Can it all be done on 10k?

Hi

Welcome to Hitched :-) and congratulations on your engagement!

Absolutely it can be done - there is no right or wrong amount of money to spend on a wedding, its just what is affordable and what you as a couple are comfortable with spending. There will be loads on people on here that have planned a wedding for less than £10k and equally lots of people who spent a lot more.

My advice would be to shop around - lots of venues and suppliers offer cheaper rates for weekday or 'low season' weddings - you mention June so you may not benefit from the latter but could you consider getting married during the week? Try and book in suppliers early to maybe guarantee their 2017 price even though its a 2018 wedding. Consider your invite list as that obviously has a bearing on cost. Depending where you are located in the country (and where you're planning on getting married) does seem to have a bearing on prices. Get yourself off to some wedding fairs to pick up ideas and suppliers - a lot of starting up suppliers showcase their wares there. Use a spreadsheet to keep a track of your costs - lol. and use the lovely people on this forum as there is a lot of experience and expertise for you to draw upon :-)

Good luck - keep us informed x

Hi. Sorry to hear about the circumstances pushing you to bring everything forwards. We're getting married in May this year, and have managed to do everything on around £5000. This is excluding a DJ and professional photographer. We have had to downsize due to costs so we are no longer having a dance floor and disco, and we had to change the date, losing our professional photographer (we're now having a friend of the family take some pictures instead). With a DJ and photographer though, we would still have been within £6000. This is also excluding transport, as we have lots of contacts where we can pull in favours for transport options (tractor/camper van/military vehicle etc).

It is absolutely doable, although costs do depend somewhat on what region you live in and what day of the week you choose etc. Depending on these things, you may need to shop around a little to find some good deals, and may need to compromise on certain aspects to be able to splash out more on your priority bits. Definitely make use of the talents of friends and family too!

For the money we're spending, we have hired a beautiful garden of a grade II listed cottage. They're attaching a covered seating area for 40 people to the "coach bar", where we will have a fancy afternoon tea after the photos on arrival. We're then having giant garden games, and are able to make use of all the venues decorations (bird cages/picture frames hanging from trees etc). The owner will play music from behind the bar, and she has also had a cocktail bar built recently too. For the evening we will have an extra 20 guests and we plan to order takeaway pizza to keep costs down lol!

I got my dress from preloved and it cost me £80, having been worn once for around 20 mins for a photo shoot. I need some alterations but hopefully this shouldn't cost much. We're going to look at suits at the weekend, but this shouldn't cost too much based on what others have told us. My bridesmaid and fiancé's best man are buying their own outfits (they offered as they know our budget is tight after the stuff we've been through the last few years ). For rings, I would say go and try some on and then shop around online once you've decided on the style you like. Stationary can be done cheaply online too - check out amazon for invites etc. They have some beautiful ones at really great prices that can also be personalised professionally, included in the cost.

Hair and makeup - maybe see if any local colleges have any final year students on beauty courses who would do it at a bargain price for experience/their portfolio? Cake - we posted on local Facebook pages to get recommendations - found someone who makes cakes from her home, which reduces the costs, but look just as fantastic as ones from the fancy looking shops. For flowers you can do the same, or look online for dried bouquets or fabric ones from preloved or eBay etc. I'm getting gorgeous dried wildflower ones from Not on the High Street.

Sorry for the essay, just wanted to give you a good idea of how it can be done lol ? xx

Congratulations!

We did it for £8k. Ways we kept the cost down -

- Having the wedding later in the day (3pm) so we didn't have to do 2 sets of food

- Having a buffet rather than a sit down dinner

- Buying good quality prosecco at Lidl and paying the corkage at the venue (still cheaper than their prosecco)

- Buying the wedding dress at a sample sale (£450)

- Not having things like ribbons on the back of chairs - the chairs at the venue were nice enough

- Getting a friend who is a very good photographer to do the photos.

- Designing and printing the invitations through Vistaprint

x

Congratulations and welcome to hitched.

I agree it can be done. Consider later in the day as said so guests have time to eat lunch before the wedding so you're not paying for two expensive meals. Watch your guest list numbers. Yes there are always some people who will complain but youre on a budget. I bought my dress from a sample sale. You can do it for around 500 including alterations. Don't go mad with bridesmaids remember every bridesmaid needs a dress and flowers, their hair done. Unless they want to buy their own. Table decorations can be simple or even use hurricane lamps with battery candles on aisle, swop them over to table centrepieces and add tags to say whose they are and give them as gifts! Our rings were from warren James. I figured we could always upgrade those later if we wanted to. If a DJ isn't n your budget get some music together as a playlist. I didn't scrimp on a photographer. After all that's all that's left when it's over. Remember your fancy arrival car is only seen by you and on probably one photo! Definately consider midweek. It's easy to want to throw everything at your wedding but simple can be just as pretty. Oh yes and invitations only end up in the bin. Even if you don't have the space or budget to invite all the friends you would like to you could always have a BBQ for them at home at the weekend and wear your dress again. Maybe think outside the box venue wise. SOME lovely little places tucked away.

Have a think what your dream wedding would be like then get ideas to simplify the costs as much as possible I think.

Everyone on here will have lots of ideas for you.

Definitely! We're having everything on your list AND a few other things, and while we still have three months to go it's looking like we'll be pretty much bang on our budget of £10,000. And we haven't even got friends and family doing anything for free! Like others have said, the key is to decide what the most important bits are to you, and compromise on everything else. We decided that putting on a good meal for our guests and having a top photographer to capture the day was more important than flowers and clothes, so that's how we budgeted. The more guests you have, the pricier everything gets of course, but you could have an amazing BBQ or buffet for 100+ people and still keep to your budget. Keep spreadsheets and take the time to do lots of research. Good luck, and congratulations!!! x

Hiya,

You could always get married in a registry office for £300 and scale up from there.

The advice you already have above is sound and to add to it I really feel sometimes importance is put on the wrong things. We had a great photographer for our wedding, we spent 2k, but all I personally wanted was a photo of my wife, the dog and me, a few nice photos of us and some pictures of myself with my mum.

That was it.

The budget for our wedding rolled in at 24k like you mentioned and after having to turn down 4 bookings for that weekend it ended up costing me personally 30k as I paid for our wedding pretty much myself.

I'm finding a rise in the number of couples having a church wedding, a small reception and no evening do. Some don't even have a photographer or get a friend to do it because of a lack of funds.

What you want your wedding to be will dictate your budget. It's not as if you HAVE to spend 24k. Love doesn't increase or decrease with how much you spend on your wedding, the dress you wear, the pictures you have, the food the venue and so on.

What is important is your mum is ill, you love her and you want her to be there. If I was in such a position I'd be looking to getting married this year.

I've shot big 50k weddings London and there is no more or less emotion or togetherness than the budget ones. Love is boundless as is the intent and compassion it carries with it. We all set our own standards

Marks and Spencers do cakes covered in icing in a wedding style, if you go to a local cake making equipment store you can usually buy the pillars and ready made decorations there to put on your cake yourself, they can look lovely and they cost a fraction of the price of a fancy cake.

Great post Chris!

I absolutely think you can do it for 10k, we are getting married next year too but have chosen the autumn. We have managed to work everything on your list and a lot more into our budget. I have decided that I want to do as much of it as possible. However we have 5 bridesmaids, 2 best men and an usher. We have managed to include a pianist, all the table decorations, chair upgrades as I didn't like the stand ones. It all depends what is important to you, I'm having everything I want but I refuse to pay full price for anything so I have managed to wangle a few deals, also I booked really early to get a great price. X

It can definitely be done as long as you don't need a massive venue because you want to invite loads of people. You'll struggle if you want 200 or so guests!!

I'm mid-planning, here are a few random tips:

You'll pay a bit of a premium in June, so go for a Friday or Sunday wedding if you can

I've used Bark to research some suppliers - cake, florist, photographer etc, and got some great low quotes. Feel free to haggle with them all, as long as you're being fair about it.

Think really carefully about what's important to the two of you, and just don't bother with anything you don't care about. All of the traditional wedding stuff - if it won't make your day more enjoyable, just leave it out

If you'd prefer contributions to certain things, e.g. flowers or cake, consider asking family and friends to help out instead of giving you a wedding present. If it's something they're really interested in they probably won't mind. E.g. get your beauty-mad bridesmaid to sort your make up.

Check out all the nice high street stores that do wedding dresses - Monsoon, Whistles, Debenhams. Soon Topshop and Ted Baker are too

Save a bit of cash by skipping save the date cards - just send the invites early. Try VistaPrint.

Not sure what your food plans are, but consider having a buffet, or skipping a third course dessert if you've got cake

If you can't afford rings right now you could always do them later?