Have you come in under/overbudget? What have you been shocked at the cost of?

Our budget is smaller than yours and the cost of venues vary so much it shocked me< one venue in near bristol wanted £3500 just for exclusive use then charges on top for civil ceremony and food!!

our venue is costing £2100 for 50 guests for day & evening with 3 course breakfast and hot evening buffet, wedding suite for night before and wedding day night, our own private garden and bar, dj and toast master, table center pieces from a choice of 6 different options, chair covers & sashes, arrival drinks and toast drinks.

we also were allowed to change the breakfast menu to what we wanted. so this has saved us a lot of money.

Yeah, people seem to think that if you put the word 'Wedding' in front of a product its justifiable to charge you 5x the regular cost.

Hence why when booking certain things I'm leaving out the word wedding and using 'event'. This works well as we don't have many 'traditional' weddingy things. Not outright lying to people, just not making the entire truth available.

That is good! I found the ones which allowed civil ceremonies were the most expensive. Also, hotels, they tried to give a discount on rooms etc. to lure me in but it seemed they added it onto the wedding cost!

Honestly? i dont know our budget and how much over we are!

At the start, we based it on my brothers wedding which was 2 yrs previous and Mr F went from there. I know what we roughly guesstimated and the cost fo stuff since but i have no interest in knowing how muchover we are...he just tells me when to curb the spendige on items. Im not friviloius, for instance the veil i wanted was £170, im paying £62 for it !!

Well initially I said I wanted to spend no more than £10k. We've doubled that but only because we're tying in an amazing honeymoon with marrying abroad, and having a reception here as well. Taking the honeymoon out, we're just under £12k which isn't far off my initial idea.

Costs that have surprised me, considering I have been married before with the full stately home venue and all the trimmings, and this is supposed to be simpler:

Dress. First time round I had a couture design made for me. My dress from a shop this time is far less elaborate, but not much cheaper

Flowers: First time round I spent £900 and the place was heaving with flowers, and not cheap ones (roses and lilies). All I want this time is wildflowers in jugs and no bouquets, and florists want well over £500. I think we'll do them ourselves!

Venue's "extras": Our initial venue was good value, but when we went through things we realised that a lot of the nice trimmings that made it special were charged extra, which I certainly didn't have by going all out first time round. Got round this one by moving venue to a local village hall.

We're also probably going to come in well under budget since we're basing costs on 100 guests. I imagine numbers will be more like 80, so that's 20 meals, 40 glasses of champagne etc, etc that we won't have to pay for in the end.

When we first got engaged we gave a rough quess at prices of things and guessed at guests and we came up with 8k with 50 guests, when we started looking online we realised that we didn't have a clue!! We budgeted £300-£500 for a tog! ha! turned out we needed to add a extra £1010 to that alone! and after a few hours realised we needed 12k and we will be still over that im sure. hopefully there will be a few nice suprises as we plan more, but i can easily see how you can go 5k! realising you want a 2 tog package could send it up by £1000 for some, and its the little extras that add up, a band thats £300 more then a cake thats £200 more, dress £500 more, bridesmaids dresses that you love are £40 eash over budget. The tog and cars were are biggest under estimate, the car i wanted was £650! then we realised that the bm's will need a ride to the reception as they will be traveling to the church with me, so an extra £300 thats £950 when we thought £200! and the hair and make up TRIAL cost is what i thought the trial and wedding day would cost! Oh and when we wrote our guest list we realised just close family, siblings and there children (all grown up) takes us to 70 people!

I dont really have a set budget, just a rough idea of what I think is the right ball park, although more and more things seem to be added to the list and the ball park just seems to get bigger!

I was pleasantly surprised by the price from our caterers, 3 courses for £12ph which I think is a bit of a bargain, All in all our venue and food should come in under £2k

I was mainly shocked at some of the venue prices, some pretty shoddy looking places asking for £12k and one place (that does look amazing) had a minimum price of £22k without much really included.

Flowers and centrepieces were also more than I had expected so will be making my own now, there are just so many places you can splash out, I had to rein myself in!

We've lost track of our budget a little bit with all the little bits and pieces we've been buying along the way. I reckon we're sort of on budget, definitely so for the big stuff. Its little things that are shifting the numbers now.

my biggest shock though was how expensive wedding jewellery, veils, shoes etc are. Just for one day. Also Cake prices shocked me. £400 for cake?! no thanks.

Oh yes, and some florist prices too. One I spoke to wanted a minimum spend of £1500 for the same thing that Rainbow Flowers is doing for me at a small fraction of the price!

We've spent quite a bit on our wedding and honeymoon and knew from the outset what the rough figure would be and it's pretty much spot on that amount.

IMO we've not been overly frivolous at all and I've been an ebay fiend this past few months and with suppliers we haven't gone overboard and have spent £250 on a cake, £330 on flowers, £40 on my veil and my dad has done our stationary. Yes we could have done it for half the price, but the venue alone is £13k all in so once that was booked we worked from there and things like TOG is £1500, VOG is £1700, honeymoon is £5.5k and it does all creep up.

As we've paid for the wedding ourselves we've kept a really close eye on savings and costs and are well aware that when you say the 'W' word that the cost increases but we knew that before we started. The biggest shock for me is not only the price per head for a 3 course meal but wedding cars (£895 for 2 cars driving no more than an hour each).

We don't really have a budget- just a rough idea what how much we don't want to spend over, but we will if there's something worthwhile, like our venue. I've been pretty shocked at the costs of everything, to be honest: cakes, flowers, invites, veils.

Actually, veils especially. Do you know how little tulle actually costs? I made my own- it was really easy, and I copied a birdcage veil I'd seen in a shop, that had lace accents, and I used the lace from my dress on mine and only cost about £2 instead of £120!

anyways, we had looked at average prices for things and then made a rough budget. I moved a few numbers around after we booked our venue, which is costing the earth- I downsized my dress and accessories budget, and basically eliminated cake, flowers and most of the decoration budget. Hence all my DIY projects. They're fun, though, and I have over a year to do some more.

The one thing we've gone over aside from venue is DJ. I put in £300 as an estimate, got quotes from several, and ended up using the average one at £395. To a point you really do get what you pay for, and the ones charging less than that I figured might not be very good, but any more and I don't see what I'm really paying for, IYSWIM.

Pretty much everything I've bought so far has come in under budget. Budgeted £300 for the dress, got it for £250.. Budgeted £180 for BM dresses, got them for £60..

It helps that we've got friends willing to help out. One of my besties is doing my flowers, OHs friend is doing photography.. & my parents are paying for the church.

Overall, including honeymoon, I think it's going to cost us roughly 5k.

The cost of almost everything shocked me - the cake, flowers, venue, cars...I think the only thing we went under budget on was bm dresses 85 each, and DJ 400, oh and dress. But everything else we went over because I just don't think our ballpark figure was realistic for what we wanted. I could have made do with a cheaper cake but I wanted a beautiful hand painted one and the lady making is based in Windsor so that's probably why her prices are so high! I thought flowers and cars would be about 200 each ? I think overall we may be just about on our figure that we said we didn't want to spend more on, however when I think of the trips back we have made along with hotels, car rental etc that will add on a couple of thousand at least (that's the first time I've put a rough figure on it, I've been in denial!). I think if you have the money and want certain things then where's the harm?

This is a great thread! We had initially budgeted around £3-£4k for the venue but as H2B doesn't want to go outside of Berkshire (which is an expensive area and the word weddings seems to ring £ signs!) as he fears people will not come and it would be hard to organise if its too far etc.

So called packages offered by hotels/country houses vary and the trick seems to be to include items such as "dedicated services of a wedding coordinator", "banqueting staff" "microphone at head table" "use of grounds for photography" -- all of which should be part of the overall service anyway! This is to ensure that you have to add on the evening buffet (and it has to be 75% of total numbers), packages that look cheap but when you add on the extras plus meet the min numbers -- you are well and truly caught!

Hoping to find a suitable venue now as the other one we were considering has got really expensive ;(

Our budget was about 10k for the wedding itself and it's in and around that. Including the honeymoon and spending money it's about 14k. More than I ever imagined spending on a wedding and we're not being especially luxurious (village hall). It's been the wee things that have culminated in a big expense! At the moment I'm spending an absolute fortune on expensive make up. eeek!

I am completely shocked at the cost of DJs. Ours is £170 and he's brilliant!

Our budget has spiralled hugely, mainly because I didnt count in all the little extras!

The TOG was £1000 more than I had bdgeted for, and still the cheapest in our area, so had to go with her

Make up and hair are so expensive compared to what I thought, so am having to ask the BMs to pay for their own.

Veils were extortionate - the dress shop quoted me £120 for a fingertip length cut edge veil with no detail! got one from pink margaret on ebay for £23!!!

The biggest shock was suits - I was expecting about £80 each, have come out at £128!!! so expensive, but what OH wants and since he hasnt picked anything else, I dont mind having them.

All in our wedding has gone about £5000 over budget. We have been very lucky that family have offered to pay for the cake, VOG, transport etc, or dont know how we would have managed! We havent really splurged on anything, except the venue, which I dont think is that bad really 9although it is more than most other local venues) - £5800 for 3 course sit down meal, 1/2 bottle of wine, sparkling wine, welcome drinks and hot buffet in the evening, for 90 day guests and 140 night guests. Our accomodation is also included in this.

I guess as everyone else has said, put wedding before something and the price goes up enormously!

This! There are a few of these packages local to us and they make it look like a really good deal when if you separate it, it's not! One for £2000 caught h2b's eye but it only included 40 day guests and 60 evening, it was an extra £30pp day and £15pp night to add on which spirals! One that made me lol on a package list was 'the use of cake knife' haha, what else are they going to cut it with?

My friend had a 'marry in 2010 for £2010 deal and it ended up about 5k just for the venue with the extra people and wine etc.

I'm still not sure. I didn't have a budget as such but an expectation of what I'd be spending. It may come in there or thereabouts - I'll know better when I have final guest numbers and the quote for the remaining stationery.

I was shocked by how much flowers cost - but when I'd spent more time with my florst, including a visit to the flower market, I had a better understanding of where the costs come from. The flowers aren't cheap to begin with so the mark-up by the florist is much less than I was expecting.

I've generally been pleased with how flexible the suppliers I've encountered have been both in terms of trying to meet my expectations and pricing. For example with my little birdhouses - I found them on a website at £2.75 each plus p&p - I emailled to ask if the lady had 20 of them and unprompted, she replied to say she did and if I was buying 20 she would sell me them for £1.50 each. I'd specifically said they were for a wedding, so it goes to show not everyone doubles their prices at the mention of the word!

Ours is round about the £4k mark and is roughly like:

£2500 - food, toast champagne and welcome drink venue hire, rooms for OH and I evening food etc(approx for now as depends on number may be a lot less)

£400 - ceilidh band

£650 - photographer

£450 - humanist (this surprised me, very expensive compare to civil ceremony)

On top of that there is moeny for:

Bouquets but I'm making them out of foam flowers so approx £50 for mine, 2 BMs and button holes.

Room decorations - again, doing this myself so quite cheap

Flowers for the room - doing jugs of whatever is in season bought form the flower markey

Saving on:

My dress and his kilt - we already had

Cake - making it myself - under £30 so far for two massive fruitcakes

I was shocked at cake and flower costs. Don't mind the photographer because a) I trained as a photographer and knwo the stress they are under and b0 I want GOOD pics!

It's the registrar fee's that have shocked me more than anything! Ours is costing £550!! ?

Yes, our church is £540 plus £70 marriage fees at the town hall but it was still cheaper than a registrar in a civil ceremony in a venue. Think they work out around £380 for registrar to attend venue, £70 for docs then venues were charging £300+ for use of their ceremony rooms!

I have a tiny weeding budget £2500 and got most things booked We have 70 guest and out budget works out x

Church £450

Recpetion/Food £700

Dj £200

photographer £150

flowers £30

centrepieces £50

rings £100

bridesmaids/flowergirls £40

groom/bestman/usher/pageboy waistocoats £20

suits for groom and pageboy £60

Bridal Tiara £20

Wedding dress £150

Cakes £100

Ice cream cart/bike £285

bridal car £50

misc £200

I was shocked at the price of everything!! My budget was 10k:

Venue - £1500 + Ceremony Room hire £375

Caterers - £4k for 100 people!!! - the venue had a list of "approved" and we werent allowed to use outside caterers. Unfortunetly I fell in love with the venue and didn't want anywhere else so i had to like it or lump it with the caterers

Flowers - £350

Cake - £100 - my lovely cake lady is doing me TWO 3-tiered cakes for this price - 1 for the wedding and another for a post-wedding celebration party we're having 2 weeks later

TOG - £650 for wedding, post-wedding celebration party AND my henna night (yes, henna, not hen)

Dress - £1150 (bloody hell, i wanted to spend £500, but it was made to measure Indian/English fusion dress)

Hair & Makeup - £100 (including trial - Amy is getting married herslef this year and was doing a special offer for 40% off!)

Guest book and photo album - £4 (using discount vouchers on amazon)

Shoes - £28 - eBay

Side tiara - £26 - Glitzy Secrets

Other accessories - £20

Jewellery - £0 - mum's wedding set

Civil Cremony fees - £400

Invites - £75

Favours - £100

Welcome drinks - £100

Grooms outfit - £550 made to measure Indian suit

Chair covers/sashes £200

Rings - £500 for both

Transport - £0 - we are using one of our own cars that OH's uncle is decorating

I think i might have gone a bit over, oops!!

I think accessories surprised me, I never factored in the cost of things such as underskirts, veils, tiaras, etc.

Surprised by how bargainous our stationery has been, via Vistaprint...£80 for all invites, order of the days, thank you cards, etc...inc. buying stamps too!

Shocked by hair and make up costs, and I found reasonable quotes compared to some of them out there!

Pleasantly surprised by £450 for videography as we thought it would be outwith our budget.

Bouquet preservation is a bargain at £60.

Flowers were super cheap - £300 all in!

String trio was £450 for 3 hrs - seems crazy to me!

Got bargains on the MoH and FG outfits.

Budget was £10k for wedding - slightly over...£4k for honeymoon - slightly under...but still coming in at the £14k mark altogether!

We haven't even started yet and our budget has been pushed up... originally i was all 'yehh £6,000 all in' now i think realistically we are going to be looking more £8,000-£10,000...things that have shocked me...

. price of venue hire - some wanted £5000 JUST hire for a saturday in summer...

. price of evening food in some places...i saw a bacon sadwich for £14.95 at one place...

. price of flowers...WOW

. price of registrar fees!! one are we looked at the registrar fees were nearly £700!! ouch!

x

When i started I wrote a list of everything I would need to book/ buy

Our budgeting is like this:

* Church - under budget

* Daytime Venue + 3 course sit down meal with wine on tables, welcome and toast drinks - under budget

* Nightime Venue + Hot Buffet for 120 - under budget (originally budgeted for sandwiches and sausage rolls ended up with chilli/ curry/ chicken pieces etc and under budget)

* My Dress - Very slighlty under budget

* Bridesmaid dresses x 2 - under budget

* Wedding Stationary - over budget

* Suits for OH, Best Man and my dad - over budget

* DJ - under budget

* Photographer - £20 under budget (but still under haha)

* Wedding Car - Over Budget

* My wedding day accessories - under budget (ebay bargains!)

I think you can save £££'s if you shop around

ETA - This is all we've bought so far still to buy everything else on my list haha!!

We didn't have a budget for our wedding (we just took it from savings) but we spent more than I think we were expecting to.

This was partly because we'd underestimated the cost of some of the major things (photography, food, accommodation, my dress etc) and partly because we'd not factored in other things that bulk up the cost, or did in our case (generous gifts for attendants, choir, scrabble tiles, bridal accessories etc).

The cost of flowers surprised me (although I've never bought flowers on such a large scale before - or probably will again!), as did things like the organist, hair and make up etc.

We didn't factor in our honeymoon costs either but knew roughly how much we'd be spending on that.

Even though we had a healthy budget, we shopped around and I think we got good value for money. We were happy with our spend and that's what mattered to us.

The dreaded W price tag! disgusting really!

Our venue is 10k for 80 guests sit down meal, drinks canapés etc

im going to aim for everything else as cheap as possible as venue was most important to me!

All those holidays we could have!!! x

We planned to do it all for under £4000. We figured we could do so much of it ourselves that we could keep costs right down.

Turns out that we misjudged how things add up. When I sat down and did a budget it came to £9500. Each estimate hasn't been far off but I hadn't really thought about the sums and how quickly things grow into a large total.

My mum has offered to pay for my dress and accessories, bridesmaid dresses, and flowers. This has been a huge help. There are things we've managed to save on like my dress was £400 - an ex shop dress, but then we splashed out on the 4 bridesmaid dresses which are coming in at £750 and thats going to a friend of my mums who has a bridal shop and is giving us discount. I know thats a lot and I think its actually the one thing we've pushed the boat out on. Originally I intended to do high street dresses but with one bridesmaid in mostly abroad and one pregnant and the other two in different towns it all got too complicated so Mum suggested having them made.

My mum has a shop so has trade access to all the wholesalers. Shes doing my flowers. We got fabric flowers - two trolleys full and it costed £300. If Id have gone with real it would have been way more expensive. PLus this way I can sell them or keep them after. Im wearing highstreet £20 shoes that I wore for my sisters wedding so I know they're comfy. Im not a shoe girl so I dont mind giving them a clean up for the day. My veil was £50 (meant to be £75) and my mum is making my tiara from stuff she already has in her shop stock.

Our venue is under budget as were going for a Thursday. We are only having one meal as our wedding is at 3pm. Having chatted to my sister she said she spent £3000 on food alone and we weren't prepared to do this. Suits under budget - we went to Next and spent £300 on three outfits. I was amazed how lovely they are. And being bought they can be used again.

Big shocks - Transport - We decided on a venue all on one site so no transport is needed as it was so very expensive. Band - we wanted a small swing band but are now not having a band at all cos its too expensive. The venue has a resident dj which is £225, but they charge you £50 if you dont use him so we figured we would stick with it.

Hair and Make up - originally my firiend who works in theatre was meant to be doing it all but she had other work commitments so cant get here in time. When I started looking around I was amazed. It was coming in at around £1000 for me and 4 bridesmaids. In the end I found a cheaper hairdresser through asking on here, she did me a really good deal. I am spending more on the make up (£350 which to me is a holiday) but my skin dries out fast so I want someone who can keep me looking my best all day. Im not happy about spending that much but couldnt find an alternative.

My OH thinks we've really over spent on photos but to me we got a great deal. I guess it depends on how important photos are to you. We're spending £750 for unlimited time from Bridal prep till after lantern release at 11pm. Also he used to have the same job as us in theatre so understands our life and has offered to meet us on Sundays.

Cake was a big shock. Id always intended to decorate our cake myself. Id seen the cheapest place was tesco selling plain cakes (3 tiers about £40) but to get one on a specific day and not go to shop to find theyre out of stock we had to order it. The cheapest was M&S at £90 for three plain sponge tiers.

We set a budget for rings which to others may seem low. £500 for both. In the end we spent £600 but as its the thing that lasts forever we didnt mind.

I guess its the little things that add up, the centre pieces, candles, table confetti, gifts

Oh and room fees - We arent going on honeymoon straight away but our hotel is costing £250 for two nights - It is an amazing 5* appartment though so hoping it will be well worth its space for chilling out the night before and bridal prep in the morning as well as the whirlpool huge bath when we get in at the end of the day!

I am totally loving this thread! Thanks for sharing ladies

*Waves to Eeyoring* Hiya, myself and my oh are in theatre too!!! Our venue is our theatre! xxx