How do people afford it?

We are just about managing to stay within that kind of budget but we are much further north than you. Our venue isn't quite countryside but is old ruins and pretty parkland.
Our venue is also a blank canvas and can be very DIY but we are going for the minimal decorations the venue offer and leaving it at that.We don't think it needs it with it being so pretty anyway which is helping to keep costs down. We are also not going for a sit down meal as such just afternoon tea and then a BBQ which has helped keep costs down too. I am sure I could have done ours for a lot less if I had cut things like a car and my 4 bridesmaids and a photo booth but they were things I really wanted. You might have to have a look and see which bits are most important to you and skip things that you don't need. We aren't doing favours or chair sashes or fancy table decs for this reason. Smaller budget wedding do exist! They just need a bit of working on . Keep looking don't get disheartened I'm sure you wil find the perfect place!

S x

I must admit if it were just my husband and me it would have taken a couple more years to save but fortunately we were gifted about half the cost from family. Ours ended up being about 9k but we r in devon. Most expensive things were food, venue (we went out of season), band, photographer (worth every penny but we did have a good deal) and dress (completely unintentional! Went to figure out what suited me and found perfect one- didn't even know about wed2b 🙈) it's funny looking back, I could easily have saved on the dress but a lot of the other big spends can depend hugely on area. Good luck

It can be done but it requires a lot of work and if you are busy with full time jobs and maybe even children it is hard work and time consuming especially if you choose DIY options. As other posters have said if you limit Catering by having a later ceremony and buffet style reception this will decrease venue costs a lot. Venue is the most expensive bit as they are potentially looking after 100 people for 10-12 hours if you go for the whole sit down meal thing.


My cousin got married in church quite a few years ago and used a village hall for the reception which was really rustic and vintage but lovely. The food was pie and veg and evening they had a hog roast. There was a pay bar and they did decorations themselves. For the bride arrival they borrowed a mates Land Rover Defender and tied a ribbon on it!Make a list of what you can do without and the look at ways to reduce the costs of the things you really do want.We are incredibly lucky as my parents are paying for most of ours but if we had to do this ourselves it would have been a different day! Good luck

I know how you feel, we have been planning for a few months and at times the cost of things makes me feel sick! Our budget is around £12k but we are in the north east. We saved about £4k by getting married in March instead of during peak summer months. We still managed to get a Saturday. I am also very strict with my dress budget and I will be getting mine from wed2b - I'm not even going to set foot in a bridal boutique to avoid overspending on the dress. We are also not booking any transport to the venue because this is very expensive (it is actually cheaper for me to stay at the hotel we're getting married the night before the wedding). We are also delaying our honeymoon and won't be booking it until about 6 months after the wedding. Good luck x

Hi! I also agree with the other comments on this. I would think what is most important to you and then cut down on everything else. Ours is coming up to about 11k excluding honeymoon (that’s about 3.5k on top) and we budgeted for 15k. Luckily we have some savings so have been dipping into it.


Whilst I love my venue, it isn’t the “ultimate” dream venue but I’m happy with that. We’re getting married in a hotel and the ceremony room has lovely terrace outside so a lot of natural light through the doors. Ideally it would have been in a rustic barn or marquee but the prices for these were well above budget. Same goes for my wedding dress - I absolutely love it (wed2b) but it is as close to my ultimate dream dress. I couldn’t justify spending £1000s on a dress which I wouldn’t wear again. Everyone’s different but I thought I could use that money towards something else eg photographer or guest numbers.
We’ve also done DIY Decor for our table centrepieces to save money but having a few things from the venue dresser eg moongate / floral hoop and a couple of blossom trees. I did debate about upgrading to chiavari chairs but thought I’m not spending extra per guest for them to sit on them for few hours (that would have been in the 100s).
I think you can just have basic decoration cos no one is going to remember in the years to come lol. I had to look back at photos from past weddings which I’ve attended, to see how people decorated their venue when I was doing research

We are being very mindful of budget. We have decided to have no bridesmaids, we are having a later wedding so we only have dinner and drinks. Having a hog roast instead of 3 course sit down. A late wedding also means you don't need need a photographer all day. No DJ and disco- we are a bit older so this isnt isn't priority for us. No wedding favours. Monday wedding in winter so cheaper. We have a nice venue as we really don't have the time or inclination for all the DIY stuff. We can still have the wedding we want by only having the important stuff to us and ignoring all the nice to haves or getting carried away with Pinterest! We live in Hertfordshire so not the cheapest part of the world!! Good luck crossing "stuff" of your list!!

We are being mindful of not spending money just because.
We qre getting married in church because we go to that church, having the reception in the hall next door. Have hired a mobile carvery and having no evening reception. Not having any adult bridesmaids. No favours. As others have said- think about what's important to you and what you can cut out/cut corners on

Another vote in favour of spending on what's important to you and skipping the rest. We planned a 30 guest wedding for under £2,500, by cutting out things that weren't important to us.

Don't be in too much of a hurry to dismiss pubs - some of the country ones can be beautiful. Ours had an amazing garden, complete with fountain, rose arch...made for some lovely photos.

Debt, that's how most people afford it. But that's not unusual as weddings are so expensive. We got engaged last year and couldn't afford to get married due to having IVF privately. We also thought wedding or house but we are extremely lucky that our families have helped us massively. If we didn't have financial help we'd get creative with everything.
Also, lots of venues including caterers slap on 'wedding tax' so to save money you could just tell venues is a surprise party, get a plain cake and buy decorations from a cake supply ship, get creative with wedding dress shipping (I brought my reception dress for £90 in the sale from The Pretty Dress Company, my mum is making my actual wedding dress.
For bridesmaids dress pick one dress and have it in different colours or pick a color theme and have different styles. Many people also sell their old wedding decorations online and yiu can usually have access to the venue a few hours before to decorate.

I've had the big white wedding before, that my parents paid for but my now ex monster in law planned all that in honesty. Anyway, I've met a lovely gentleman and within a month I was welcomed into his family like their own. We've been together since Covid, married in July this year. We tried planning the big white wedding but we struggled, both working and renting a property. We decided a registry office would work just fine, and they've really done the room up lovely. We then have a reception in a pub/restaurant and then go on to a seperate room after our meal. My parents and my H2B mum came together and have gave us a very kind budget and that's all they could afford, they they in bad health 😔. We have gone over that budget slightly that we are covering ourselves along with other pieces. That's how we managing a small ceremonyof 36...registry office, pub for meal and disco afterwards. The pub includes the table deco, chair sashes and centre pieces in the price. And I'm actually glad we did it that way. I know us as a couple it's perfect. I hope you both find a perfect way for you as a couple. But don't ever feel pressured into booking somewhere you really don't want or even need just to make others happy. All the best. ❤

The biggest piece of advice I can give you is to make your guest list as small as you can bear. I'm not saying cut people who are important to you, but think really carefully about how extended you really want to go in terms of family and friendship groups. We're going for a 50pp package which is made up of our immediate family, closest friends and their partners. The guest list adds up fast so make this first to determine who your absolute must haves are and how long that list is - yours may be half the size of mine or twice as big and any size is equally valid but you need to know what your number is as it'll impact your venue choices.

There are always going to be some disappointed people who expected to be invited for one reason or another, but it can be thousands more to add another table worth of guests and whatever you do someone is gonna be annoyed for one reason or another so don't let it spiral as it will affect your budget. Invite the people who you'll be running up to super excited yelling "I just got married!!" and making a beeline towards on the dance floor... anyone you feel like you'd be inviting out of obligation or politeness or even a "it'd be nice but I wouldn't be heartbroken if they couldn't make it" sentiment can go on the B list either forever or at least until you know you can and want to afford to add them.

Just to put a bit of context in, guests add a lot of money because they are more than just a price per head (which can be horribly expensive in itself!) - it's also the amount of tables you need (remember two extra people can bump you into needing a whole extra table depending on max capacities), and therefore the amount of table decoration you need, the amount of wine per table, the number of canapes and snacks, toasting and table wine, stationary (invites, save the dates, menu cards, escort cards, postage...), basically any other elements you fund for your guests or the overall experience will be affected by how many people you have to cover. Also bigger guestlist = bigger (and usually more expensive) venue too.

Small wedding parties help too - you're funding the outfits etc for anyone you ask to be in the wedding so again make sure you really want them in that role. If you do, ask them! Just putting it out there that it'll eat into the budget for something else so...

As others have said - prioritising is crucial! Don't spend money on anything you don't genuinely want (even if it's "tradition", even if others tell you that you should...), pick and choose and allocate your budget towards things that will make your day feel special to YOU! Remember that your priorities will be different to other peoples, I'm sure some people on this group would fall off their chair the amount I've spent on my dress, or that 1/5 of my guests are actually in the wedding party, or the amount extra my venue has cost me by choosing a Saturday peak season day because I wanted my guests not to have to stress about needing to take days off work - but these were priorities to me so remember your wedding is not anyone else's it is yours (and FH's!)

Hi!

I hope this helps as we're in a slightly similar boat. We didn't really start out with a firm budget. We picked the things we wanted (within reason - still thinking about cost), and formed a budget around the day we wanted. Then we figured out how much we needed to contribute per month to afford it (setting a date slightly based off this).

I was so worried about how we'd be able to afford our dream day. I looked into it a bit, and one post recommended dividing your total budget by how many months are left until the wedding. Once I saw the amount each of us had to contribute per month, the overall budget didn't seem all that daunting! It also helps to delegate payments if you can (ex. bridal party buys their own outfits, parents chip in for the dress, etc).

With a firm budget, a few money savers would be online invites/save the dates. As for the venue, my fiancé and I are having a celebrant rather than a registrar. For us, this isn't saving money, but I think it could for you. A celebrant will open your venue options because you can literally get married anywhere (Even if the location is not registered with the registrar's office). This might open you up to way cheaper locations - Maybe places that don't normally do weddings like a countryside gallery, conservatory, garden, or even a cool, old army barrack or something. You can do the legal bit at the registrar's office for £46 the day before, and have a really great, personalized ceremony with a celebrant the day of the wedding.

I'll try to think of more money saving things! I definitely recommend planning the day you want then seeing if you can afford it monthly! (Also celebrants!)

Happy Planning!

Honestly when I started out I said the same on my budget.. my wedding is now costing 20k and a 4K honeymoon on top 😂. Me and my fiancé in the end decided we wanted a big fancy wedding, we don’t have kids yet, both work full time and he’s got a good job! So while we can .. we’re going big lol.
But.. we are saving pretty much everything after our bills are paid towards the wedding. We just decided to sacrifice having spare money for a while so we could have our dream wedding.

It really just comes down to what you can afford to save and also how much you’re willing to save haha. If you have an active social life that needs funding too.. our way definitely wouldn’t work 😂.
Start with your venue and how many guests you want.. that will set you off for everything else like food costs, decoration cost etc based on those two factors. Good luck! Xx