How much are you spending?

Very roughly I think:

£600 celebrant

£300 village hall

£750 hog roast

£175 cheese tower

£150 ice cream van

£350 alcohol

£600 fish and chip van

£1,300 brides outfit

£400 bridesmaids

£700 team groom

£700 photography

£600 venue decoration and ccoordinator

£140 DJ

£150 bouncy castle

£40 hay bales

Then there's a load of 'other' like hair, make-up, venue decorations, homemade cakes, cake topper, cupcake toppers, pre-wedding day (legals and lunches), garden games, homemade invites etc. total is £9,500.

Oh crumbs, seeing it in black and white is scary!!

70 day guests and 110 total in evening. Nearly forgot to say!

I honestly couldn't tell you what we spent. I think you spend to your means.

Somewhere between £5k & £6k - mains costs are venue/catering at about £3k, photos £1.5k, ceremony £500, dress/suit £600. 50 guests.

I think we are looking at £11-12k, before I got engaged I thought the idea of spending that much was ridiculous and thought we would do it for about £6k! How wrong was I. But my thoughts on it now are, you only do it once!!! The most expensive things are:

Reception for 80 and evening for 120 (inc post ceremony drinks, 3 course meal for 80, wine with meal, post speech fizzy and buffet for 120) - £5,500ish

Registrar - £450

Wedding dress - £1k max

Bridesmaids dresses - £500 max

Band inc DJ - £800

Photographer - TBC but no more than £900

Mini-moon inc £200 spending money - £625

The other stuff takes it up to the grand total!

Oops. Left out honeymoon. I see the ring as one cost, the wedding as another and honeymoon as another. Suits me to do so, I guess!

We initially planned to keep it under 5k and keep it small and simple. OH said from the start he wanted to spend as little as possible on the wedding and as much as possible on the honeymoon! I think so far we're on track but I know there are some things we haven't yet accounted for so I won't hold my breath that it will stay that way. We're basing this on 35 guests, we haven't yet decided how many more may be invited in the evening but it won't be a lot. Largest chunk of money is on food, then drink, then photography. I'm not counting dresses as mum has offered to pay for those. Saving money in a few places with DIY stationary and decorations and hopefully bouquets and OH has a friend who is a dj and has offered his services for free. We've budgeted for honeymoon separately.

We're spending:

£2850 on the venue hire, food, drink etc for day and evening

£800 on the photographer

£430 on the registrar (plus £25 deposit and £35 each for giving notice)

That's all we have booked at the moment but I *think* it should come in at around £6-7 K (not including the honeymoon)

Our reception came as a package, Arrival drinks, 3 course meal for 40 with 16 bottles of wine, drinks for toast. room decorations including table cloths and runners and chair covers and sashes in our chosen colour, evening do for 100 with buffet and dj for £2000

church fees including organist and flower arrangements around £500

Photographer from bridal prep to first dance - £350

Suit hire for 9 men including shoes - £850

transport my dads sorting as a gift

rings from argos in the sale for £130 for the pair

hair and make up for bride and 4 bridesmaids including trial for bride £210

3 tier chocolate cake £190

seating plan, filled activity boxes for kids, table numbers, name cards and personalised bunting £75

brides dress in the sale for £600

brides shoes £45

brides tiara £35

brides underskirt £13

jewellery is free as its my 'somthing borrowed' off my FMIL

material for 3 teenage bridesmaids (my mums making the dresses) £75

bridemaids shoes for 3 teens £55

bridesmaid and flower girl jewellery free by a jewellery making friend

flowergirl dresses £56 for 2

flowergirl shoes £40 for 2

flowergirl mini tiara £16

maid of honour dress in the sale £36

updated passport £72

guest book £20

birdcade card collection £20

Flowers are a gift from my mum

invitations £14

i think thats everything so far so around the 5.5k mark

Yeh I see my honeymoon as a separate cost. As we have a little girl (18 months) we are planning a mini moon to Venice or Rome for 3 nights after the wedding and will have a big family holiday a few months after, but I don't see these as costs of the wedding.

Our ceremony venue and registrar are costing -£900

Transport - £800 (this was our massive splash and have got a vintage routemaster and a vw camper!)

Rings - £500

Reception including meal for 79, wine and an evening Buffett for 120 just short of -4k

Entertainment - another splash as want an irishband. Band dj bouncy castle sweet buffet and few other bits for kids -£1200

extras like insurance, stationary, cake, flowers and photo - £1000.

And all the bits for looking good another - £1000 my dress is a bargain £175 and we are only buying the dresses for the bridesmaids, they are happy to wear own shoes etc. The groom and groomsmen will not be wearing suits (my other half hates them) so will be wearing grey waistcoats and ties which match colour scheme, so is massively saving on suit hire.)

Did anyone get any freebies thrown in by their venues? We got our bridal suite but were shocked they wouldn't even throw in free coffee!

xxx

Hi

My costs: roughly

Venue(including food and toast drinks and evening buffet) £8559 (65 day guests 130 evening guests)

Registrar £555

Band £900

Photographer £1100

Flowers: £500

Decoration £600

My Dress: £1100 plus fitting

Bridesmaids (5) £1250

Flowergirl £70

Pageboys £80

Cake £350

Shoes for me £50

Shoes for OH £50

HONEYMOON...........£6000

Very excited xxx

Holey moley, not a small budget! If you don't mind me asking are you paying for it all yourself or some help from family? X

Why does that matter out of interest?

We're looking at a total of around £16k without honeymoon!

Roughly 45% of that is on venue and catering (we're having 100guests to the day, 60ish more in the evening)

£1200 - videographer

£1000 - photographer

£400 - registrar

£600 - rings

£400 - wedding cars

£800 - ushers / bridesmaids outfits

£400 - cake

£800 - flowers

£500 - bespoke suit for the Mr

£1700 - my dress & accessories

Cant remember anything else off the top of my head! x

This is going to sound bad but I don't know how much FIL have budgeted and given that I don't know I guess it is more than a couple of grand

If It was up to me we would spend the £119 on getting married and a couple of hundred on a slap up meal with our 4 guests

FIL are paying - I will try to make sure they limit themselves but can't lie it is lovely that they are in a position to do it

My awesome mum and dad gave us £10,000 towards it. I have waited 10 yrs for my engagement ring and wanted to do it in style :-)

We are paying the rest. Had they not offered that, I would never have spent that much! xxx

Just curious. Didn't mean to offend. I always wonder if we had money from our families if we would have upped the overall budget or just lessened our share of the input.

Just curious. Didn't mean to offend. I always wonder if we had money from our families if we would have upped the overall budget or just lessened our share of the input.

You didn't offend me. :-)

Yeah, we could have done it within the £10k but we were more than prepared to pay for the wedding so essentially doubled the budget thanks to my mum and dad. The venue I have booked I didn't even look at before because I knew how bloody expensive it was. It was great going in there and knowing I could actually afford to get married there now!

How much did you spend? I have a massive family, my side I have 9 uncles and aunties, all with kids(who are not invited in the day!) so the day was always gonna cost me. I wanted a sit down meal which is more pricey. xxx

I think ours is going to be around the 22-23k mark without the honeymoon. For 100 guests .

venue 5k

catering 10k

church 1k

florist 1.4k

My outfit 1500

bridesmaids 700

hair/makeup 500

photographer 1000

car 500

entertainment 700

then a bunch of misc stuff!

Ours will be coming in at under 10k, although we have up to 16k to play with. I'm determined a trip to Disneyland will be had instead of blowing the entire amount on one day.

Transport £625

Venue £1900

catering £1500

Registrar £450 plus £250 charged by venue for holding ceremony there.

£400 Wedding dress and bridesmaid/flower girls dresses (all 5 dresses for that.. I love a bargain!)

£350 Groom/Best Man/Page Boys

£600 venue decor inc. chair covers/sashes

£200 cake

£750 band

£500 reception drinks

£1000 honeymoon

£950 photographer

£300 Videographer ( a recently graduated film student)

£180 brooch bouquets

and a large contingency for all the ebay stuff I can't resist.

Wow, very generous. My parents helped us out massively with some house maintenance costs so on our own for the wedding, well my mum is helping by making our canapes and doing our flowers!

xx

Wow, very generous. My parents helped us out massively with some house maintenance costs so on our own for the wedding, well my mum is helping by making our canapes and doing our flowers!

xx

That is awesome, nobody in my family seems to have any useful wedding skills. Except my mum, she makes awesome cakes and offered but I didn't want her to be stressed near the time.....have now noticed how bloody expensive cakes are!

Think we are going to ask the lads to hire their own suits. Do you think that is rude? xxx

She has specially taken a course to do them bless her. I am making my own cake, isn't as tight as it sounds lol I run a cake making business and refuse to pay someone else over the odds to make cake, when I can do it myself. Also hoping that it will keep my mind busy the day before the wedding some I'm not stressing about the silly little details. Making my own cake is probably saving me about £300!

I think it depends what sort of suits you want, if they are really expensive, then maybe offer half? My husband to be hates suits so he and his grooms men are wearing waistcoats. So just going to tell groomsmen to wear their own black trousers and white shirts and we will hire the waistcoats and ties, which is only about £25 each! Again saving us loads!!!

xx

i apologise for my messages coming up twice all the time, no idea why?!

I would definitely put disney over wedding, full stop, so make sure you keep that money aside!! eBay is the worst budget buster, I'm not getting married for 14 months and already obsessed!!! Xxx

Major costs:

Venue/food/wine - £8k

Dress/BMs/Boys - £8k

Honeymoon - £9k (inc spending money)

Minor costs:

Everything else.

Last time I checked we were at around 26k not including honeymoon

The biggest part of our budget is our venue which is 17k but we've got it for the weekend.

We've spent about 4k on our tog,

quote from florist is 3k

these are probably our biggest costs, I'm scared to add up the rest!

I personally love all weddings no matter how much is spent, as long as you can afford what you are spending and have the day that you and your OH want that's all that matters.

We are having a church ceremony followed by reception for 80+ day guests and another 25 ish in the evening. Not totted up every little item but it's roughly 6/6.5k.... Mum is putting 5k of that in, dad is paying for a few bits too. Roughly: Church (bells, choir etc). 600 Venue weekend hire. 250 Marquee lining plus extras. 600 Hog roast, buffet etc. 950 Ice cream van. 100 Bouncy castle and games. 80 Band. 600 Dj. 130 Transport. 175 TOG. 100 Groomsmen. 300 Bms. 100 Ushers. 150 My dress etc. 400 Rings. 250 Decor, favours etc 400 Spa suite and meal 1 night 270 Welcome drinks. 250 Flower bits. 60 Growing and doing my own flowers, sister is making my cake, MUA pal styling me for free, made my own OOS etc. Loads off ebay in bm dresses. Mates rates on band, dj, tog, transport..... Saved a packet. If I had paid full price for everything, it would likely have cost an extra 2k+ at least.

Gggrrr!!!

Why, when I type things as a column list, do they keep coming up as a block paragraph???!!!!

Highly annoying, sorry :0/

Venue - ceremony and reception + BBQ wedding breakfast, pudding and evening buffet and drink for 65 day guests and approx 5 more evening guests - 5.5k

TOG £700 ceremony to first dance

DJ £200

Hair £70 + trial

MUA No more than £90 + trial

Registrar £469

Hotel inc bridal suite on wedding night £215.

Rings up to £400 for both.

Dress £499.

BM dresses up to £200 altogether (they will contribute some too).

Honeymoon - variable could be anything from £700-1000+ will see how much cash we have nearer the time and immediate family are giving us cash as a wedding gift.

Groom suit up to £150.

Flowers up to £100 FSIL is a florist and doing this for us.

Cake - cost of ingredients FSIL and FMIL are making this for us.

Stationery £50 inc material to make invites + place cards and individual typewriter letter stamps.

All the small details like favours, bunting, pearls, table name holders, flip flops, umbrellas etc I pay for out of my wages so is not included in the budget.

We are coming in at around 8k for everything except honeymoon (as don't know our budget for that yet). If we took away the venue cost which lovely FPIL are paying for we are coming in at £3,143.

Everything apart from venue (which is covered), is being paid for out of saving saving saving! I have finally managed to get out of my terrible HSBC credit card and student overdraft and paying the loan for that so do not want to get into any more debt for the wedding if possible!

OH has just got a promotion and pay rise of 3-4k so that will hopefully cover the honeymoon and some cheap transport phew!

Not great at the whole budget thing but was hoping to get it in at 10k, not sure it's gonna happen. Ah well....

so far,

venue £3250

food £2900

dress £1400

ceremony £500

cake £249

dj £350

tog £350

decor £150

flowers £no idea

suits £400

bridesmaid £200

flowersgirls £22 (bargain!)

drinks £no idea

Everything else £no idea

15k is ours, that's everything, I'm not going to lie my first budget was 5k, then I realised n the wedding world for what we wanted that wasn't going to happen. Sooooo..... 15k is. Our budget now, not a penny more. I would prefer not to spend anymore than 10k and have 5k left over for the start of our married life. But it's there if we need it, but then saying that...

everything is pretty much done now I think of it and we only up to 6k ... So who knows lol...I haven't really worked it all out yet, but that's without a honeymoon