Lower budget tips on the non essentials?

It really depends on where you're willing to compromise. Our rings cost far less than £100 for both. They are made of tungsten carbide, which may lack the glamour of something like platinum, but is just about the hardest thing known to man, so they won't scratch at all and our symbol of love is a lot longer-lasting than most

Do your own decoration, bunting is so easy to make and 'scrap' material can be bought cheaply (curtains from the charity shop) do your own flowers....if your not brave enough to try a bouquet remember a single sunflower can be stunning!

Ebay for outfits, there is NO resale value on wedding dresses so you can be very lucky and pick up a bargain...again bridesmaids dresses can be bought cheaply if you don't stick rigidly to a colour scheme, I have four and they are all in different dresses!! Rings can be bought online cheaply or go to the jewellery quarter, Hatton Gardens and negotiate a good deal with an independent retailer.

Good Luck!!!

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Thank you for the replies

My engagement ring is silver, so I’d be happy to look at silver ones. Great idea!

I haven’t really thought about a second hand dress. Is the best thing to do to still go look at them, find one I like then ebay hunt??

I’ve found bridesmaid dress’s I love for £45 but we have 6 bridesmaids! Eeek. The website did have a big sale last month so maybe I need to keep an eye out for this again as they were £20 each.

My one gripe is the chairs at the venue are ugly and I don’t really like chair covers. But hiring chairs is SO expensive!! Rather unsure what to do

Our budget is around £3,500. The chapel, venue, wedding breakfast, evening buffet, DJ and all table linen plus drinks for toast should come in under £2k (waiting for written confirmation from venue). We aren't doing favours. We're decorating the venue and chapel ourselves.

My dress is last season's Mark Lesley and dirt cheap but brand new and utterly stunning, the MoH dresses were ebay as was the flower girl's dress. MoH's are wearing their own shoes and jewellery and going their own hair and make up. My shoes we bought in a sale at £30 and I have slightly modified them by adding flowers to make them more 'bridal'.The flowers we will be doing ourselves. My sister is doing my hair, makeup and nails. My H2B's suit is from Matalan, a three piece suit with a gorgeous designer inspired shirt for under £70.

The transport has all been provided by friends/family so we only pay for fuel (my BIL is a member of a classic car club, he asked around and we weren't short on people who wanted to show their car off for a few hours for a tank of fuel!)

We are getting our invites from vistaprint.co.uk so they come in at around £80 for 50 wedding invites, 120 evening invites plus the inserts (directions etc) and envelopes

Our rings came in at under £200 for both

You need to try and get past the 'wedding snobbery'. No one need to know your rings are cheaper, or that your dress is preloved, or you did your own buttonholes!

Keep a spread sheet of ALL your wedding spends, this includes bits here and there, it's so easy to lose track of what you've spent!

Good luck

x

try

https://onlineshop.oxfam.org.uk/bridal/wedding-dresses?pscid=ps_ggl_2013-Shop-Bridal-Brand

hth

Peter

Try preloved for your wedding dress, friend of mine got hers from there and it was about £600 cheaper and was in near perfect condition except for a stain .. inside the dress.

Veil - i am borrowing my aunts, its 35years old and in beautiful condition. Have any family members got anothing like this? Always counts as your something borrowed too.

Ebay - I have saved so much, silly things like place names, petals, table decorations. Compared to highstreet places like Hobbycraft its so cheap. (But warning its addictive and you may end up with additional items)

Table decorations, poundland do church candles and tea lights. I also got a lovely photoframe in there to put wedding pic of our parents and grandparents in, nice little display for the card table. I got my vases from Matalan they were on special offer for £4 each at the time. Ikea is a good option too.

Cake - i am going with good old M&S, i joined Sky about 8 months ago and got £100 vouchers, then my parents cashed in on some points system and got another £100 M&S vouches they kindly gave to us. Cake done.

My 3 adult bridesmaids dress and 3 flowergirl dresses were both from TK Maxx and cost a total of ... £150 for all 6.

Got a few cardigans for the kids from Matalan and wraps for the adults from Amazon £2 each. They all had nude or ivory shoes and bags im not fussed what they use as it will only be at the reception.

Flowers i am going down the artifical route. Got them from http://www.dunelm-mill.com/shop/artificial-rose-bouquet-51500 I have just decorated with pearl pins and lace, the look fab.

Rings - ours cost £550 all together, i got mine in a shop that had a 25% off and OH alba rose - argos always has a good write up on here.

100% agree with keeping a budget spreadsheet it really helps. Try not to get caught up in everything wedding because trust me i have so many things i really dont need and no one is even going to remember i just convince myself i need them.

My rings are palladium; same pricing as yellow gold. I didn't want white gold as it is only plated, to turns yellow over time. OH's ting is tungten carbide I think and was £50.

Oxfam is well woth a look for dresses; bridal and bridesmaid. Most are samples and have never been worn.

I'm loving this thread!

Which websites are you using for bridesmaid dresses? I've looked at most of the high street shops and was a bit underwhelmed (maybe its the wrong time of year to be looking at summery dresses!).

Snow Bride- I'm not sure where you're based but there is a bridal shop in West Byfleet, Surrey (I think its called Swoon) that specialises in 2nd hand dresses. I think most of them are samples and look to be in great condition.

I bought my wedding dress for £325 from the phase eight sale (its the Emma dress if you're interested)- bargain!!

I'm starting to collect old fabric (curtains, old bed sheets, etc) from friends and family to make bunting with and will probably trawl through charity shops for other bits and pieces.

I will probably get a florist to do the bouquets but I would love to do my own flowers for the decorations- not sure where to start really- might have to research flower markets...

As for chair covers- I'm not bothering as the chairs at the reception venue are in good nick. I don't like the look of covers anyway. The chairs in the ceremony room are little bland though (they look like the wooden chairs you often seen in canteens, etc) so I was thinking of tieing fabric bows around them. Ikea have dirt cheap lace which is £1.50 per sqm- you wouldn't need much.

Anyone have any tips on cheap booze? We have reasonable corkage at the venue so want to take full advantage. I'll probably keep an eye out for the 25% wine deal they have in Sainsbury's- which I think works out cheaper than Majestic wine usually.

Some excellent tips!

Will admit not sure on what I like on tables yet, will have to go look on pinterest for ideas

Stationery – I own a stationery company so here’s hoping I can do that as cheap as possible, although I unfortunately have big ideas! Lol.

Flowers – I love origami flowers! I’m hoping this could be a cheaper way. But again with needing multiple bouquets (damn big social circle) this could work out not so good. We’ll have to look I guess!

Hoping to get bridesmaid dress's from here: http://www.ladyvlondon.com/

We aren't paying anything for our rings (technically we are but I'll explain), we will be using our Tesco Clubcard points to pay for our wedding rings, my friend in work also did this with his wedding rings.

Could this be an option for you?

Hot Chilli : Is it only goldsmiths these days? I don't think I'd want to spend that much!

OMG how have I never seen this website before? Thanks for the tip- these dresses are lovely ?

OMG how have I never seen this website before? Thanks for the tip- these dresses are lovely ?

There are quite a few online shops who carry this style.

http://www.lindybop.co.uk/

https://www.tigermilly.com/

Also, if you are wanting petticoats, I got mine from here http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Lady-50s-Underskirt-Rock-n-Roll-Petticoat-TUTU-26-/370372400143?pt=UK_Women_s_fancy_Dress&var=640003456210&hash=item563bea540f and they are great!

Yes I beleive so, we're totting up our points from our monthly food shop & petrol, as we spend on average £120pm on food and about the same on fuel we will have enough points to get our rings by May next year (we started saving the points about 4 months ago)

My budget was originally going to be £5000 but im expecting venue to cost more so thats now £6000 (not including honeymoon)

the venue is the huge chunk after that you can move stuff around... have you used the budget calculator function?

We got our wine in Calais - if you go to https://www.calaiswine.co.uk/ they will organise your travel for free if you spend £250.00. They do wine at all ends of the price spectrum and although we spent on the lower end of the spectrum, we could have got even cheaper if we wanted to (and connoisseurs could get better quality stuff if they wanted) . For that £250.00 we bought more than enough red, white and rose in recognisable brands plus Prosecco for the toast and some bottled lager too and we still have loads over (even though our bar kindly allowed us to keep drinking the free stuff through the evening, which we didn't think they would) and we got a fun day trip to France. Whilst we were there we drove out to the big shopping mall just for some normal shopping and we also stopped at the Pidou warehouse where we bought our welcome drink (a pre-mixed Kir Royale type sparking wine cocktail) which was embarrassingly cheap but people really liked.

Also bought wooden roses on eBay (about £12 for 100 I think) which were pretty and available in all colours so we got them in our theme colours and my MIL tied them together with ribbon for the centrepieces - they were also popular and lots of people wanted to take them home at the end.

We printed our own orders of service on good quality hammered paper I bought on eBay for a bargain and rolled them into scrolls tied with ribbon, left them on the chairs in the ceremony room which then doubled as a kind of decoration.

Wooden roses?! Fantastic idea do you have the link?

Some really really good ideas here ladies xx ️⭐️

Our approach has been to identify what is really important - for us this is the food & drink, the photographer and the disco. We are spending 80% of our (smallish) budget on these things and scrimping on the rest - register office ceremony, no favours, flowers, cars, decorations (though our venue doesn't need them), save the dates/menus/order of service, no bridesmaids or groomsmen. My dress was £75 in the Monsoon sale and his suit is coming from Reiss. Rings from Argos or similar.

I think it's easy to think you have to have all the extra fripperies just because it seems the done thing, but it might be worth considering whether you actually want them and what difference they really make on the day.

Excellent ideas We are also trying to keep to a budget as and have got a few nick nacks off the car boot sales including some Laura Ashley candle holders for £6

Im not 100 % what to do for the food as we have booked a village hall but i know we are having corned beef pie and peas on the night which is cheap to do but also good pub grub after a day of drinking

Matalan do have some lovely suits in at the moment aswell

I don't know where you're based but you could try wedding dress factory outlet, they are on Facebook and have their own website. They have 3 outlets, Bolton, London and Leicestershire. None of the dresses they sell are above £500 and they are all samples, end of line, overstock or stock from shops that have shut down plus they have their own designer (viva brides).

You might even be lucky enough to win your dress from them if you enter their monthly comp on Facebook!

Good luck!

I don't know where you're based but you could try wedding dress factory outlet, they are on Facebook and have their own website. They have 3 outlets, Bolton, London and Leicestershire. None of the dresses they sell are above £500 and they are all samples, end of line, overstock or stock from shops that have shut down plus they have their own designer (viva brides).

You might even be lucky enough to win your dress from them if you enter their monthly comp on Facebook!

Good luck!

It's a tricky one because one person's non-essential might be someone elses pivotal factor! Our priorities were an informal venue, lots to eat and drink, and lots to do/music. Less important: what we wear, how we look, favours, pretty things.

Consequently we've spent our budget on venue hire/registrar, then entertainment, then food and drink, then other stuff.

Our bunting, for example, is the sort of bunting you get at fairs and fetes, rather than shabby chic print fabric: £36 for 200m of ripstop nylon rainbow colours. I couldn't hire cotton print buntng for this price, and will donate it to the town fair committee after the wedding. (in fact they did offer me bunting for free but it was all bought for the jubilee and i thought all red white a blue woudl be too odd: even for me!).

I'm making my dress, having bought a stock basic dress from china and some lace and chiffon. We're growing the flowers.

These things aren't even because of a limited budget really; it's just that we have other things whcih we deem more important to spend our money on than bouquets for example.

Do you mean kusudama flowers? If so they are surprisingly easy and you could make them yourself for next to nothing.

The pivotal thing is getting paper of the correct weight. Conveniently, post it note paper is perfect! I have made hundreds of these flowers with the brownies (aged between 7 and 10) in one evening and they all grasped the concept and got a flower or two each in a single 90 minute meeting. Once you have it sussed you could probably make a bouquet in an evening: the whole lot in a week, or make it a fun (inexpensive) hen activity!

Whatever you do you have to have a photographer Even if its a family member with a good camera!

Here is one link: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/80-Mix-Wooden-Roses-Choose-Mix-Required-40-of-each-Colour-/360758317332?pt=UK_Home_HomeDecor_Miscellaneous&var=&hash=item53fedf1114

And if you see other things from this seller you can see a variety of colours and quantities.

Fake flowers are good for bouquets also recommend ebay/preloved for a dress bargain - also high street shops like monsoon and BHS have some gorgeous looking wedding dresses.

For BM dresses I found mine in Monsoon then have had them on watch for months on ebay and I've been lucky enough to find two of them brand new for about half the price.

My main thing is to not get carried away on things we don't need (I saw a bride put lots of jam jar tea lights in all of the trees at our venue and it looked amazing. While it wouldn't cost that much it would be a lot of messing around and would still add to our budget so I stopped myself from getting carried away). Also, take care what you're buying - don't rush into something just because you're worried it will go and it's cheap - I've wasted money doing this buying things that I'm never going to use on the day.

If you are looking for silver rings, you should be able to get those pretty cheaply; happy to email you some places if you want