Is a low budget, but nice, wedding possible?

Have you looked at hotels that might have smaller function rooms that are cheaper to hire than the main wedding space they advertise?

If you don't want your ceremony in a registry office then you are going to pay a lot more for the registar. You could help the budget by doing the legal bit for £40 with just the two of you and having a celebrant led ceremony at your reception venue, maybe one of your guests could lead the ceremony so it's completely personal to you. Then you will have more budget for the reception costs.

We found a local pub with a nice garden and a private function room for our reception. They didn't charge us anything for the room, just the cost of the meals. It worked out way cheaper than the cheapest 'wedding venue' in the area.

For your number of people, you may be able to find a nice restaurant or pub with a private dining space they can open for you. Or perhaps a local cricket/bowls club might have a club house you can rent out. Some flowers and fairy lights can make a real difference to a space.

You could have the celebration there with a friend/family member officiating, then do the legal bit separately. The cost of having a registrar to come to a licensed venue is about £800 at present, so would take up half your budget.

Unfortunately, I wanna note that the cost of having a registrar come to a licensed venue can be quite high, around £800, which could take up a significant portion of the budget. It's worth considering alternative options like a registry office or a venue that already has a marriage license to avoid the additional expense. I bet that is a better way to find a better balance between budget and desired wedding experience.

Try a local pub or restaurant and maybe look to plan on a different day to a Saturday. Most venues may considering dropping a hire cost if it means business into their venue on a quieter day!

Hello,

As most others have said it will cost about £700 to £800 for a registrar to attend a licensed venue which is a big chunk of your budget. What you could do to keep costs down is do the actual legal part at a register office with just 2 witnesses on another day beforehand. We had considered this a few years back. It would have cost less than £100. This would get the legal part out of the way. Later on celebrate your wedding by repeating your vows in a private ceremony. This part is not legal but will be nice for you and your guests. You could hire a pretty village hall and get caterers or DIY the food with help of friends and family to do a buffet. This should save on costs. Alternatively you could celebrate in a local pub or restaurant. We thought about hiring a space in a hotel and do a buffet dinner with music and dancing. If you don't mention it's for a wedding prices will be much cheaper.

It's totally doable on your budget. Get married in a church/registry office followed by either a meal in a pub/restaurant or look at hiring a community hall and getting a caterer in. Costs will plummet if you're happy to have ordinary food instead of a posh 'wedding breakfast'. Nearly everything on the list of wedding costs can be either ditched or drastically reduced. Taking out the cost of our honeymoon, we were able to plan a wedding for 30 for under £2,500 - and we could have done it way cheaper, only we chose to pay out extra for things that we wanted.