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Congratulations! Is am exciting time for you! My advice would be to make sure your budget is realistic. Make a spreadsheet with all the elements such as venue, catering, florist, cake, dresses etc and set a budget for each, but do some research on the costs as some stuff will be a lot more than you may have anticipated. Once you have the total work out if you can save enough in the time needed, you will need to pay deposits now and in full around 3-6 months before the day for the big stuff. It is so easy to fall in love with a venue but don't overstretch yourself. From experience I would say don't rush in to it, take time to research what you want and cost up but also consider logistics for you and your guests such as travel time, hotels etc. Enjoy the planning!

There’s some really good websites out there to do online invites. Another option if you want something physical is maybe creating something generic on Canva (we did something similar for our save the dates and printed via free prints Matt finished so it didn’t have that photo shine). But you could leave a space to write their names and a individual link and code for the website in which you could then obtain their rspv and food choices this way. Nice envelopes on envelope world (bulk and cheap) I got some lovely champagne sparkly ones. Finished off with some frosty as personalised stickers to seal the back with our names and date in good. We had so many compliments about them and they were only our save the dates! X

We're keeping numbers low and not doing favours to save money. Might not do a wedding cake either for same reason. Having ceremony and reception at the same venue is cutting down on transport costs! I'm also keeping an eye out on when bridal shops do sales/outlet stores to try and find a cheaper dress.
If you have any friends who are florists/MUA's/photographers etc you could call in a favour with them to see would they be one of your vendors 😊

We made our own wedding invites on Word. We used a template from the internet and then did it ourselves. We sent them to a printers to get it printed professionally. We had a invite card, food card, rsvp card and details card, printed 60 of these and packaged them up ourselves. Overall we spent £100 on our invites including postage. Which saved a few pounds as some websites were charging £2-£2.50 per invite.

Congratulations on your engagement! My first word of advice is everything will probably be more expensive than you anticipate but you’ve got plenty of time to research and save.

For me the biggest expense has been the venue and catering followed by;
1) The florist and venue styling - this has been my second biggest expense after the venue but that’s because I’m having it all done professionally. If you’re happy to DIY the decorations this could save you £1000s2) The Dress + Alterations - look for the ex-display and sale dresses, search online and consider pre-loved. Also look for independent seamstress as they tend to be cheaper than the bridal shop.3) Photographer - the cheapest packages I’ve seen start at £600 and go up to £3000 so consider how important professional photos are and how much coverage you want.4) The size of the wedding party - obviously the more groomsmen and bridesmaids you have the more you’re going to have to spend on their outfits, hair, make up ect

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Thank you for the advice we have looked into the suppliers which the venue gave us some are cheaper then other but some are so much more expensive defo worth shopping around.

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Thats a really good idea will defo be looking at doing this thank you xx

Definitely look at Zazzle for cheap invites - they nearly always seem to have a sale on, so don't buy anything full price from them! We're also saving by not having RSVP cards (will just provide email, phone numbers etc).

I have just started giving out our save the dates and got many comments. I did them using Canva to get the template, fill in etc. then printed on Vistprint, got a black friday deal but pretty resonable. I then got cheap vellum paper, stamp with wax etc to seal, all in all 30 save the dates came to about 90p each and everyone so far has commented on them. Had vistaprint not had a deal on, i'd have just printed on FreePrints using the Matt finish