Budgeting! Help me!

It's not tight as long as you are prepared to shop around and do some things cheaply.

Our budget is £9000 (not including the rings because we are getting them closer to the time and paying on finance over a few years)

I've already saved £200 by making my own invitations.

Just dont expect to have the best drinks package the best photographer etc because you may struggle.

Your budget can be anything but obviously it does affect what you end up having on the day. I've seen lovely weddings done on a budget of less than £3000 easy. I would say prioritise what's important to you and OH, i.e. do you have a special venue you really want, or not so fussed? And then you can shave money off the low priority spends, to leave room for the things that are important for you.

Hi Aimee

Congratulations on your engagement! Our budget for wedding and honeymoon is around £24k, which did shock us both when we sat down and looked at the prices for certain things we wanted i.e. the photographer i knew i really wanted. However I think you need to sit down together and see how much you can realistically afford and stick to it, there are always deals to be had! Each to their own as well but I would try and steer away from getting a loan if you can help it, you don't want your wedding day to be a burden on you after the event. I am one of the least imaginitive people which is prob why it's cost more than 10k, but if you're willing to make your own invited etc it can saves you tonnes!

Have fun x

Hi ?

I've worked out a budget of £****, which doesn't include honeymoon, and have until 2016 to save it up. I worked this round making as much as possible myself so I could get the photographer I wanted and the venue we fell in love with.

I started by looking at the budget page on here and then looking round at what I wanted and where from to get an idea of costs

We have a £10000 budget but £7000 is for catering and £1100 is for the band. That's priorities for you.We decided really on was that the most imoortant thing was that the people who mattered the most were there (all 180 of them) and they have a great time.

That means I had to make savings elsewhere. My dress and shoes came in lessthat £160, invites and orders of service 15p each, table centres are about £1.50 each, my friend is making my cake and my MoH and I are doing hair and make up on each other and the other three bridesmaids. Our wedding and reception are in the same venue so I'm not paying for cars either. It helps that my cousin is a Tog too.

So my advice is to prioritise and spend the money where it matters most to you.

Ours is coming around £6k. Oh dad is a photographer so we have saved quite a bit. We don't need a car as we are at one venue. I have made the invitations. I am making the cake and we are having fake flowers that I am making as this is not something that is important to me. My dress was the most expensive at £1,000. We got a good deal on our venue.

It's worth gathering some prices of places and looking at what things will cost.

Ours is coming in at just under £10,000 and then we are paying a further £950 for our honeymoon. I'd reccomend looking around some venues that you initially like and getting a feel for the different packages they offer. That's what we did and our venue is doing our centre pieces, chair sashes and various other bits included. We are calling in a few favours too, my grandparents are paying for our cake and my dad is a printer so is making our invites, we are just buying pretty sparkly bits to jaz them up. It's worth shopping around with everything, our photographer has cost us £650 with some serious bartering. We fell in love with his work and his package. We saw someone the same day who was offering less a package but was charging £1200!

My main advice would be if your not sure of costigs then ask someone or o into a flower shop for example and ask them. I just guessed mine initially and it was way out, some good some bad.

Good luck and congratulations on your Engagement x

I've managed to find a decent package for 3k, just got no idea where to start for breaking my budget down to seperate things!

Thanks for your comments everybody

That's not tight at all! We've got an 8k budget (£3k contributed by future father-in-law) not including honeymoon- my dad is paying £3k for that!!! ?

It's suprising how easy it is to spend money on things you don't really need when you get a bit excited / carried away. My fiance is pretty good at putting the reins on things; for example, I wanted some stripy straws for the tables- he asked me what they were for, and I said "the tables!". He then asked "Specifically, where on the table? What are you actually going to do with them?".....my answer "I don't know...I just LIKE them...they are COOL!".

We didn't get the straws. They only cost about a tenner, but you can see how easy it would be to fritter cash away!

Priorities for us were food, cake, booze and band. We've picked a venue which isn't glamorous, but I know it does fabulous food. Our reception is costing just over £3k (excluding the band, cos they're free!) and that's including canapes, welcome drinks, sit down 3-course meal, buffet for the evening and a copious amount of free booze! We're also spending £450 on a cake, but it's going to be a real unique centrepiece. Some people don't see that as such a priority.

One sure fire way to cut costs is to be really strict with the guest list. I said from the outset that I'd rather have just close friends and family and be able to spoil them and give them a hell of a party, rather than invite the world and his wife and have to cut corners everywhere.

A wedding is a huge undertaking and it's next to impossible to get everything right. Maybe you would save money by speaking with a wedding organiser (someone with experience with countless couples). At least they'd be able to help you see the pros and cons of any possible decisions as well as having contacts for the various bits you might need to put the wedding together.

I'd want to make sure I was getting the best value for money for sure.

I can't help with the budgeting part as we have spent double what we budgeted so we're clearly not a good example!

i think if you do your research on things there is no reason you won't be able to have a fabulous wedding on your budget, I'd suggest getting a really good spreadsheet so that you can see exactly what things are costing, and discuss with your OH what is important to you both, for us it was venue, food, photographer and band. We spent ages researching these so that we got them right and then we could see what we had left for other things. You might find you spend more than you thought on one thing but less on something else so it evens itself out again. I didn't think photographer would be so expensive I'd under budgeted on that but I'd over budgeted on my dress so worked out fine.

I think as well if you are creative then DIY is the way to go, you will definitely save loads if you can do your own stationery and it makes it a bit more personal too. I really wish i was able to do this but I'm rubbish at it!

First off, you both need to sit down an dlook at your current finances, decide how much you can save each month, this will give you the total cost of how much you will be able to save before the wedding.

go to a wedding fayre and gets prices AND then shop around as you will find prices a lot cheaper elsewhere but at least these first prices will give you an idea where to start with budgeting.

it also depends on which part of the country you are getting married, how many day and evenign guests you want, are you getting marreid at the venue where your reception is or will it be a church, if its a church you will need transport.

decide on what food you want to serve, will you have a wedding traditional breakfast (3course meal) or a buffet, will you want to serve wine with the meal if so check the venues price ofr wine and their corkage fee, as this could help save some money.

remember the more bridesmaids you have the dearer it will cost.

sit down and write a list of everything you want for the wedding,pre wedding and after wedding:- hair, make-up, nails, shoes, honeymoon, hotel room for the wedding night, hen do, stag do.

my main tip would be to over estimate on budgeting prices so that your not too shocked at what everything actually costs.

Hi ? Welcome to hitched, and congratulations.

In reply to your post, 10k is more than enough to have a good wedding, but then every wedding is different, you need to draw up a list of guests and look at how many bridesmaids/ushers etc you want as well. What kind of wedding do you want?

Personally I would absolutley advise against getting a loan. Look at your finances, how much can you afford to save per month? Times that by how many months you have to the wedding and there you have your maximum budget. Even if that leaves you with half the 10k you have imagined, you can make your wedding fit within that with careful planning now. Once you've started booking things it's much harder to cut back on costs. You could look at things like having your wedding later in the day so no need for evening food as the wedding breakfast serves as dinner rather than lunch.

Good luck with everything.

Hi and welcome,

Our budget is around £12000. Without honeymoon as we are lucky and having it paid for us. We decided how much we could afford to save each month and then figured out how long it would take us to save the amount we needed, then set a date.

I personally wouldnt want to get a loan, I wouldnt want to be paying off for the wedding after its happened. There are lots of ways to cut costs etc.

Thanks everybody, you're all so helpful! ?

I've just worked it out quickly and should save 9.6k by then but takeaway 1600 for a holiday and should have 8k. thats without any help though and i suspect i will get some donations from family my venue and catering is priority and ive managed to find a good deal in the venue ive fallen in love with. fingers crossed its as nice when i go and see it! im having 5 bridesmaids too as i didnt want to choose between, but ones offered to pay for her own dress! my good friends ;D

so exciting! x

My whole day is going to cost £3,000 max and that includes wedding dress, x2 BM dresses, OH suit, button bouquet, invites, artificial flowers, pew ends, table decorations, hotel accommodation for 30 guests, hot carvery, wedding rings, alterations and shoes. I like to drive a hard bargain and really don't like to spend too much money. I wanted to cut the food costs down until OH said that £30 a head wasn't unreasonable.

There are so many things that you can do yourself and there's really no shame in preloved garments or end of season, good luck.