Wedding on a Budget!

Theres loads that you can do - get married late and only feed people once. Serve your cake as pudding, get a shop bought cake from M&S/Waitrose etc as they can be a lot cheaper.

For things like favours and invite making stuff, search ebay, there's so much stuff on there

Good luck!

Hi! Yes we're on a tight budget. It's been eased slightly by a donation from the in-laws to be but still a lot smaller than many weddings I've seen.

We're saving pennies by:

me making my own dress
having an afternoon ceremony and buffet in the evening (so no need to feed guests twice!)
having a talented amateur tog friend do our pics (she has a degree in photography and is very talented, just doesn't work as a wedding tog)
h2b's aunt is making our cake
I'm making all the flowers with origami rather than using fresh

You could consider going for an off-season wedding or having it on a weekday. That often brings the price down by LOADS. Also look at having the ceremony and reception in the same place because then you won't have to worry about transport, although the costs of using a venue's licence and the additional registrar's fees can be extortionate so look it up. Ummm.... what else. Mainly the key is in DIYing as much as you can, or getting talented friends and relatives to pitch in. For stationary, check our Vistaprint and sign up for their emails. They have SO many free offers and loads of hitchers have been able to get all their Save The Dates done for free, or Thank You Cards etc. I got 100 free STD postcards and envelopes, using my own design, for £10!

I'm doing our wedding on a budget. We are also getting married in a registry office, we decided to have the wedding at 3pm because then we can get away with only feeding the guests once. We are having about 20ish guests for the entire thing. After the wedding we are having a 3 course meal in a country pub which is letting us have the room for free which is perfect. We aren't having any entertainment, just having a good old get together. We are making our own cake, we made our invitations ourselves, my dress is technically a bridesmaid dress but has been very popular with brides having small weddings as it is available in ivory satin. My sisters bridesmaid dress is from Debenhams, OH's suit not sorted out yet but it won't be very expensive. We are having cheap rings which we will replace with more hardy ones in the future when we can afford them. We aren't having a honeymoon straight after the wedding, we asked for donations from our guests which we will save and go somewhere in the new year. We haven't decided on favours yet but will cross that bride when we come to it. I am having artificial flowers from rainbow florist who is a HIB on here. I couldn't justify buying flowers which would last me a day when for a similar price I could have some which can last forever. The guests will be doing our photography and video and my dads Volvo is going to be our wedding car.

I felt slightly ashamed when I came on here and tried to hide the fact I was having a low-budget wedding but I've realised there is absolutely no shame in it, it's what we both wanted and even if we had more money we would still have a small wedding.

HI,

We have gone for an off-season and weekday wedding. Our total package at our venue is costing £1500. Thats for 50 day guests and 150 evening guests including 3 course meal, DJ, ceremony room, drink during photos, drink with meal and for toast, buffet, our room for the night and few other things i cant remember at the moment.

Best advice i can think of at the moment would be to hunt around, go to sales (i got my BMs dresses in the Debenhams blue X sale for £25 each and my dress cost me under £200) and never pay full price for anything. I dont think we have actually paid full price on anything for our wedding.

There are so many things you can do. I didn't have a "budget" wedding as such - but I certainly didn't want to pay for things just because and other things I did becuase I didn't want things to go to waste:

Some ideas from me would be:

1) Dont have favours - waste of money and usually get left anyway
2) Invitations - have a look on Visitaprint. With deals I got my invitations for around 37p each - that included envelopes and little magnets! I ❤️ them
3) My Mam makes shed laods of fruit cakes each year and my husband's Mum is good at baking so we got my Mam to bake the bottom tier and his Mum to make the top 2 sponge layers and ice it. Apart from it making my cake feel more special - it saved us a lot of money!
4) Ask the men in the bridal party to wear a suit they already have - we both dislike rental suits so wouldn't go that route but it certainly saved us money. We just bought them a tie to wear for a bargain price of £7.99 each!
5) Think about what things you can borrow fo ryour outfit to fit in with the old, new, borrowed & blue. I saved money on a tiarra by borrowing my best mates - it made it special too. And my necklace was my something old - my Nana's pearls.
6) We only had 65 guests total - no extra evening guests. The earliest time our venue did a ceremony was 4.00pm so we had dinner served at 6.00pm and then straight into the evening. We actually had a fancy 4 course meal with a chese and port course. We also served cake instead of dessert as it never seems to get eaten otherwise! (though we did add the cheese course!)
7) I only wanted simple geflower arrangements which also turned out to save us lots of money. All my flowers were real - gerberas - and in total cost around £180. Our table centrepieces were £4 each!

Running out of steam now!

Thanks girls for your comments so far!!

Getting married at a registers office is fairly cheap. I have managed to get a good price on a photographer and the wedding cake. I was having some issues with the wedding ring for me as my engagement ring needed a wedding band to be made to fit and the quotes I was getting were quite a lot more than I wanted to pay!! However I have managed to find a jeweller on the web who has agreed to make me a unique wedding ring made to fit my engagement for £180 - BARGAIN!

So far, I have managed to book the registers office, wedding cake, photographer and my wedding band for £650! I think that's quite good going I am finding that the most expensive part is the catering as we are inviting 100 people to the reception and my partner has asked if we can have a BBQ ... which I am being quoted £1500 and that's just for the food. I might need to do a lot of negotiating on that one but taking advice given, I won't be paying the full price!!

My biggest saving has been on the invites. I got mine from ebay and cost me £25. The similar designes i like from other companies were coming in at around £100 to £125.

Hiya hun

We are on a tight budget too We've booked the registry office and we are lucky enough to have parents with a large back garden on so we can get a marquee on.

We are having a small wedding - max 30 people

Food is being ordered from Marks & Spencers online with me doing some of my signature dishes

I'm going to have a go at making my wedding cake.. if it goes tits up then i have a friend that has offered.

Florists have been sorted.. not cheap but not too expensive £70 for my flowers

Invites were from ebay

Called in a favour from a close friend with a nice car for transport to and from the wedding

Music is sorted pulled in another favour from a friend who is a lead singer and guitar player in a band

Dress is ordered @ a bargain price of £100

the list is endless.. but managed to save alot of money!

Wow! You have done so well. I intend on ordering my wedding dress online which will be a replica of a designer cdress i have seen. The price I have been quoted is £125.

A few people have mentioned M&S for food. I never thought about doing that. I suppose it is because my OH wants a BBQ and it is the only thing he has asked for in all of the planning so I feel obligated to try my hardest to get it at a bargain price. I did find a website that offered burgers, sausages, salads and some traditional buffet food for £695 for the 100 people ... unfortunately, they aren't local

We did considering a bbq..but with the british weather you can never predict what its going to do! Plus we had quite a few veggies so i suppose the buffett option was the easiest thing for us to do.

Btw.. if your struggling for plates and bowls ikea have stonewear plates and bowls for 30p each in a cream colour

Only thing im struggling with is inspiration of how to decorate the marquee.. its not a huge one, holds max 50 people seated (another £80 bargain lol) i need to get some kind of flooring in there aswell.

What about trying a hog roast?! My OH wants that and the quotes i have been getting are for 60 people £675 and 100 people £795. This includes salads, new potatoes, all cutlery. Oh and the stuffing and apple sauce!!!

Worth a look and there are loads of companies out there!!

Also for my favours i was thinking of going down to a local beach and grabbing some smooth flat stones and then writing peoples names on them. I think its just a nice touch!!

That's a good idea. I guess it's just a case of shopping around and getting quotes ... then trying to haggle them down!!