Wedding costs help........ sorry if cheeky!

To be honest its a bit of a how long is a piece of string question... so much depends on the size of your wedding... our venue for example didn't charge a hire fee but a package per head so would really vary on numbers.

Flowers again are hard to compare given they can be so different.

I'd say a good place to look is programmes like 'Four Weddings' as you see a lot of the details and they give you a total wedding budget for each one.

Hi, I know a lot of people on here don't like to disclose their budgets, but I'm not too fussed - although I can't help you with everything as we haven't sorted everything yet! So if this helps:

Dress - not ordered yet but have set a budget of £800 (have a feeling my parents may step in with this one though)

Suit Hire - no idea - sorry! You can get brochures from Moss Bros etc though to get an idea of how much they charge.

Venue Hire/Breakfast meal/Buffet - these all come included in our wedding package which also includes the DJ, guests welcome drinks, wine with the meal and overnight room for me and OH - the price varies though depending on how many people we are inviting obviously. For a minimum of 80 guests to the whole day, and 150 evening guests, the whole package comes to £7,400.

Cake - likely to get an M&S one, so around £200

Flowers - around £600 for the lot (my bouquet, 3 bridesmaids, flower girl petals, table centrepieces, top table display and other decorations for the ceremony room)

Photographer - £695 in total covering the ceremony up until the first dance - we don't get an album included with this though, just loose prints and we only get 60 official ones, but we get to keep the CD of proofs.

We have also booked a videographer which is £625 for the whole day.

Hope that helps a bit - I know how confusing budgeting can be!

People arent always comfy revealing those details and yes they do vary. Reading all my magazines gave me good ideas and calling around places for quotes. There are things I wish I had looked a bit cheaper for but felt bound by the fact they were friends of relatives doing stuff for us..and on the flip side we got some great deals.

One venue we looked at were going to charge almost 50 bucks per head for the meal, the venue we chose charged us 27.50 for the meal and even though their prices had gone up over the last year they stuck to the original price for us.... and that venue had so much more charm etc

Hi,

Personally I don't see any point in hearing what others paid because it varies so much from supplier to supplier and depends on what you want. For example my cake cost £200 (got a discount on it) but the same cake shop had cakes at £600. Dresses can cost £100 to £5000k so again just depends on what you want.

My advice is don't ask anyone what they paid and decide what sort of style you would like and get quotes based on that. Get as many quotes as possible and then you can go into the finer detail of what you get for your money.

Wedding don't need to cost £30k or even £10k. Mine cost less than £10k excluding the honeymoon and we had exactly the day we wanted and couldn't have had it any better even if more money had been spent.

Lx

Most of mine came as a package as it is abroad, so for about £3,000 we got the civil ceremony, photographer, cake, flowers, transport and lots of little extras too.

The meal is about £500 for about 20 people.

Dress about £700, we bought H2Bs outift too at about £200 total.

I reckon my total spend with literally everything added in will be about £6,000

hello ?

i agree with PG. everyone has a different idea on what their day is and realistically how much it will cost. mr hillier & i sat down and set a budget for everything and plan on sticking with it, if we go over on one thing, we cut back on another.

do you have an idea of how much you are willing to spend? i have a spreadsheet that im using that i can send you if you are interested? x

Couldn't have put it better.

The bulk of the cost normally comes from venue hire/catering but each venue tends to have a different pricing structure so you really are best to look at venues and owrk out how much your wedding (with your number of guests) would cost there. There's also a big difference in the time of year and day of the week you get married.

You really are best to work out much you can and want to pay and going from there. The average wedding is quoted as being £18kish, but most are much less than that because the odd £50k or £100k wedding brings up the average.

It is a piece of string question but hey - spend what you want and what you can. We had fun shopping around for bargins and making things ourselves...

Here's our breakdown!

Dress - my dress was £300 second hand from america (postage included), my whole outfit including nails, hair and new make up came to £555.

Bridesmaids - dresses, jewelry for all four came to £328

Suit Hire - Hubby's outfit came to £159

Groomsmen - Three suits and ties came to £131

Rings - £274 for both, his was twice the price of mine! hehe

Thank you cards and gifts - came to £152

Favours - £203

Church costs - £450

Venue Hire - our venue hire was free as we catered for 100 people

Breakfast meal - £37.50 a head, that was a three course carvery dinner, 2 glasses of champagne and 2 glasses of wine, and a bacon buttie in the evening.

Buffet - answered above, but it was around £4.50 per head.

Cake - this was free as my FIL made it - we did give him £50 for ingredients though. Our cake stand and topper came to £59.

Flowers - £182, this was for wooden rose bouquet for me, three bridesmaids ones, three corsages for the ladies and 5 button holes for the men, oh and a little garland thingy.

Photographer - £200 - a friend did them for us.

Videographer - £50, a mate did it for us who sadly passed away last month.

DJ - £285 (not worth it - he was crap!)

Car - free, a friend loaned us his BMW

Stationery - we made our own bits and bobs but spent a whopping £320 on it (we bought a lot we didn't use!)

General decoration - vases for centrepieces, balloons etc - all came to £223

Our entire wedding, including honeymoon and new passports came to £6453

Ours came in at about £10,500 but can't remember the exact amounts

Something like

Dresses: about £200 each, they were both regular dresses not bridal ones. Obv no suit hire!

No bridesmaids

Venue hire: I think about £1300 for the venue for the ceremony and meal, and then about £1250 for the evening venue

Meal: About £32 per head for 39, plus £8 per head for 3 children, plus 20 bottles of wine at about £12 each

Champagne for toast about £20 per bottle, 7 bottles

Photographer £500

Flowers £600 (no bouquets, just centerpieces and two massive displays)

Evening buffet £15 per head for 95 people

Evening sparkling wine reception £14 per bottle, about 25 bottles

Free bar for the first couple of hours £1200

DJ £400

Cake £180 including stand hire and delivery

Not sure if that even works out right, would have to sort through receipts etc to find exact amounts.

Honeymoon not included with above.

You can do a wedding on any budget, and others are right, suppliers are so different and what you want could be completely different to what anybody else has, so I think the best idea is to work out what you can afford to spend and then look at what's available. If you come in underbudget, great! Spreadsheets are a great tool too!