can i plan a wedding in 6 months on a £5000 budget??

Welcome! Our first xmas engagee!

I would say yes you can plan a wedding on that budget and in that time, but you will have to be prepared to make sacrifices and compromise.

No idea if you want a church or civil ceremony, but not getting married on a Saturday will help in both cases!

Basically work out how many people you want to be there first. That rough number will give you more of an idea for venues. No point in booking something that holds 100 people if you only need 20 places and vice-versa!

And most importantly CONGRATULATIONS!!!!

Ali xxx

Firstly congratulations and welcome to hitched!

The short answer is yes, you can. A lot of the calendars in mags and online show 12 months but lots of people plan in much longer or shorter. Probably the first thing to think about is what sort of day you want and start looking into venues. You might want to think about how many people you will plan to invite too so that you have an idea on budget too.

You are in the right place for advice and help though!

Hello & Congratulations !

Yes, 6 months is fine. If you want a wedding dress from a shop then you will need to order soon, they can take about 16 weeks to come in...and the same for bridesmaids. If you prefer, you can get things ready-made from places like debenhams, bhs etc, in which case you can normally walk in and buy instantly.

If you want a photographer then you should book that sooner rather than later and the same for a florist (get them to at least pencil your date in when you have one).

Good luck & enjoy your planning

x

I've done a very rough list of people we'd want there and it's prob around 50 for the ceremony. My fiance (ooh thats the first time i've called him that!!) doesnt mind where we get married and although im not particularly religious, i think i'd like to do it in a church. My mum is a regular church goer and i used to go when i was younger so i've kind of got in the back of my mind it would be nice to get married in the church i used to attend as a kid (though i dont even know if we could get married there as we dont live within that parish, though it is the same church my mum still attends)

The tip i've heard that will probably save us the most money is to have the ceremony late in the day then go straight to the "party" bit, without having a formal sit-down meal. I think this is a good idea - in some ways i think we would prefer this more relaxed reception, but i just cant picture how it would go - i mean where would the speeches etc.. fit in if there's not a "proper" reception?? However i do like the idea that doing it that way would mean we could have everyone there for the whole thing rather than only being able to have fewer people for ceremony and meal (due to budget) and others coming later for the party. Has anyone ever been to a wedding like this?

I feel like i should be more certain about what exactly i want and how we should do things but i really dont have any set ideas or anything! Maybe it just hasnt sunk in yet - trouble is i know with such a short time scale i need to get a move on. I just want it to be perfect but am feeling the stress already cos i dont know what i should be doing!!

Thanks for the replies already sent - any tips or advice most greatfully appreciated x

Congratulations and welcome to hitched. If your mum still worships at the church then you will have no problem getting married there.

Congratulations! I recall that xmas day engagement feeling... *sigh* t'were lovely.

welcome to hitch. You made the right choice

Congratulations

One of my BF's arranged ger wedding and got married in 3 months, not really sure what her budget was but it was basic as she was the only one working at the time.

Get yourself a pen and paper and write down everything you need to organise and how much you want to spend on each thing, take it slow and don't forget to send your invites 6 wks before the big day ?

I have done most of my planning and "shopping" on the net, it's a great place to start

HTH

My wedding for 60 guests cost us £4.5k in the end so you should be able to make your budget stretch, although it seems to depend where in the country you are as to how much things cost! Things that are likely to be booked already are venues, photographers etc so call round a few and see when they are free. I did my own flowers and friends did makeup and hair which saved quite a lot of money. photographer is a friend who is just starting out so that was much cheaper than a 'normal' photographer would have been. My dress was from BHS for £140 which saved quite a lot of money and was much quicker ( to my knowledge a lot of bridal shops require around 5 months to make up a dress). Cake was from M and S and we had an afternoon wedding followed by a hot buffet and straight into the evening do which, as well as being much easier to organise, saved us money as we were only feeding people once! I think our biggest expense after the food (which was almost half the budget) was Hs kilt!!

I reckon its definately do-able as long as you're willing to be flexible, and you'll have all us lot to help you too!!

Hi,

Congratulations!!! I am also new here and my boyfriend proposed on Christmas Day. I glad there is someone else here who is doing a short notice wedding on same Budget as us. I am hoping for an August wedding as my brother is marrying next year and I dont want to wait until 2011. im impatient! LOL. Biggest problem I think we are going to have is the venue.

I have already cut the cost of my bridesmaid dress by £350. I found a user on ebay under bestforyouall based in Berkshire who do a few things. Havent used them before but the moneysaving expert forum has some amazing reviews from people who have used them if that helps at all?

Congratulations!

6 months is plenty of time as long as you are not set on a particular venue or date. Photographers, Florists & Venue are the key things to book first as these tend to be booked years in advance.

I am sure you will get plenty of help from Hitchers, this place is like a Bride 2 be's Bible!

The time scale is ok and budget wise you can do it. just have a list of must haves and nice to haves. Get the church sorted asap and the venue & photographer.

Hi and welcome to Hitched. I'm another bride who rushed the planning so my Dad could be there, although for different reasons to yours. I got engaged 22nd December 2007 and married 2nd August 2008, so it is possible! We had a bigger budget than you, but we could have done it for £5k if we'd needed to.

As you're on a budget:

• look in the January sales in places like Monsoon, Debenhams and Coast for your dress, and bridesmaids if you have them
• limit your bridesmaids - I had three, my cousin had nine, you don't really have to have any!
• save on flowers by having wrist corsages rather than bouquets and by only having buttonholes for the immediate wedding party
• have a later wedding (4pm ish for example) and only have an evening buffet rather than a full wedding breakfast
• do as much as you can yourself (stationery; table centrepieces; hair and make-up; even flowers if you can get to a flower market and are arty/know someone who is arty)
• venues usually give a 20% discount if you book a wedding on a day other than a Saturday
• look for people who are building up a portfolio - we got a videographer for £70 (cost of travel plus expenses) in exchange for using the footage in promotional materials, you'll find photographers who will do this too
• get help from as many people as you can! You could even ask some people (parents, for example, or other close relatives/friends) if they would consider contributing something to the day rather than buying you a gift - my Mum made my brother's wedding cake for him when he got married in 2004

Most importantly, remember that the day is about you and your h2b getting married. That one bit where you exchange your vows is the important part; nothing else really matters that much.

Hi there!

I'm getting married in March and we've decided to not have a sit down meal to save money so I might be able to help you with timings for your day, we're getting married in a hotel though with everything in one venue. Here's our plan:

• 4pm - civil ceremony (around 25-30mins)
• 4.30ish-5.30ish photographs
• 5.30ish all guests go into evening reception room (no seating plan, so will be a bit of a free-for-all!)
• 5.45ish we will be announced in, then we're allowing around 45mins for speeches which will be done at the singers mic on the dancefloor while we sit just off to one side at the edge of the dancefloor (no top table, very informal and saves hassle!)
• 6.30pm Cake cutting (again on the dancelfloor - lots of space for photos!) which will then be wheeled away to be cut up in the kitchen...
• Followed swiftly by our first dance to get it out of the way early!
• 7.30pm evening guests arrive (they've been told on the invites 'Food will be served at 8pm so I'm guessing they'll all arrive around the same time!)
• 8pm - buffet will be served!

I hope this helps you a bit, it's taken some working out but with the help of the venue's wedding co-ordinator I think it'll come off well! If you were to do a similar thing I guess you could just have your ceremony a bit earlier to allow for time to travel to your venue (say 3.00-3.30pm depending on distance of travel and length of ceremony?)

Good luck!

Congratulations on your engagement! What a lovely Christmas present!

As all the others have said, yes, it's definitely do-able on the budget and timescale. The key will be to get yourself super-organised though. Book your key suppliers at the earliest opportunity, then shop around for the finer details. Be prepared to be flexible in your ideas - if you have a very set idea of what you want you may end up being disappointed. Check out the sales, online auction sites etc for bargains, make your own wedding stationery, borrow items from friends - it all helps when working on a tight budget.

But most of all - have fun! Planning a wedding is great! ?

Hi, firstly congratulations. You can get it all organised in that time. I just got married after a 3 month engagement. We got married 23th December.

We were in a similar situation as you, slightly more complicated: we live in Dubai, my hubby is english, I'm Dutch. So we had to sort travel and all that too for ourselves as well as a few of hubbies relatives.

Our budget has come in at 4.5k, but that does not include the sit down dinner my parents paid for. Perhaps an idea: speak to your family if you don't really need house presents if you want and if they are willing to pay for parts of the wedding. My parents paid for the dinner, husbands colleagues paid for photographer, my sister is doing the wedding album, my nan paid for the hand made chocolates (in stead of a cake). It got everyone involved which was lovely.

Good luck, this website with planner and budget really helped me to decide what I wanted on my day!

Hi - i have no other advice to give other than what has been offered already, so just wanted to say hi & welcome ?, and congratulations!

Congratulations & welcome to Hitched.

Like others have said it is possible to plan a wedding in 6 months, me & H2B have done it in 5 months, I think you just have to make sure you dont slack on things, like we have as we have been so stressed.

With regards to budget be really strict, we WERE having a small wedding, we now have 80 adults for day!! Just because we added on people we think we should invite, not who we want to invite - for example a girl from work I use to be close friends with invited me to her wedding 2 years ago, we hardly ever see each other or speak anymore but because I went to hers I felt inclined to invite us to hers, but probably shouldnt of. Also we have had his parents & my parents invite family we not seen in 5 years!

Hope that helps & good luck

Kelly

Congratulations!

I am in exactly the same position- my boyfriend proposed on Christmas Eve and we are also getting wed in June! It's a bit of a scary prospect organising everything in a short time and limited budget so it's nice to find I'm not the only one panicking! So much to do! We have already booked the church and are having the reception/ party at my Mums house. Trying to save as much money as poss but don't want to scrimp! Am going wedding dress searching tomorrow! How exciting (though slightly daunting after all the xmas over-indulgences!) xxxx?

Congratulations newbie fiancees! Get two for one on this post!!

I don't think there is much else to add really - heaps of good tips already given. Whoever said about being strict on budget - thats the hardest thing in the world but if you are on a smaller budget (I don't like the word 'tight'!) then you do have to be very discipined. But you can have a spectacular day for five thousand or less ... Mr SP and I did that very thing....

If there is one place you'll get good advice (and more importantly, HONEST advice) its here. Its been quite quiet over the past couple of months, so we're looking forward to lots of newbies joining in the coming weeks so us old-marrieds/HIBs (Hitchers in Business) can play in the park of brides to be all over again! Its GREAT!

Hi

I'm another newbie - congrats all. I can't offer any advice but share your angst! Planning to get wed in October but all I've organised so far is a new year's resolution to stop eating cheese! Feeling a little overwhelmed and need to start visiting venues asap! Can't face the idea of waiting - we've been together for over 10 years so waiting another 2 years to get married is something I want to avoid.

Looks like a good forum - looking forward to finding out some gems.