving us his top package for free!!! Just had to pay for any prints we wanted. As his studio is combined with a hairdressers, I had my hair done for free too. Daughter is a beautician so she did my make up.

Other bits and pieces: used shop bought invites (in the sale) - who cares if they don't match the order of service, made my own order of service for less than £10 by printing and decorating myself, neighbours niece did my flowers (she's a professional florist but did it as a favour and I got flowers at cost price), a mate paid for me to go to a national wedding show where I bought my shoes and wedding favours (for which I made my own boxes). Got lots of vouchers from the show and used some to buy my jewellery and underwear. Even won a comp at the show and got £100 of car confetti. Got a gorgeous handmade hair vine from off the internet for just £20! Had an ebay selling spree and got the money for my dress. Bought our rings through a relative and got a whopping 35% discount.

All in all I estimate that had we not rented out the bedrooms and went down the regular 'wedding' route we would have paid approx £20k for our big day. It cost under 4k!