Honest question: how did you pay for your wedding?

Congratulations and welcome firstly! Buying a house at the same time must be very daunting financially. I must admit £20,000 sounds like a lot to me (though it does depend on a lot of things including area). For our venue (2nights) and food for up to 100 people it is under £5000, there are many other factors but we r hoping to keep it under £8000. We are also very lucky in that family members have offered us money which we have gracefully accepted 😊 look at your list of things to get/do. Also there r a couple of other threads on here about keeping costs down which r worth a look. Good luck.

View quoted message Ohhh that you. Fills me with a bit more confidence I’ll keep looking

Hello! Congratulations and welcome!
So, my wedding is being heavily supplemented by my mother. I simply don't earn that much after a change in direction with my career and my partner manages a care company which is also horrific wages 😔 so when we got engaged and my mum offered to help, we graciously accepted.

So my mum is paying for the venue and the food and my dress. And we are paying for everything else. I've chosen a modest venue, it's a Double tree Hilton which just so happens to have a listed barn attached to it. It's quite reasonable we have a package for a Saturday for 80 day guests and 120 evening for £9300. Breakfast, evening food, hotel room, canapes, drinks, dance floor and DJ are all included in that. I was actually gunning for a Thursday to keep the costs down... It was about 2k cheaper but my mum insisted on it being a Saturday.
So everything else, that we have to pay for, we have worked out and made enquiries on costs. We have to save £340 a month on top to get the key things covered. I've got a cheap tog and will be asking all my friends and families to take loads of pictures. Cake is being gifted, venue dresser is a necessity for us, as is a specialist lights person to create an ambiance. Then rings, flowers I'm going to get from Lush, BM and GM outfits and gifts. My dad has a graphics company so is covering all the signage and invites. My wedding shoes and makeup and hair I'm going to try and cover out of selling crap out of the house hahaha and yeh, that's it. We want to get married sooner and this is how we are choosing to compromise.
Hope that helps with ideas xxxxx

View quoted message Thanks for the advice! Might need to go on a clear out of the house and do a big car boot!
That’s a really good deal! Sounds perfect.
Have a fab day! x

If you go for a weekday (monday-Thursday) it will be a lot cheaper. Some places offer packages for certain amount of guests and some include hotel rooms.
For the ceremony and wedding breakfast we are having close family and friends (about 80 people). Then the evening having more of our friends join us. Not everyones going to come that you invite. And you could invite more of people to the evening and just have family at the daytime and it works out cheaper as daytime guests tend to cost about £20 whereas daytime are atleast £50/£60

View quoted message Fab thank you! Currently trying to cut the guest list down from 120! We have planned to do the wedding where we currently live, which is in between where our two families live. That should cut down some numbers but then it’s hard to incite people just to the night when they are coming 90 minutes away x

View quoted message Me and my partner have saved for ours. When we booked our venue they were doing a package which we used as a lot was included.


Lots of things i have gone for a cheaper option- DJ for entertainment as bands can be very pricey.
Photographer is very good and one of the cheaper ones around. We did a pre wedding shoot witht him and the photos turned out amazing!
Wedding dress i shopped at Wed2Be as i found these dresses were about £599 (average price) and a vail about £30/£40. Bridesmaids dresses I actually got of Shein so saved some money there.
Some places have discount codes and as soon as you say wedding theh up the price. Sometimes going for a more local new business its likely to be cheaper as they havent had much business yet and decided on prices. When businesses first open up they always price things cheaper to get customers in but when open for longer they will up the price

View quoted message Oh thank you very much! I’ll give it a try. Went to our first fayre today and I think I found a good photographer that was £1000 less than the one I was looking at before so fingers crossed!

View quoted message Photographers are also willing to travel. The photographer i have costs £650-£725 which was much cheaper than others as some where charging atleast £1500.


If you were to get married at a venue where you have the wedding breakfast and wedding reception and maybe hotel rooms for people to stay it sometimes works out cheaper and you wont have to pay for travel to places.
Dont forger Legal fees. They can be costly! I didn’t realise how expensive they would be.

View quoted message Oh that’s a great price! I’ve seen some that are £3000 and only give 100 photos

View quoted message Yeah its best to look around!


Even doing some things yourself such as music for the ceremony just use spotify (thats what im doing)
Some weddings i have been too they have brought a 2 tiered cake for the cutting of the cake then had traybakes out the back for the guests as much cheaper and they then took the nice cake home to share with family the next day.

View quoted message Excellent idea!

View quoted message Where i work we do weddings so have had many ideas from different ones to use at mine.


Also doing some things yourself like signs and table numbers. Which i have done myself. Cost me £30/£35 for 10 table numbers

Definitely keep looking!
We set ourselves a budget of 10K (which is more than we really wanted to spend) and it’s been very doable!
I’ve done a whole lot of DIY, we’re not doing certain things like favors, corsages, matching suits… I’m only have 1 maid of honour and our guest list is small & tight! We’re so excited for our small intimate wedding & even more so knowing it’s not going to break the bank!

We’re also getting married on a Monday in April… surprisingly so much cheaper!

View quoted message I’m sure you’ve actually saved yourself a lot of stress doing it that way! How exciting!!

Enter competitions if you can find them - some of them are really worth it!

Honestly, we are not paying for our reception, my dad is. It’s costing about £10,000. We are paying for everything else - we have managed to stagger payments so we aren’t paying everyone all at once, plus we are one of those couples that has been fortunate enough to save money during the lockdowns, etc. But we have been very selective with our guest list, we aren’t doing additional evening guests and there are things we aren’t having or are doing ourselves.

View quoted message Thanks for the tips 💙

We paid for it ourselves - under £3,000 - out of savings. It doesn't have to cost £20,000 unless you want it to.

View quoted message Hi, what food did you go for that kept costs this low please?

View quoted message Our venue included a menu for quote purposes that was around £1000 but we're possibly going to change that to a hog roast for roughly £1200, haven't sorted it yet though 🙈

We are paying ourselves, set budget at £15k, and are saving £1500 a month to cover it and a buffer as there are always little costs you forget. You can cut out expensive things like flowers, cars, favours. I would say the best advice is to research each area like venue, caterer, Photographer, dress/suits and set realistic budgets for each area, and then only look at suppliers and venues in the budget . Specific wedding venues like barns will always be more as they have to make as much revenue in a short period to cover themselves. Look at venues with all in packages, especially hotels as they are cheaper as the event space is not their only revenue stream so often there is a low or no hire charge. Also ask if they do per person costings, so they will give you the cost for each element of the meal, drinks etc, we have opted for this and built our own package as we have a lot of under 18s and non drinkers, so worked out £1800 cheaper. A lot of suppliers will require upfront deposits and you cant pay on credit card so you need to have a pot to start with before booking, we have spent around 28% of our budget in the first few weeks just on the deposits to secure our venue and suppliers. At the end of the day only you can decide what parts are important, and If you really want something then be realistic and set your date out further to allow time to save for it. good Luck x

View quoted message Oh those are some great tops. Thank you!

Both myself and partner are on the lower scale of wages, with rent, car etc it doesn't leave much for saving for the wedding! We are getting married on a Sunday which is cheaper - I know Monday-Thurs is a lot cheaper (venue specific) but we have children involved in our wedding so Sunday was perfect for us. Are are also being very strict on the cermony/wedding breakfast. I'm trying to stick to a rule of 'if i wouldn't pay for you meal on any other day, i won't be for the wedding'. In the evening we have also opted for a Hog Roast rather than a buffect as its cheaper and we can be a lot more flexible with the amount of guests.

We have 10 children at our wedding at they all have a 'Kids Menu'. If an other guests wish to bring their children (who we don't know/invited) we will ask them to pay.

My partners family have offered to give us some money towards the day which are very grateful for.

I have also asked my Bridesmaids to pay for their own hair/makeup and they have very gratefully accepted that. For me, I don't care what they look like.

I don't think i will be send Save the dates either. I have also looked at doing invitations through email - for less tech savvy guests, i will do invitations for!

We have also booked this for Sept 2023 so have plenty of time to save (Hopefully)

Congratulations! We're basically using savings, sharesaves. Blood. Organs. Prayers if you're into that. Haha. I do a sharesave thing with work which conveniently pays out near the date we're working toward so that should cover the vast majority providing the shares don't nose dive.. My H2B is also mining bitcoin so hoping to have some pennies saved up from that by the time the day comes round.


Parents on both sides aren't financially able to help, although my mum is convinced she'll be able to afford my dress.. but we shall see there.
I think whenever you set your budget, look at your finances and see what, If anything, you can put away. Is there stuff that you could sell on ebay, vinted or the other ones. All the pennies add up at the end of the day. Good luck! ♥️

We're getting married mid-week and off season, venue is £2500 vs £8000 for a summer Saturday. We're also lucky that both sets of parents have been very generous, everything else is coming from my savings. But we're not in a position to buy a house just yet (we both own flats but I can't currently sell mine due to cladding issues, but that's a different story!) so don't have that additional drain on the savings.

Top tip - finding a venue where you can use your own caterer will save you money. Also bridesmaids dresses take nearly as long to get as a wedding dress does, I didn't have time and have ended up paying much more than I wanted. We had to be brutal with our guest list for the full day but have "upgraded" guests as we received rsvp's so we could stay on budget.

I'm making our cake and favours (long term plan is to make wedding cakes for a living), we're DIYing pretty much all the decorations, I bought my shoes for £20 and painted them. Shopping around will help with costs but I would advise you to think of what your must haves are for the day as there are many fancy things to spend money on that you don't really need. We've been pretty frugal on a lot of stuff but it will still cost us around £20,000, could we have done it for less? Yes, absolutely, but I didn't want to compromise on the venue and with the food that's pretty much half the budget!

View quoted message We’ve come in at under 3k too and have a mini honeymoon to Cyprus in that! We’re having a small ceremony and then a party a few days after. It all depends what you want. We didn’t want a massive fuss and definitely didn’t want people watching.

View quoted message Oh that’s good thank you. Yes venue and food is currently 75% of my budgets. Similar to you I want it to be special so yes we could probably do it cheaper venue but I think I know what I’ve had in my mind x

View quoted message Thank you! Best of luck with yours z

Hi - Congrats and this is a great question which I am going to keep following the answers to. We got engaged in May and want to get married in July next year. We have opted for the registrar to attend a local Victorian chapel in Eastbourne which is licensed for weddings and that alone is costing us just over £2k for the ceremony. However, to keep things down we have decided to have our wedding evening at our favourite village pub and they are letting us have the garden for private use with the outside bar and they are laying on bbq and later burger sliders and chips as a late night snack. Im not having bridesmaids etc - we are keeping it clean and simple in that regard. There are some amazing dresses on sites like ASOS, AX Paris, Monsoon which are well under £300 and we will be doing the music ourselves - employing a reliable friend - to press play on the iphone using a paylist created on spotify. So far, all in the cost is coming in at £7.5k for 80 guests with a 3 course lunch, a 2 course supper, welcome drink and toast drink for all, a london bus to transport all guests from chapel to reception, photographer (friend who is clever at that stuff), and using our own car for taking me to the chapel - which my daughter will chauffeur. I wanted to keep it under £6 but its been hard. Our food and drink budget is £35 per person and our amazing local landlord has come up total trumps for that. ASk about, your friends and fmaily will be extremely resourceful - you can manage it much cheaper and it can and will still be amazing!

Congrats on the wedding!
We looked at venues but had a strict budget. The venue I think is hard to cut cost corners with, (unless you want casual then do a registry office and go somewhere for a nice sit down meal and hire it out rather than a 'wedding' venue - the word wedding always doubles the price) but we found a local florist who is starting out and her prices are cheaper. As i did a photography degree I know quite a few student photographers - They really are just as good! but they don't tend to have as high of a cost - but still worth paying for!!
Buy a high-street wedding dress or second hand.. I've had dress regret so currently selling mine which was from a bridal boutique https://www.stillwhite.com/215789-elite-bridal it's unaltered and unworn so like new but without the price! There are also loads of dresses in still white for all sizes and styles.
But now I have a high-street dress which is much more my style.
Rent your suits instead of buying them. Ask bridesmaids to pay for their own dresses? Or buy highstreet dresses. Do your own hair and makeup, you'll have time to practice!
Make your own table decorations - just make sure you have the time, or friends who can set up for you.

By doing things like this (but I have a wedding venue not a registry office) inlcuding the honeymoon we have only spent £12k, we had a little help from family too, so i think we've only paid £10k out of our own pockets.

Every little helps! Good luck!!

View quoted message Definitely visit as many wedding fairs as you can. We managed to get our flowers for £650 by shopping around. It was one brides bouquet. One bridesmaids bouquet, 2 bouquets for our parents, 7 buttonholes, 4 ladies wrist corsages, 2 arrangements for the church, 8 pew ends for the church and a top table display for the reception. We also saved money by using a company that supplied modern cars as wedding cars rather than the traditional older cars. Using the modern cars means we only paid £350 for 3 cars. Alternatively if you have a friend who’s willing to play chauffeur for the day all you need is ribbon to decorate their car. Again look at hotel packages as ours included canapés for the guests whilst they were waiting, two glasses of fizz for toasts, half a bottle of wine each, a three course meal plus coffee, bacon and sausage rolls or sandwiches for the evening and a DJ for £6500 for 75 adults. We could also add extra additional adults and children for £20 per child and £40 per adult. We hired a band rather than going with the DJ and my mum paid for a magician for our drinks reception. We paid all the suit hire, the bridesmaids dresses (Debenhams), All the hair and makeup and In the end I think our wedding came in at around £14,000.