How much are you planning to/did you spend on your wedding?

About £4k for wedding and another £5k for honeymoon. We've cut out a sit down meal which has saved about £2k and doing a lot DIY.

We never set an over all budget to be honest. We just discussed what we wanted, budgeted the "going rate" for those individual things, (such as a photographer or caterer) and went from there. I wish that meant we had oodles of spare cash laying about, but unfortunately not- it's just a longish engagement due to work commitments, so plenty of time to save & do some DIY!

With regards to staying in budget my technique so far has been overestimating everything to begin with ?

I think, aside from the venue we've come in way under on most things so far.

We spent 9.5k approx. Gawd knows what on!

Budgeted 10000 originally. I reckon it'll come in between 10 and 11. We've saved on quite a few things but gone a little over on others.

Probs around 12k hopefully no more!

We don't have a budget as such which I know is bad.

I think the total cost not including honeymoon will be approximately £18K.

We didn't have a budget like Pugsley, just said we'll try and cut down on things and not go over the top, and after adding it all up were between £10k - £11k, actually frightening I didn't want to spend that much. But oh well here's hoping it'll all be worth it ?

Set budget at 12,000 but who knows what the final total is. We haven't got in any debt from it.

I think we'll end up at 9k not including the honeymoon, which is more than I wanted to spend. But that's mainly the venues fault, I fell I love with somewhere pricier than I wanted.

I'm trying to be really strict with myself, though I'm proud of myself that everything so far, apart from the invites and venue, has come in below budget.

I don't count the honeymoon, as although it is more expensive than an average holiday (!) that it what it is.

No more than £7k. Even that's a ridiculous amount!

The total is around 18-19K including the honeymoon which we have calculated at around £7000. That does not include all the extra clothes I have needed to buy for the honeymoon though! I wouldnt be surprised if over all we actually spend £20K if I actually added up all those little bits and pieces that are all wedding related but dont come out the budget as it is £10 or £50 a time.

We didn't set a budget as such, just knew that we didn't want to spend a ridiculous amount of money for one day of our lives! As it stands, the wedding day itself has cost around £4000 (Just added it all up & can't believe it's reached that much!) The wedding rings came in at £1200, honeymoon £2000.....................OMGosh ~ that's £7200!

Just think what we'd have saved if we'd popped down the Registry Office and spent £50 for the same outcome!

Initially wanted to do it for around £5k but it is looking like it will be around £8k in the end. We are spending way more on our photographer than I anticipated and our venue has a £1k hire charge whereas I thought we would do it somewhere with free hire/minimum spend. Still, my dress was £75 so I'm feeling pretty thrifty. ?

Wow you lot...I feel awful!

We originally thought about £15000 but it is nearing about 21000 now. We have been cutting corners at that too. The venue for a Saturday to hire alone was £6000 so we opted for a Wednesday which was £1300. We thought there would be less people coming on a Wednesday, how wrong we were. Average price per head is £70 and we have 112 day guests. Luckily my aunty is a cake maker, OH's cousin is a graphic designer and printer and we have done bits and pieces ourselves but it's a lot more than we thought. For ONE day!!! It makes me feel a little sick when I think about it for too long.

Ours total spend has come to 9.5k for wedding alone, 5k for honeymoon, not include spending money and honeymoon clothes etc (taking everything new on honeymoon so that's cost quite a bit too :s)...well we'll only do it once!

I am too embarrassed to say because we were so lucky with a lot of help from family, my venue hire alone was 12.5k... but I do have a handy budget tracker here!

I would also suggest that you try to put every receipt for something you buy for the wedding into one place, maybe with a piece of paper with the running total on it. Do the same with online purchases. It will help you remember all the small things that add up.

I stuck to my budget well on all the big things but I went over on a lot of decorative things and on gifts!

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the girls on here have a million tips for cutting costs but you need to work out which the most important things are to you, and where you will compromise. Then you have to make it all work within that!

xxx

We are on a strict budget and looking to spend about 3k if that if possible!! Pretty much everything is going to be DIY and I am so looking forward to our big day!!

We started off with a 18k budget, plus honeymoon. That seems to have horrifyingly crept up to about 21K plus honeymoon. Partly this is because we fell in love with an expensive venue, and partly because neither of us do things by halves and we egg each other on! We get married on a Friday in November and our venue (inc food, drink, DJ and overnight accommodation etc) is around 13K for 90ish day guests. We live in Essex though and I do think there is a difference in venue costs nationwide, I dare say you could get the same elsewhere for less!

as for planning your budget, make sure you have a miscellaneous fund for random extras - for example I have spent £60 on clip in hair extensions this week!

That's a really good bit of advice actually, i've heard so many couples comment on little things they've forgotten in the final week leading up the the wedding and if you don't plan for it, all of a sudden your budget can be gone.

I wish I had that before we started. Much simpler than the one my OH put together. I agree with the receipts, I just haven't done it for everything.

We had £6000 when we started planning but I started off with the intention of spending around 4-5k. It actually looks like we will be close to 6k tho but I don't mind too much as we had the money put aside and feel like we are getting a lot for our money.

Kept the costs down by using eBay, amazon, ikea, vistaprint and having silk flowers. Went about 5 x over budget on the rings tho!

My whole outfit has cost less than oh's suit- brand new Amanda Wyatt dress worth £800 for £203 off eBay!

I'm going to go with a no comment on the actual number. My parents are paying for my wedding, though. They originally set me a budget of X, and then started looking at how much things cost... and doubled the budget. We're still going to go over that. ?

I agree. I'm in hertfordshire and have found most venues round here to be expensive. My venue alone for 80 guests including food, wine with meal etc and the honeymoon suite for the wedding night is £11K so that's a similar price to you.

I originally thought that we could get married for about 5K, on the basis that a house party for a similar number of people cost about 2K four years ago. I was wrong. We are at a hiatus point in our lives where none of our children need uni help yet and our pensions are OK so it's more that I'm not prepared to pay more than I believe necessary than we can't afford it, but I just can't get my head around spending a fortune on a dress for one day or hundreds of pounds on floristry. However I do justify spending on food, drink and entertainment for our friends, so we're blowing money on those kinds of things.

It's about value to us rather than the actual cost, and consequently our budget is based on those priorities: our budget so far:

venue and registrar: 30%

food and drink: 25%

Photography: 5%

entertainment: 15%

clothes for wedding party, flowers: <10%

stationery, decorations, sundries: <5%

Transport (all guests from home or local hotels): <15%

(I know this adds up to 105% but some come in slightly over or under and I've rounded a bit!)

this is pretty much what we've done. Looking at the breakdown I'd say we've prioritised pretty similarly apart from the photographer and entertainment which is a bit more evenly balanced at around 10% each and my sundries are slightly more but transport slightly less. We too had the money to spend more but plan to take the children to Disneyland the year after the wedding and decided to keep money back for that.

Ours is coming in around 8-9k including family contributions but excluding honeymoon but keep finding things to add to the list lol. Little things popping up here and there! x

The percentage breakdown of our budget so far (not entirely determined, I'm assuming we spend all of our budget but no more) is:

Venue hire and ceremony costs (approx, as we have a package)-15%

Food and drink- 25% (again approx given package plays into this)

My dressing costs- 8%

My fiance's dressing costs- .8% ?

Female wedding party- 2% (there's only one of her!)

Male wedding party- 1.5%

Ring costs- 8.5% (I seriously blew the budget on that one)

Flowers- 2.5%

Other decoration-under 3%, yet to be determined

Entertainment- nominal (we're doing an iPod DJ)

Wedding cake- 3%

Transport- about 1%? I'm planning to get changed into my wedding dress at the venue and catch a cab, I don't care about cars

Favours- about 1%

Photographer and an album- 7%

Accommodation before the wedding and for mini-moon- about 5%

The "oh crap" fund- 4%

Initial budget £10k before we decided what sort of wedding we wanted. Budget became £20k once we decided, BUT that included an overseas wedding, flights, a stupidly luxurious multi destination honeymoon, and a traditional reception back in the UK. I did point blank refuse to spend more then this second budget, and decided quite a few things were unnecessary. Rough breakdown was: ceremony, dress, rings, photos etc etc £6k ish. Flights and honeymoon £9.5k. UK reception £4.5k.

Same here. Lots of little things bought here and there along the way haven't made it onto the official budget /actual amount spent spreadsheet

!

Ours is coming in around £6k

We got a fab deal for our venue for a sit down meal for 60 and evening buffett and disco plus half a bottle of wine for each person and a glass of processo for the toast.

My parents are giving us £3k (not asked for but they said it was only fair as they paid that towards my sisters wedding), oh mum gave me £500 towards my dress and she is paying for the table flowers. Luckily we have saved the rest of the money. We didn't wnat to spend huge amounts as we are also trying to say for a house.

Asking budgets is like asking how long is a piece of string - you will get anything from £2.5k to £30k plus.

What is your ideal wedding? Swanky venue on a Saturday in wedding season, with copious amounts of food and drink will set you back thousands, but if you are prepared to compromise on these elements, eg married out of season, or on a Friday, you can get married for far less.

We didnt really have a budget, we just went with whatever we wanted. Adding everything up its looking to be around 18k. Made own invites and got a friend making the cake so thats saved us a bit