Budgeting

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Bit of a 'piece of string' question that. Depends on where you are, type of venue, etc etc.

First thing I would do is work out your rough guest list and wether you want a church or civil ceremony.

Cheapest way of doing a wedding is probably a registry office, followed by village hall type thing but you may be able to do a more 'traditional' venue depending on numbers and time of year.

Dresses, you set the budget on that. Some brides on here get a dress for £250, some for £2000!

Most things you can choose a budget for and you'll find something in that budget...it might not be the best or the most ideal, but working to any budget means compromises

Hey

Our budget is just under £3000 and is broken down roughly into -

• Ceremony £150 (reg office - not glam but hey)
• Reception Venue £750 (a pretty village hall in a public park with lake!)
• Rings £60 (Argos whooo - we ain't precious about jewellery - can always replace when we are flush!)
• Food £750 (local farm hog roast, homemade quiches and salads etc, pot luck dessert buffet)
• My clothes £250 (Viv of Holloway dress, lots of handmade jewellery and accessories)
• His clothes £150 (Converse, braces and dickie bows)
• Stationery £50 (printing invitations designed by friend)
• Room Decs £200 (Handmade pinwheels, paper flowers, jam jar vases, homemade bunting, photo booth props, table plans, favours etc)
• Entertainment £200 (PA Hire, decks etc)
• Bouquets/ Buttonholes £50 (all made from buttons/brooches by ME)
• Thank-you gifts £100 (all homemade or bought from etsy cheaply)
• Hotel on wedding night £80
• Expenses £200 (anything else that might come up)

which brings us to just under £3000.

However. this wouldn't be possible if the following were not being donated by our lovely f&f for nuffink -

• 2 singer-songwriter friends performing at the do (for nowt)
• A ukulele band performing (for food and wine)
• 6 DJs playing for free (all buddies who are coming anyway)
• A sound man (good pal) plus who will get cheap PA etc
• Friend making wedding cake
• Lots of f&f donating to dessert buffet
• Photography by good pal who's a budding amateur
• Bridesmaids paying for own dresses etc
• Hairdresser friend doing my hair
• Friend with nice car being our chauffeur
• People lending us cake plates and lovely bits for decs
• Table linen being donated by a caterer pal

So, we are having no flowers (though might send someone out to Tesco for some roses on the day to put in glass jugs!), most things will be handmade by me and my super talented crafty friends and we have been super lucky that lots of our guests are DJs, musicians or artists so will be delighted to DO something instead of give presents. Also, I think everyone is relieved that my OH has found someone willing to marry him so are doing all possible to make sure I go through with it haha

So my point is - it can be done. We're not getting married til Nov 2013 but cos most things are handmade we are having to plan WAY in advance to have time to make everything.

I know it's by no means everyone's ideas of a perfect wedding but being thrifty, handmade kind of types anyway, it's very us. So my advice - divide up your budget BEFORE deciding what you want, make it personal to you, forget any ideas out of your means (embrace being on a budget), don't try to pull off ' classy on a budget' as it often comes off looking like 'we wish we had more money but we didn't', pull in favours from anyone and everyone and BE CHEEKY - ASK for discounts and haggle (I emailed the ukulele band asking if they;d play for food and unexpectedly they said YES!).

Let us know how you get on X

PS - we have 150 guests

OK, if £5k is your budget, you need to think a) how much of that you want to spend on reception/food and b)how many people you can feed for that amount. If your budget is tight, I see no point in doing a guest list first - if it ends up being "we can afford venue X that can cater for Y number of guests" then so be it - you choose your guests accordingly. With larger budgets, yes, you can think "do we spend £30 a head on 100 guests or £60 a head on 50" but after dress, rings, flowers, cake etc, you'll be lucky to have £3000 left for everything, including venue hire, ceremony costs, photographer......

It's a perfectly workable amount of money, as long as you accept limitations (e.g. no point in looking at big stately homes) but first, what sort of wedding do you want? Church/registry then venue, or civil marriage at one location?

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Your wedding sounds like my cup of tea!

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my thought exactly!

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my thoughts exactly!

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I'm stupidly excited!

My £5k budget is now £8k and won't go over that, but I've been able to overspend on so many things because our venue (for the whole thing, start to finish) is £190. It's a village hall with a large pretty car park and a small field and kiddy park. Hog roast in day for 60ish etc £700. I've cream van for dessert £100. Then in the evening fish and chip van, cheese, and cake.

We worked out what we could save for a year and what we were happy to spend on a wedding (we weren't prepared to spend £10,000 on it for example as we felt that was too much for one day) We decided on the 'must haves' - for example a church wedding, a local reception that was nice but cheap enough for us to invite everyone we wanted to, a live band, a good tog. We then worked out rough quotes for these. Our biggest outlay was the reception and food which was half our budget, but we had 80 to the day and 150ish to the evening do and this was important to us to have all our family and friends there. This gave us a left over pot that everything else had to come out of.

The budgeting page on hitched helped us plan what we could spend and what we needed. We were also able to cross out what we didn't need - favours and STD's for example. We were also able to work out what we could do ourselves - bouquet, decorations etc and what family and friends could help us with - cake, invites for example.

What Kirstabubble said. There is no standard cost. My advice is to come up with a list of priorities. For example; if you want a band and a certain dress you might have to compromise on flowers and drinks.

You really can do it as cheaply or as expensively as you like! We spent around 11k on our wedding but we got everything we wanted and although we did most things cheaply, we didn't skimp on the important stuff.

Our venue cost around £6500 including all food/drinks/exclusive use/bridal suite etc... a friend of mine is getting married at a lovely Holiday Inn nearby, a similar package is around £3000 so they are definitely worth looking into.

My dress cost £895 but I had a 15% discount from meeting the shop at a wedding show so paid £760 - this is worth remembering. Talk to everyone at wedding shows to see if there is any discounts they are prepared to offer you. Also, some wedding dress shops send you a small discount if your equest a brochure online, Perfection Bridal do and they have shops all over the country.

To save on a photographer but still get top quality you could go for a CD only package, then order your own albums using photobook website, for example they come up on Groupon a lot, so that would save you money.

Real flowers are expensive unless you know someone who can do them for you. My bouquet alone was £97.50! Think we spent about £450 on flowers and that didn't include any table decorations or centrepieces as our venue supplied these. Artificial flowers can be a lot cheaper too, I've seen a lot of sellers on eBay selling artificial flowers made to order which are lovely and very reasonable.

Following on from that point, use eBay! My tiara cost £14.99, BM's tiaras £9.99, post box £8, hoop skirt £14, flower girl dress £15... eBay is amazing for weddings!

Just remember things that you can't save on, such as registrar fees. We paid over £650 for both our notice of marriage appointments, and the wedding fees. This is cheaper if you get married in a registry office so remember that, you can get some really nice ones.

Most venues require around a 10% deposit, ours asked for 25% but were flexible and let us pay half the deposit at the time of booking and the other half 2 months later.

Just always remember to ask for discounts or try and haggle... I managed to save £50 on our DJ by telling him we'd had a quote £25 cheaper, he didn't want to lose our custom so he knocked £50 off his original quote... result!

Good luck and I hope you can stick to your budget!

xx

Won't attempt to give all our costs as I should be working!!

But regarding venues... as much or as little as you like. Some venues we looked at online wanted £2500 just for venue hire, plus around £60 per guest for food... would have loved one of those, but it was way too much money for us. We've settled on a local club which is charging £150 room hire; £150 for set-up, tablecloths etc; and £12 per head for an evening buffet. Deposit was minimal - balance 6 weeks before - catering not paid for until the week of the wedding.

Dress - anything from £200 to £5000 - most 'standard' wedding dresses are around £800 to £1500 I'd say, if you stick to the cheaper designers? But you could buy a reduced price sample, charity shop, Ebay etc... Plus £100 or more for alterations! Plus underwear, tiara, petticoat, veil, jewellery... depending on whether you want any, all or none of those things!

Photographers - £500 to £2000...

£5000 is definitely do-able but is surprisingly not a lot when you actually add up all the costs... think about bridesmaids, suit hire for the men, video, invitations, postage!, printed orders of service, music/bands, registrars' fees, decorations, cake, hairdressers etc...

Good luck :-)

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Very good point that.

I went on a site that suggests what % of the budget things should cost, then went through and adjusted because some just weren't enough with a smaller budget (mine started at £3,500 but is now closer to £4k because we had a bit leftover in an old account and my mum's giving us a bit for xmas). E.g. it said attire should be 10% but there's no way you can dress and accessorise the whole wedding party on £350!

My rough costs are:

rings - £500 wedding dress, shoes+veil+tiara+alteration - £400
suit hire - £220 bridesmaids - £200 invites - £40 cars - £10 (just getting a taxi!) flowers - £167 photographer - £270 (from groupon) ceremony+notices - £125
reception venue+meal+dj - £1050 evening buffet - £420 cake - £200 decoration - £250 favours - £70 (this is mostly on toys for children, adults were about £15) hotel room - £85

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No chance!

A lot of good advice already, there aren't set amounts that everything will cost, everything varies so much. But main tips for budgeting:

- Shop around, there is usually someone cheaper than the first quote you find, you just have to be willing to search for it

-DIY - there are so many things you can do yourself

- Haggle. Most people just want your business and will be willing to take a slight hit

-Prioritise. Think about what is really important to you

And basically what everyone else said!