wedding on the cheap side

Do you have a budget in mind chuck?

And do you know where you want you get married ie church, registry office etc...

It's more than do-able to get married on a shoe string.

theres some lovley cricket/rugby clubs out there that do wedding packages now. And some of the bigger hotel venues offer really good packages if you book out of season.

Also, where are you based?

kelly x

We're getting married on a fairly small budget, with the plan that it won't be tacky the biggest way we're saving money is by only having 50 guests.

We're getting married in a church, but a small country church where the charges are slightly less. We're not going to have a choir but will probably pay more to have bells. We're having the reception at a village hall, with a tea party theme - so the less things match the better! I think we're going to make as much of the food as we can, so little sandwiches, scones, cakes and nibbly bits. We'll also be having the cake for dessert.

We're using friends/families skills as much as possible - so a friend is making our cake, another friend is taking pictures, my sister is flower arranging.

What sort of wedding are you looking for? Church or civil service?

I'm sure it won't be tacky and the people who matter will understand and help you.

Hellie xx

Depends how cheap you mean! I consider mine to be cheap and will be spending just over £6k excluding honeymoon... was supposed to be lower but the costs have crept up for various reasons. We are having 120 guests to the meal.

We are getting married in a register office for less than £200- prices vary depending on area. I always wanted to get married in a reg office. A church or hotel is not for me.

Our venue is a village hall which we will be £275 from 10am-midnight. Not to everyone's tastes but suits us and we will be decorating ourself to make it look less "Pheonix Nights".

I love sewing (though am a novice) so am making bunting and lavender heart favours. Bunting will cost me less than £15 for 50 metres and the favours (for 60 ladies) costs around £5.

I will be having jamjar tea light lanterns, decorated with lace. I have bought lace, a glue gun and 8 hour candles, jam jars free from family and friends. Cost for 100, £30.

My uncle is an amateur photgrapher and has an amazing camera so will be doing the wedding pictures as a gift. We will arrange for them to be printed and will pay to have them done nicely. Not sure of the cost yet. Will do this after the honeymoon.

My late granny had some rings that we have had melted down to make 2 wedding rings- £80 for the both of them.

My friend will be making our cake as a present. She is starting her own buisness and her cakes are amazing. This will be free. A money saving tip if you aren't lucky enough to know someone who can do this, is to get a plain wedding cake from M and S or similar, and decorate with fresh flowers.

Most of our money is going on catering- we are hiring caterers to serve a sit down meal. We have cut down on costs here by serving triangular sarnies as canapes (goes with our theme)... we will not be serving a starter as the sarnies are filling. The wedding cake will be served as dessert (we are having chocolate) with cream or icecream.

We wanted to provide our own booze so this is where a big chunk of money is going (plus glass hire) but many village halls have licensed bars so you wouldn't have to (or be expected) to do this.

Im in edgware. north west london.

i dont really have a budget exactly in mind at the moment but no more than around 2500 for whole thing.

i would love to get married in the church but the churches around my area are horrible and you have to get married in your area if its a church service dont you?

what exactly is a village hall?

im looking into a cricket club at the minuete im meeting with the manager next week.

If you have a connection with a church in another area you can get married there - so if you were christened there, your parents live there or grandparents you can use the church. I think you can also approach churches in other areas, depending on the vicar you might be able to get married there.

Village halls are buildings in local communities which are used for a variety of purposes, they're all shapes and sizes. The hall we're having is in a village and is all wood beams, etc and really lovely from the outside. Also very cheap to hire - £400 for two days hire with all the extras included.

Ok thanks for that my mum lives in bedford so maybe i could try one up there.

We had a massive church wedding then in a beautiful hotel, and we did it cheap, but you wouldnt have guessed.

Having a later wedding means you can skip a 3 course wedding breakfast and just go for a big posh buffet. We got wed at 4pm, photos, drinks, food, cake, speeches then party.

Also we did a friday wedding. Alot of things are discounted on a friday or weekday.

A photographer friend did our photos but may be worth asking at local colleges for students who may want to do it for free or cheap for experience.

I did my own hair and makeup but MAC do makeovers for £25, and you get £25 worth of products back. My friends did this and looked stunning.

Same here, however not quite sure how cheap we will get it down to as we will be catering for 150 guests all day and night.

We are not having a church wedding (yet to find somewhere licensed that holds 150! - might have to cut down just for the ceremony!). Our local civic hall - which is lovely inside, is a contender for the reception\party and so is a marquee at local drinking establishment! No wedding breakfast - hog roast buffet and then bacon butties or something later in the evening. A big emphasis on entertaining kids for us too as there will be quite alot of them! We will be using a catering company, but using friends\family help as much as we can.

Will be keeping my eye on this thread as it was going to be my next thing to post about?

It depends how cheap

ceremony-£184

dress and eccessories £60

BM and PB outfits £40

rings £80

flowers £8

pressys for BM and PB £16

Nails £15

total £403

Im not bothered about make up as im a make up artist and one of my bridesmaids is a hairdresser. my uncle is doing photos, and im going to have a try at making cupcakes for our cake and cookies as place names/favours to keep costs down.

the main thing is the venues.

maybe ill go for the registry office as its only£150 on a sataday.

shelly74shelly did you no find that as you did your wedding on the friday that people wouldnt turn up due to work etc...??

Shelllaiken how on earth did you get things that cheap. thats amazing

Gretna green wedding with myself OH and my 2 kids thats it ?

Ohhhh ok i bet that was amazing.

i would love it to be just us and kids but we both have familys that if they wernt there would not be happy.

plus OH has a bit of a big family (which doesnt help lol)

I hope its fab....its next month

RE: churches, we're getting married in the church of a parish where we lived for 16 years (we no longer live there and neither do my parents). I'm allowed to get married there because i have been resident in the parish at some point in my life for more than 6 months. You need to qualify on at least one of seven points. have a look at this website www.yourchurchwedding.org to get an idea of the cost of the wedding and where you can get married. you might actually find a registry office cheaper though. We're setting aside about £500 for our church service because the fees are going to go up next year apparently.

@ DWC - our fees for our CofE wedding this year were £550 and i've also saw another church wedding OM commenting that they could run into over £1,000 so a church might not be an option if your looking to keep costs down.

It sounds like your doing well with supplies etc. My only other advise would be - cupcakes can be bought relatively cheaply, by the time you've looked into buying ingredients for the actual cakes plus a mock up and a few trial runs etc it may actually work out cheaper to buy them, so do consider that too.

I'm thinking something like this for example - £2 for 8? And they look awesome! (I had to resist them at the weekend).

http://www.tesco.com/groceries/Product/Details/?id=267218599

http://www.tesco.com/groceries/Product/Details/?id=267221237

http://www.tesco.com/groceries/Product/Details/?id=267219742

We're getting married in Rye, East Sussex at the Town Hall (£250) with dinner only at a pub The Ship Inn which is £25 per head for 3 courses (we wouldn't have had to pay the £250 room charge if we had it midweek but because of some family availability we are paying for the Friday), we're only having 20 people so the cost is a minimum and we don't have to deal with a bunch of people we haven't even spoken to in a good 4 years. We chose not to have a disco or evening reception to keep the costs down - we are opting for a solo dance on the dock front in the evening provided it's nice with an mp3 docking station - lol! I got my dress from a wholesale website for £80 (please don't hate me) because I found that the dress was the biggest cost of all if I'd have gone independent. I'm only having 1 bridesmaid, so only have to buy 1 dress, 1 bouquet, 1 gift etc her dress was £20 and shoes were £15. We are not buying suits for the FOB or BM they can wear their own suits they already own, as we aren't having a very formal wedding. I customised my own shoes costing about £20 in total, my H2B dad is making the rings as a gift, and his aunt is making the cake.

this is what rye town hall looks like:

Can you get married in a registry office that is not in your area?

Yes you can, but you have to liaise with the Registrar office of that borough.

@little madam, it depends on your church! the costs we were given by our Vicar were the basic fee costs. Its the basic £321 plus the cost of the organist. We're expecting it to go UP to as much as £500, thats what we were told by the Father. I know some churches charge extra fees specifically for the church or 'request a donation', ours doesn't.

That is a brilliant idea - may have to get some red velvet ones as an alternative to my "HORRIBLE DISGUSTING FRUIT CAKE" that we are lumped with because silly H2B has coeliacs disease and it's being made for us by someone in his family!

Ok sounding silly here what does that mean?

@ lilmadam have a look at these i just found. i dont know what area you are

www.yummyinyourtummycakes.co.uk

When you pick a venue and speak to them they will give you contact details to the registrar for that area.

for example: I live in Ashford, Kent. I called Rye Town Hall and provisionally booked the venue, they gave me the contact details for Hastings Registry Office because they're the ones who dish out the registrar to Rye. I had to then see if someone was available for the date and hey presto.

We did our notices of marriage in Ashford, which we then had to forward onto the registrar for rye.

Sorry if I've made this sound really complicated. In simple terms - When you pick a venue, they will direct you on what to do next.

Easy ways to save money:

Midweek wedding, resgistry office is often the cheapest option, Vistaprint or DIY for stationery, 2nd hand dresses or high street bridesmaid outfits (or don't have BMs), Groom in his best suit or hire one, late wedding and no WB and fewer guests, get a cab instead of a 'wedding car', silk flowers or DIY hand tied posies. And ebay is your friend.

But most of all if you book something don't tell them it's for a wedding or they'll double the price! Makeover - £30, wedding makeup - £65 +20 for a trial.

No as it was at 4pm so a couple couldnt leave work early and just came afterwards, and most were able to book the day or afternoon off. You will find those who want to be there will make it. And its saturday the day after so everyone could drink! xx

Bump

We're doing it fairly cheap (and we could have done it cheaper but we decided to splash out on food).

We're getting married in church and the reception venue (town hall) is £230. Have to pay some corkage and £2.50/person for use of the kitchen as well, so really quite cheap. Could have had a civil ceremony there, but decided on a church wedding as OH's family is very religious, he is fairly religious and I am at least CofE by education and tradition, and really enjoy going to services at that church. Town and village halls can look really good, and you often have more flexibility in services/ corkage which helps for budgeting.

We are doing ours really cheap too with fifty day guests and around 100 evening guests

We are getting married at 4pm in a registry office, using my sisters brand new BMW as a wedding car, then have a hotel suite complete with bar for £200. We are then serving canapes and bucks fizz to our day guests whilst we do speeches etc which is working out at £5 per head, then evening disco (£150) with buffet food for £10 a head. Cake from Marks & Spencers. Got lots of decorations eg bubbles, glitter, table stuff from the pound shop too :-) Hotel is even giving us complimentry bedroom for the night on the house :-) We have friend who is a professional photographer he is going to do them for £200 and then give us the photos on a disc. Whole thing with suits etc included around £2k

Hi im not too far from edgware, there is a nice church St Lawrence I think it is with the arch and grave yard and its on the main road just on the way to canons park. Unfortunately as it is close to London none of the venues we looked at were cheap in the area although not sure if you know the golf club on the way to Watford (its in bushey) they have a room to hire and as I remember it was about £5k for the highest package when we looked. Might be an option for you?

Our budget is between £2000-£2500.

Venue Package includes DJ, sandwich and drinks buffet after ceremony for 30 guests, evening buffet for 100 guests, hotel room for us for the night, toast master, the staff set up everything for us, just have to get it there the day before. - £1149

Bridesmaid dresses and the boys cravats and waistcoats - OH nan is making them for us. Materials is only going to cost around £30

Cake - My mum is getting it made for us as a gift

Rings - Mine £55, OH's £75. Both engraved inside with each others names and the date of the wedding.

Flowers, invites, favours - making them all myself. Invites have cost around £10 but look fab. Favours are costing around £15 for 100! Again, really happy with them. Flowers not sure yet.

Table decorations - £30

As long as you are willing to put the work in, it is possible to have a beautiful wedding without spending a fortune! x