Finances….a strange one

Perhaps they’re asking because they want to make sure their £5k is enough to support you, rather than to compete? When we got engaged my father in law offered £1k, asked if my mum would be able to contribute, and when I said she wasn’t in a position to, my MIL added another £1k and offered to buy our cake for us. It could even be that they know your parents are well-off and are worried their (very generous!) contribution looks stingy!

We managed to do our dream wedding with a final spend of £12k. As Hayley mentioned above, guest list is the biggest factor when it comes to cost. We chose to have a smaller guest list of 70 and make sure everyone had a wonderful time, rather than inviting more and spreading everything more thinly.

Some of our big savers:

- I did my own flowers for me, the bridesmaids, and buttonholes. I had so many compliments on them on the day and one friend even asked me to recommend my florist for her own wedding. It was a lot of work and trial runs, but so worth it, as I only spent £150 on flowers, plus maybe £50 on trial bunches and equipment.

- Made the choice that we would pay for bridesmaid hair, but they would do their own makeup.

- I made the place settings - hobbycraft place cards, gold pen, stick on flowers. Can’t have cost more than a tenner.

- We didn’t print individual menus. We got acrylic photo frames, put the name of table on one side and the menu on the other. We only printed individual menus for our vegan guests.

- No erroneous spending on unnecessary entertainment like photo booths, magicians etc. Instead we gathered games (trivia cards, articulate, uno, decks of cards etc) and set up a games table, which we got so much positive feedback about.

- Instead of a full evening buffet, the venue did bacon sandwiches, which were incredible!

- No evening guests, so this cut out the feeling of having to invite more people than we wanted, because if we didn’t like them enough to be there for the whole day, they weren’t coming (bye obligatory invitations to work colleagues!)

Although that makes everything sound really DIY, because we focused on everything coming together in colour scheme, font etc, it was still a really classy style, and it all worked perfectly!

Congratulations on your engagement! It's great that you're being realistic and setting a budget for your wedding. It's also understandable that you may feel uncomfortable asking your parents for money.

One approach could be to have a conversation with your parents and let them know about your plans for the wedding and your budget. Let them know that while you appreciate their support, you don't want to put any financial burden on them. If they offer to contribute, then you can accept it graciously, but if not, then you can continue with your plans based on your own budget.

As for wedding money saving tips, consider having the wedding on a less popular day (like a Friday or Sunday) or during an off-season to save on venue costs. You can also consider having a smaller guest list, which can save on food and beverage costs. Another option is to DIY some of the decorations or centerpieces to save on decor expenses. Finally , consider hiring a newer photographer or stylist who may charge less but still have great work.

Heya,

I think the traditional route is the brides family pay for the wedding? Certainly in some other cultures that's true but over here too I've heard. I was chatting with my fiance about this as we were wondering whether to ask my parents or not for any help as obviously that would massively change how many we can invite, what we spend on or not, etc. Clearly, this doesn't happen in many cases now, but IMHO it should not not be asked, I don't think its rude to ask, so long as you feel Ok doing it.

My fiance has 2 female cousins, to be fair that family does have a lot of money, and their dad paid for both their weddings, in full, must've been a good £20k each. (they both married before I met him so about 10 years + ago too)

If you feel OK doing it of course. My fiance is quite a bit older than me and sadly his mum died a couple of years ago and his dad died ages ago, so my parents were the only set of parents that we could ask. I'm an only child too, so guess that helps as if you were one of say 5 other children or daughters they might be thinking, oh dear do we have to do this 5 x?!!

I approached it very gently, and said, if there is anything you could help us with we would really appreciate it, and left them with the (quite expensive!) venue wedding price list. Bless them it did take them a week or so to get back to us, and I didn't push it AT ALL (and obviously it would depend on each situation of each parent/s.) my parents are amazing, and don't have loads of money, but are very sweet, and very mellow people, not big partiers at all - and they ended up coming back with that they would pay for the daytime costs and we would pay for the evening party as its more of our friends. So maybe something like that would work? xx