Budget - what is yours?

? I know what sort of wedding will it be with out those!! How dare I!!

Haha I know i think its going to be ffrrrreeeeezzing for my day if its this cold already!!. When is your big day CB?

H x

That's why we chose the New Forest (apart from being half way between the base of the two families) - we were getting quotes in Surrey from hotels for packages starting from £180 per head!

May, so still a while yet!

I think there's still a real stigma to spending a large amount on a wedding - I wouldn't discuss the amount with our respective parents but then again, I wouldn't discuss my earnings with them either! Hurrah for Hitched!

Honeymoon is an easy example. I want to go somewhere i wouldnt usually be able to go on my normal holiday budget. Hence picking a lovely quiet resort in the maldives. Well this has set us back 6.5k just for the holiday with out spending. Its a once in a lifetime thing and if know what we want and can get it then money is no object. x

We are spending £12.5K ourselves (incl £3.K on our honeymoon).

My mum and her husband are paying for my dress and accessories and all of my bridesmaids dresses and my auntie is making my cake for nothing so I guess if you added those things on the total budget would be around £16K.

Sammy - With regards to have everything a £20K wedding would have, I think for your extra £15k you would have things like a honeymoon in a more expensive hotel, a more expensive dress etc, I am not saying that you want these things but I guess if you suddenly had the extra money land in your lap you may well add some things to your day or upgrade some of your choices. I know I would, it would be things like having a band instead of a DJ, which is a price difference of about £1500 upwards !

I know of someone who spent £70K on her wedding and the money was on things like having real swarovski crystals on the tables instead of glass or acrylic ones, buying all the vases for the centrepieces instead of hiring them and using real pearls in the flower arrangments, giving her bridesmaid Mulberry handbags as their gift, the list goes on.

We could spend £25,000 easy if we wanted chair covers, vintage cars, personalised favours, massive flower displays, 20 bridesmaids, open bar all night etc etc - but that's not the sort of day we want.

We're still planning on about 60 for the wedding breakfast and about 150 to ceremony and evening reception which is not a "tiny" wedding really. I like finding bargains online too so that's part of the fun of arranging our big day for me too.

Interestingly I am not having any of the things you mention other than a free bar.

For me, it would be important to have the people we really want to be there for the whole day rather than the evening do thing but I appreciate lots of people do that. As for online bargains, I can assure you that I bet many of the people on here with 'larger' budgets also do that, I know we have been!

Wow! sorry to be really nosey but does that mean your dress almost half of the budget?

Our budget is 10k. We have people helping on little things, like mum is making the cake, a friend who's a florist is doing the flowers and we're going to make a lot of the decorations etc. Hopefully we'll have some pennies spare to put towards the honeymoon! lol

Its really intrestign to see how varied things are!!

Our budget, loosley, is 13k...although this si just OUR savings..whereas parents on both sides have said theyd contribute so....we can either save money and stick at 13k ro use the 'extra' money and go for more, i could easily spend 35k ona wedding!! For instance the dress i wanted was 2700k, but i got one just as nice for £650!

things like that can bump up budget as well as what menu choice you have at a venue to, they can vary!!

We didn't want to spend our life savings on our wedding - the budget was £7,000. We'll have spent more than double - maybe 3 times that amount by the time we are finished, but we've worked hard for it.

Our wedding is perfect for OH because he doesnt do fancy restaurants, the thought of Tea at the Ivy scares the hell out of him, but i'd loooove it!! I don't want to sound like a madam but I do like the finer things in life!

If I were to get married in the manor house I work at (and hence have the same service I recieve everyday for breaky/dinner and tea) I'd be looking a £100 per head for catering which takes me to £15,000 without anything else at all!! As it is we've spend about £3.000 on catering so if I add the rest of my costs I would be coming it at over £35,000 easy - I can see how it is done, and if I had the money, or if my parents wanted to spend it on me I would have "all the extras" - we would have fireworks, i'd be off to the airport in a limo, my family would be in the nicest hotels available - I could easily see £50,000 spent! I could have spent a good extra £10,000 on a once in a lifetime "travelling trip" before we have babas for example!

I think we're probably going to come in at around £12.5 - £13K, although some of that does depend on exchange rates at the time.

I scared myself when I saw this figure at first as I thought a wedding abroad was supposed to be cheap, but although it doesn't include the party when we get home (which hopefully we'll be able to do mostly for mates rates as we both work in related areas), it does include pretty much everything else.

For this we are getting 2 weeks in Bali and 2 weeks in Australia and it does have a sizeable chunk of spending money budgeted in there too. My engagement ring is also included in the total, as we chose not to buy a ring until we had set a date for the wedding - spot the romantic couple!?

Like a few others on here, we're doing all this oursleves without any help, and have discussed and agreed the costs every step of the way. Some things, like the venue, we have gone all out on; others we have been bargain basement - my shoes were £12 in the Next sale. While some things will inevitably end up on the credit card as they do with any holiday, the important thing is that we are both happy and comfortable with the amount we are spending, and that, surely, is the main point.

As long a the couple are happy with spending the money and dont end up in loads of debt then i dont see the problem with how much it costs.

Personally I will be quite happy with my 18 - 20 grand wedding as I have saved mega hard and not bought things I used to waste my money on!!! And I will be the princess on the day! hehe

£8k - and cannot possibly go over that!

I'm not entirely sure what our budget was.

We have however, cut corners where possible and we have been very very lucky in some areas - my parents are giving us £3000 towards our £4000 venue/catering cost - we're getting married in October which is cheaper and in a fairly cheap area with a small number of guests, OH's Mum and Stepfather are paying for our honeymoon (they live abroad and will not be attending the wedding, so at least they can see their son after the wedding). OH works for a local college and the photography lecturer is also a professional photographer and he's offering us "mates rates" and I work with a lady who's a whizz at making stunning cakes (she's just completed one in the shape of a ship).

Other than that, I got my dress for £100 and my bridesmaid dresses for £30 each.

I couldn't agree more CB - unfortunately, people do seem to think it is perfectly acceptable to pass judgement on how much people chose to spend on their wedding.

Although I don't think we are being particularly extravagant, as soon as we announced our engagement I was deluged with "helpful" comments from well-meaning colleagues (and some family & friends) as to how we could get married as cheaply as possible. I appreciated the sentiment, but I had trouble trying to make people understand that as we are paying for it all ourselves, have lived together for 10 years and are established in our home, no kids etc, we didn't necessarily WANT to do it as cheaply as humanly possible. Of course, I don't want to waste money and will shop around, look on line for bargains etc - but then I'm sure the same applies to all of us, regardless of whether our budget is £5K or £35K.

I did notice as well that a lot of people who have been trying to find out how much I intend to spend are either single, or got married many years ago, and it does make me suspect they are only asking so they can pass judgment - hence, I have avoided talking about it, other than to close friends who I know will not be judgemental.

We haven't actually got a set budget as such - we've put a rough estimate at £10K, but we're in the very early stages of planning so have only booked the venue so far. Ours may come in at less then 10K, but equally we don't mind if it goes over a bit if we decide to spend more on certain things (for instance, photographer).

This is a really interesting thread - such a variety of budgets, though as long as everyone has a day they enjoy and will remember fondly, that's the important thing!

I don't have a budget as such - I know it might sound a bit odd, but I'm basically looking at each thing as we come to it and when comparing suppliers, looking at what gives us best value for money. We're almost two years away from our wedding and know we can save quite a bit in that time - I'm going to make a spreadsheet to get an idea of what everything we want comes to so that'll give me some idea what to expect to spend, then I'll decide if that's an amount I'm willing to spend or not. I don't think it's going to come to more than £20k.

No help from bank of M+D here, but my mum does want to buy my dress, and as this is something she's got her heart set on I'll let her

That's really interesting, Jenny. We've been quite lucky in terms of the level of questioning we've faced. I know my MIL, for example, would be horrified if she knew but then she would be shocked if she knew we spent more than £6 on a bottle of wine!

Horses for courses and all that stuff.

I have no idea what the budget will be for ours.

Venue we got a good deal and is just under £5k, inc catering. I would imagine everything else will come in around the same again. My mum is making our wedding cake with a family friend decorating it. Mum is also making our table centrepieces.

I am fortunate in that my parents are paying for our wedding, something they wanted to do with some inheritance from my grandma. That doesn't mean we have a blank cheque, nor am I a princess, I am just very lucky.

Had my parents not been in this situation, we would have saved up for a few years and paid for it ourselves. We are paying for our own rings, honeymoon (expecting around £3-£4k for that) and gifts and some decorations etc ourselves.

AJ, I'm sure some people could see spending 10k as the same as you see spending 25 or 30k! I used to not see how people could spend so much, until I started planning. It's easy to spend thousands, it depends on the choices you make!

Our budget was £3000 and i'm pretty sure we've stuck to it.

However my friend is a photographer and is doing that free, my dad is a dj and mum has paid for a sweetie buffet for us

I think I'm quite lucky to a certain extent CB, in that most of the questioning has come from nosey (albeit well-meaning) colleagues, rather than close family/friends, so I don't feel too bad about fudging the question!

The only thing I am dreading is that I know FIL is likely to ask about costs as the planning progresses. Although we are paying for everything ourselves, FIL is notoriously, errm, careful, with his money - when OH and his brother where little and they went on family days out, he would apparently sometimes park 2 miles away from beach/town centre to avoid paying 50p at the car park - and the thought of other people spending money also seems to bring him out in a cold sweat. OH is far too open and honest about such things, so I'm going to have to ask him to avoid him telling his dad how much we're spending on any particular aspect of the wedding, as I just know he'll stick his oar in, and I don’t want to give the poor chap a heart attack!

Firstly let me say i am a little princess and my parents are paying for pretty much all of our wedding, and what they arent paying for my OH parents are. We are however paying for the rings, giving notice and the registrar so in essence we are paying for the wedding and they are paying for the party, if that makes sense. Despite being a princess our budget is 5K and we are bang on budget and will not go over it. nI theory we could have had a much larger budget but have decided to use the money to pay off a chunk of my mortgage, get a new car pay off some debts etc. My parents completely agree with what we have chosen to do and we are using my wedding money to make sure that when we start married life we are in a much better financial situation (For a number of reason i got myself into a hell of a lot of debt and we have been slowly paying it off for years). My brother's wedding on the other hand cost somewhere between 75K and 85K, it was the most amazing day and both him and his wife have very high paying jobs and they could afford it. I dont see any problem with spending that much if you have it to spend, as my brother said he is only getting married once so he didnt want to scrimp on anything - and very obviously didnt!!

Our hotel's cheapest "house wine" was £16.50 a bottle, or £8 corkage if you bought your own.

Just a rip off really.

If people want to spend big money on really good wine then that's fine - but those prices for the basic stuff you can get in a supermarket for a couple of quid a bottle? Forget it!

I wasn't criticising those whose parents can help, or those that spend more than we are - circumstances happen and that's it.

My point, which others have also made, was simply that a £30,000 wedding is not automatically better than a £6,000 wedding simply because more money was spent on it. As long as it's the day that you and your partner (and sod the family!) want.

We're spending a fair amount on wine but then I'm a wine drinker. We're sourcing our own and my friend who's a master of wine (what a cool job!) is helping us.

How do I get me a job like that? ?

Your comment was quite scathing though and it seemed to me that you were criticising people. Some dads save up from when their daughters are little girls to give them the wedding they want - that's not treating your daughter like a 'little princess' it is being proud of being a father and wanting the best for your child, IMO.

''I wonder if the "average £25,000 cost" comes from celebrities, celebrity imitations and "little princesses" where daddy pays for everything majorly increasing things against the true cost of 'normal people' weddings?''

About £5000. We lost track a bit but I'm 98.5% sure it's under at the moment. We originally planned for far less but we didn't think we'd have generous relatives!

I honestly don't know what our budget is! I daren't add estimates up - it terrifies me! I like spending money, but hate spending large amounts of money on things iyswim :/

If I had £50k in my bank, there's not a chance in hell I'd spend that on my wedding.

I really don't wanna spend more than £7-8k, which is a very small amount in comparison to some. But I'm not doing without anything; I'm having a band, the personalised favours, Castle wedding, 4 bridesmaids and sit down meal!

We've been given £3,000 from family members.

Just because I could spend £4k on a venue, doesn't mean I would like to.. I don't feel like I'm gonna miss out on anything or have to compromise anything at all by being thrifty. I'm a very hands on crafty type, so I'm loving my DIY planning. Once married I can think back to my perfect day and know that I did all that and nobody else's will be the same.

I think the biggest thing for us has been value for money. If you have a larger budget it's easy for many vendors to think you're a walking cheque book. Where we have spent a lot of money, ie food, drink, fabric etc, the quality has matched the cost, rather than us simply going for over priced items.