Money

What a good idea for a thread.

- If you have time until your wedding, make a list of things you can purchase during big discount events and aim to buy them then e.g. Black Friday, January sales, Amazon Prime days. Particularly good for accessories and any diy bits such as table centres.

- Photography: consider if you need the photographer for the whole day or just part of it. I’m not bothered about having “getting ready” photos, so my photographer has offered me a half day rate.

- Food options: ask for alternatives from your caterer for the evening. Ours would have charged £18pp for the standard evening buffet. We didn’t fancy it and asked if there were other alternatives - we’re now having a job lot of bacon sandwiches at £6pp instead.

- DIY flowers. I love flowers but don’t want to pay hundreds for bouquets, displays etc. I’m ordering 2 big bunches of flowers from Bloom & Wild, then breaking them down into small bouquets for me and the bridesmaids. We’ll put vases in the venue and our bouquets will go in them after the ceremony.

- Be careful accepting favours from friends! They might seem like good options to save money, but only if you trust them 100% to follow through with what you want. Three things were offered by friends and family - 2 fell through and cost us more in the end as we had to book later and had less choice for suppliers.

Buy a supermarket cake and decorate it with a custom cake topper - it worked out less than half the cost we were quoted for a plain iced cake, never mind a decorated one!

Buy your wedding dress from a high street or mail order company or a second-hand shop. Hire instead of buying the grooms/ushers suits, or get them to wear what they already have.

Skip unnecessary stuff like favours, printed menus and signs except the ones you really need.

Look at alternatives to a wedding car company - book a taxi or get a reliable friend or relative to drive you.

Ask your regular hairdresser if they do wedding hair - mine was a fraction of the cost of a 'wedding hair stylist'. And I didn't wear makeup, although I know this is a bit far out of most people's comfort zone!

Wedding rings are also a good buy during the sales - we got ours on a buy one get one half price deal in the January sales!

Definitely agree with putting money aside as soon as you get paid! We have a standing order that goes out after pay day for the amount we want to save for the wedding each month so it's definitely saved rather than accidentally frittered away! We've only recently started doing this and I wish we had done sooner!

The other big thing I haven't seen here yet is think about your guest headcount. Our biggest saving was in going for a 50 person package over a 75 or 100 person package - we decided we'd much rather have the wedding we want and give a smaller group of people a great experience than have to compromise loads in order to accommodate lots of people who we probably would barely spend time with on the day anyway. It basically came down to cutting obligation family members or friends we don't really hang out with outside of big group events. The knock on effect of a smaller guest list has been huge on the budget as food costs go down, decor costs because you have less tables, favours, invites, confetti... so much for a wedding is per person so it's saved a bunch and often meant we could go for better quality things because we need less of it!

As well as your point 4 (booking a wedding not in Summer), booking a wedding not on a Saturday is a lot cheaper at many venues. If you're planning well in advance, you've got plenty of time for attendees to make sure they're free on the day in question, and it can save thousands!

I would also recommend looking at Money Saving Expert for non-wedding ways to save money if you haven't done this already.

I got my dress fom a second-hand online designer shop and it worked out waaay cheaper than a new dress; bridesmaid dresses were from the sales. Got shoes in the sale.

Paid for makeup consultation in a store where the payment could be redeemed against makeup products.

If you're providing alcohol, it's far cheaper to buy from supermarket rather than pay bar or restaurant prices (unbelievable difference).

I think buffet-style catering can be a lot cheaper, e.g. serving various delish curries (I went to a wedding where they a great array of Srik Lankan food - it was amazing).

We are marrying locally, so less money on accommodation.