How much are you spending?

I am glad it is far too expensive for us or I would be having some serious wobbles right now! My venue is lovely but if I had more money then there are so many ones that are even nicer and yours is just spectacular and exactly my taste!!

Is it somewhere you can stay for a few nights? I may have to suggest it to the OH as a mini break for our first anniversary or something.

I would love this, long walks along the beach etc OH is a bit of a snob and says he wants one last blow out before a kid and then I can have as many caravan holidays as I like

It is! The bedrooms in the castle open up as a B&B on nights when there isn't an event booked: https://www.hevercastle.co.uk/stay/bed-breakfast/

We were aiming for £12,000 in our origional budget. But over the nearly three years of engagement our financial position has changed meaning we had considerably more disposable income, once we hit £16,000 I stopped counting. I think we will come in at around the £19,000 mark but getting married on a Friday in the north of England does make it cheaper. :-) we are keeping to our Meens though and won't be getting in any debt. We are also only having a 4 night honeymoon as if we went for longer OH wouldn't get much time off with his kids in the holidays (different for me as I teach) but we are having a second week somewhere hit and sunny next may when he has more leave.

I've always been too scared to add ours up! But I'm guessing it was somewhere about £30k for 120 guests. The big ticket stuff was £3850 venue hire, £6000 food, Music (DJ and string quartet) £800, Flowers and decor £5000, Dress and accessories £2000, BM dresses £800, Suits £800, Hair and make up £600,accomodation for wedding party £3k, I don't even want to think about drinks.

My parents paid for the food and venue hire and we paid the rest. Most of it was covered by my bonus last year so we were within our means.

Honeymoon was probably about £25k but that was 3 weeks in Sydney and Fiji with first class flights.

Under £500.

Register office wedding, only guests were my 2 boys, and our 2 witnesses. My dress was £30 off ebay (which is a dress I can wear again and again, not a traditional wedding dress) shoes and accessories were items I already owned. Rings were cheapo ones, as I wasn't going to wear it after the day. Bouquet (brooch bouquet) was made by my friend, she got her uncle (who has a wedding car business) to drive us to and from the ceremony for free. Tog was one of my witnesses, who is a pro tog (handy), so was also free. Made my own cake (under £10). H's outfit, and outfits for my boys came to under £100.

We paid for a meal on the evening for us all, plus my Dad and his then gf. That only came to £60.

Ours comes in around £5.5k- that's for EVERYTHING, except the honeymoon which my dad is paying for as a gift.

We were very fortunate that OHs dad gave us £3k (which is basically paying for the reception) and we've saved for everything else ourselves, so we remain debt free! Yay! (been there, done that, got the depressingly grey, sweat and tear-stained t-shirt)

We're also extremely lucky that we have a raft of talented, creative and beautiful friends / family who are providing freebies for us: hair / makeup, flowers, transport...even a band! The only sacrifice I suppose we've made is having limited numbers; we only have 50 guests which is a small wedding to a lot of people. I would rather have spent more per head and provided nice food, some free booze, etc. than stretched the budget and had a finger buffet in a leisure centre (for example). There is nothing wrong with that at all- have been to a couple myself and who doesn't love a sausage roll?- but I really wanted to spoil close friends / family a little bit, rather than worrying too much about feeding and watering Uncle X who I'd not seen since I was 12!

Don't get me wrong, if money was no object and I could afford it without getting into debt, I would have spent FAR more on the day...but not from a selfish point of view (insomuchas trying to impress people), but to really give everyone we love (including extended family) an absolutely INCREDIBLE time! Hopefully our nearest and dearest will enjoy what we've cobbled together when the time comes. ?

We have spent about £11k but we are having 150 guests to the whole day.

But 9k sounds reasonable to me.

Ruth