Wedding Finances...Help?

Our budgetis £5, 000 at the absolute max. At the moment, by our calculations, we are at about £3, 000 with not alot left to pay for.

We have also budgeted £1, 000 of that for out honeymoon :-)

We have paid for everything so far with cash apart from my dress with my credit card (it was only £160)

I don't see the pointin spending ridiculous money when you can do it just as well on a smaller budget. What is important to us is getting wed and eveeryone having a good party with us afterwards.

X

Thanks. It was a last resort idea, i.e. if we save 80% of it pay 20% on credit card or something but our budget is higher because our families live at opposite ends of the country and its trying to get everyone to one place happily. If i was doing it closer to home it would be cheaper

If you have the 10k saved already (or nearly), I would've thought that was a great budget and you could have a lovely wedding for that amount. The only thing that might go up in price would be the venue, so if you have found somewhere you like, perhaps you should try and find out whether their prices might increase next year/year after and see whether you could get it for the current price if you booked now, or whatever. Some venues will do this, but I think that's probably the only major price increase to worry about.

Obviously, a lot depends on how extravagant you want to be with everything else - dresses, etc, but I really do think a 10k budget is more than enough if you are sensible with it. We are struggling to save for ours and that's only 5k! But we should get there over the next few months and will have a lovely day with it!

10K includes everything from cars to dresses to flowers to toast drinks and invites. I know we can cut back further if we look in the right places but im looking at the higher budget as id rather save too much then too little. Can i ask what your wedding plans are on 5k?

We are having a church wedding then going across to the town hall for our reception, so a rather low key venue but very much what we wanted and kind on the budget. Catering for 100ish - we've put aside 2k roughly, then the rest is for cars, etc (we only need one car for me and maids as OH will already be down there), flowers I am doing myself as I have done a flower arranging course - you can make great savings buying from flowers from the supermarkets, though I'm getting buttonholes and flower crowns made from the florists. Erm, cake - OHs parents have kindly offered to pay for, we are also supplying the drink for the reception, so have set aside about 300-400 quid. Probably buying the toast drinks from M&S - OH knows more about wine than I do, I'm a cider girl.

I've bought my dress and will be buying the bridesmaids theirs from the high street - so if I included this in the overall budget then it would probably take it up to more like 6k, but I paid for this separately out of my own money. OH is buying his suit in that sales and the best men and dads can all wear ones they have, no need to buy new or have all matching as it's not that kind of day. Also I'll either be making the invites or buying from the shops (got my eye on paperchase ones which would be 80 quid if i got them, so not much).

I would suggest looking into the kinds of things you want for yours - are you more inclined to want an expensive dress or something that is cheaper? This will help you work out if you need to save a little more. We always knew we wanted a village hall, relaxed, nothing matchy matchy or "typical" wedding, so I guess its been easier for us to cut back as we don't really mind...

So that's why I think your 10k budget is really healthy, it just depends on what kind of day you want really. If you want a traditional hotel/stately home wedding then look at their low season packages and also many venues do special packages for a few thousand if you are flexible on dates.

Our budget is £7k but hoping to come in at around £6k leaving some for a honeymoon!
My parents kindly offered to pay 50% which basically covers the venue/catering. Our half is coming from OHs annual bonus which is around £4k. We are just paying deposits atm so not spending huge amounts and then balances will be paid in jan/feb when we have the £'s. Nothing is going on credit...if we didn't have the money, we would wait another couple of years until we did.

OHs brother paid for his £15k wedding 6 yrs ago using loans/cc and is still paying for it...and they're now divorced!!!

I'm using a credit card but our budget is only £1k and I'm paying off the balance every month. Because we haven't paid for insurance, credit card gives me something to fall back on if anything goes wrong so it makes sense for us. To be honest, if I couldnt pay it off each month, I wouldnt do it though x

I also got engaged at new year and didn't want to wait to get married. Within a week of being engaged the church was booked and other things were in place. We get married on the 23rd November this year. We sat down and worked out where we could save money and how much things would cost approximately. We then worked from there how much we needed to save each month without breaking the bank or using credit cards. We are less than 10 weeks till the wedding and things are starting to be paid off. I've put money into envelopes ready to give the relevant people. Shop around, DIY and ask friends. This has helped me a lot x

We ow £1500 on our cards for definite wedding expenses but once we get from honeymoon we are paying off what we can with the money we have left and then we go from there.

It isnt ideal but it isnt the end of the world (hopefully when it comes to house buying!) I know some people suggest not to start married life with debt but we had debt anyway so a bit more isnt going to make a difference,

I think that if you don't want to wait, then you should have a wedding that you can afford to pay for. But only you know your financial situation and how the debt would affect you. Our wedding was £12,000 (£2,000 was donated by family) and we saved for nearly 2 years to pay for it- no debt. I wanted my dream wedding so we waited until we could afford it, and I'm so glad that we're not paying for it now that it is over! Now onto saving for a house deposit....

My budget is only £6,000 for everything and that is with our evening do being at a 4 star hotel so it just shows it can be one if you cut back on certin areas and if you shop around. We're using credit cards but this is because my parents advised me to as it covers you incase something goes wrong with the company. We're paying card off in full so we will have no debt as the money is already being put into savings luckily my parents are helping out so I don't even think we will use all our money

i think it all depends on what you want but shop around that's the best thing we have done so far and have got some great deals

We have looked at different types of wedding but we fall short because both families live in different areas and his mum has MS so we want to have ceremony and reception all under one roof with accomodation too so she can go lay down at any point. Also my partner been married once before and he had a very small quick wedding and said it wasnt what he wanted. So we having a proper knees up. My budget is what i expected it to be for what i wanted.