people getting married on a budget of 10k or less

I'm buggering off to Turkey!! hehe!! This way i dont need as much stuff! No chair covers for me!!

We dont have a budget as such but we (h2b) would like to spend no more than 7-8k. Our reception is at a posh restaurant (in the function room) and for 60 day guests (3 course meal + arrival drinks, table wine & coffees) and another 60 evening guests (with a buffet for 80) comes in at around £4200. The church is about £550.

I personally think that he isn't thinking about all the little extras and it's going to be nearer 10k (our photographer is £1650 alone!)

Hi ya

I've helped quite a few hitchers like this now so if you'd like I could look at your budgets and see where you could save money and maybe come up with some ideas for you.

If so, email me to *********@***************.**.**

Ruth

x

I'm well under 10k and it has been easy to do and I haven't even tried to keep the budget down really. I'm lucky that my photographer is my bridesmaids brother so getting a really good deal with him and my friend is doin the dj'ing and also solo singing so I guess those 2 things have saved a lot.

We are having a sit down meal for 70ish and about an extra 30 in the evening.

Something that has helped heaps is that we saw the venue before it was built so got a very good deal. Instead of paying £40ish for the meal we are paying £26 so that in itselt is saving a fortune. We are only having one car because the venue is 1 mile from the house, only one bridesmaid (wouldn't ever have more even if we were millionaires) and one usher but he will be wearing his own kilt so no expensive there.

Our venue provides the table centre pieces so again money being saved there without even trying. I've just had good luck with a lot of things which has helped heaps.

You just have to prioritise. We weren't bothered about a sit-down meal so we're skipping that. We are spending a lot on our photographer, but I've made all our stationery and table decorations to save money

We're not having chair covers, favours or cars and are only buying token gifts for people who have helped us out.

Our BM's are buying their own dresses so I let them have a big say in what they had, because all I was bothered about was that they were pink, I wasn't too fussed about the style, luckily they chose something I would have picked!

We nearly booked a cake for £400, but at the last minute changed our minds, and now have family doing it for free - granted, it probably won't be as stunning as a professional £400 cake but at the end of the day it's a cake and it will get eaten - so I'd rather spend the money on something else!

The main thing is to not worry about what you think you should have - or what other people have - but to do what you want! It's so easy to spend money on things you think you have to have, just because that's what everyone else does!

That is a very good point because when I started planning I kept asking h2b 'should we have this' & 'what will people think of that'. He quickly told me that it was our wedding and we could do what we wanted.

Not sure exactly how much ours will be but will be well below 10k hopefully!!

we're getting married in a church which only asks for a donation and no fees, the organist is my grandfathers friend and my piper is my dads friends son.

using my dad and my uncles cars as they are both silver ones an audi the other a merc

only having 32 during the day and have booked a lovely restaurant for the meal after the ceremony which we will take up the whole dinning room, it gives you the sense of it all being yours without the price tag! then have hired a large hall for a party with about 200 at night, my dad knows the owner so only being charged £100 for that.

i have bought my dress off the peg, got 25% off it doing it that way, my H2B is buying his kilt as sees it as an investment and is getting all the accessories for his 30th birthday from our families.

am making my own favours and centrepieces, am using someone very reasonable to make my invitations. my mum is making the cake

my cousin is doing my photography. the only thing i have to worry about are the flowers, dont mind spending a bit more on those but dont want anything fancy.

HTH

Ax

I think 1 of the major problems im having is venues, im in essex and most of the wedding venues charge about 2-3 grand just for hire, not including anythin else. iv now found a church which has its own hall and im thinking of doing that with the reception there as well. i originally wanted somewhere with rooms people can stay over at afterwards but thinking of scraaping that now because cant find anywhere in my price range that offers this. does anyone else think that this is a vital thing ?

We are going to come in under 2k! We are having parents, grandparents, siblings and partners. Self catering for food and drinks, which has saved us a huge huge amount. We are serving curry and chilli with jacket potatoes, can be cooked before hand and kept warm in the slow cooker.

Tesco celebration cake, one tier coming in at 13.48

A friend as a photographer doing a good deal for us.

using own suits

silk flowers

We are hiring at cottage for the weekend, so despite not having all of our friends there we manage to save on food and alcohol but celebrate our wedding over a whole weekend

Our budget was £10k and rough breakdown was as follows:

Venue hire £3k exclusive use of Farnham Castle in Surrey

3 course meal £2k for 54 adults

Drinks £800 Pimms welcome, wine & OJ with meal, sparkling rose bought by us + venue corkage

Evening buffet £1k for 100 adults at 75% catered

Dress £660 including alterations

Photographer £650 for 100-150 prints, CD & negs but would have paid more with hindsight

Disco £325

Mens suit hire £315 groom + 3 best men

Flowers £300

Hair & make-up £125

Registry office £100

Cake £100 M&S plus cake stand hire

BM dress £70 including alterations (Debenhams)

Stationery £50 DIY

We borrowed cars (BMW & Ferrari!), I made all the stationery and my H made all the table centrepieces (he's a welder and made pieces of armour to fit with the castle. Essentially our reception was 75% of our budget so we may cut backs elsewhere.

The venue is what we saved a lot of money on. We hired out a really really nice restaurant/bar and then hired outside caterers. Both came to about £2500 for venue and food and then we had drink on top of that. That fed 65 people a 3 course meal with 3 choices for every course. Everyone was allowed a bit of every choice of course or just the one choice, it was up to them. It was Caribbean food too so it went down a treat with everyone.

The food was that nice and there was that much left that people were asking to take some home. That then left me money to play with without having to cut back on other things.

Our budget was £8k, and our breakdown was....

Church £600 inc bell ringers, organist etc

Flowers £200

Village Hall £300

Hog roast and veggie paella, nibbles and desert for 200 £2000

Drinks for toast and arrival £325 - my uncle bought us champagne for the toasts as a wedding gift

Band £850 (really good price and my one extravagance!)

Venue decoration inc table decs, table cloths etc £800

Clothes boys and girls including my hair and make up £875

Wedding rings - both platinum £820

Stationary - I made invitations, orders of service, wedding post box and guest book, but materials including postage cost £300

Gifts including favors £600

Other bits inc wedding insurance and marriage prep £500

For wedding cars - we borrowed friends cars (a jag and a convertable mini), my mum made our wedding cake, and a friend did our photography,

We spent around 5K-7K i think.

We cut back by having a village hall reception £125

External Caterers did a 5 course meal for 80 & buffet for 100 for £1500

friend did photographs for us for free

H's nana made the cake for free

Sis's BF's grandad lent us his Jag for the 2nd car

We had everything we wanted:

Church wedding

Fantastic food

Lots of wine with the meal

Welcome drinks (we were able to print a voucher for the guests so that they could have any drink they wanted rather than bucks fizz of whatever and we just paid the bar bill at the end of the night)

Vintage wedding car

Wedding Singer - who was fantastic and well worth the money

Lovely flowers

3 bridesmaids

And it was the best day ever apart from the rain, but there was nothing we could do about that.

Our wedding budget is 5-6K and i think we should be ok to get everything within that. This seemed impossible at first but i think the key is to do as much of it yourself as you can and definitely make use of friends/family who may have skills that will come in useful. (and of course take advantage of all the help available on hitched!) I'm making the invites/order of service sheets myself. Getting married later in the day and not having a full wedding reakfast, just a hot buffet in the evening for everyone. My mum is making all my bridesmaid dresses. My dress will either be high st or also made by mum. I'm going to make the cake myself. My MOH is a trained beauty therapist so will be doing our make up. A colleague of H2B is a photographer and will hopefully be doing a photos for a good price. Having a fancy/vintage car is not important to me so wont be spending much on that. Reception venue will be decorated with balloons, saving a fortune on flowers.

We have been so ucky as our parents are really helping out. They are paying for the sit down meal and evening, dj, honeymoon, wedding dress and accsessories. Our venue has no hire charge.

My main issue i have to deal with is drinks. The cheapest drinks package on offer would set us back 1000 which we dont have, so unfortunatly our guests will just be having a drink on arrival and one at the toast - i dont know what the cost of this is yet!

Other than that we have £1000 of our to put in, plus any money we had for xmas /birthdays. This is to cover everything else. Alot hasnt been sorted yet, but a few things are.

Flowers are £212 (mum/chief bridesmaid helping with some cost)

Mens suits £50 each from burtons, i need either 5 or 7.

Bridesmaids dresses £260

Bridesmaid facinators (bought bits to make own) £15

Invites (hand made) aprox £50

Cake from m+s or somewhere aprox £40

Car quoted at £180 (but still waiting to see if this price will be honoured as they now charge 100 more, luckily i kept their origanal quote email!)

chair sashes £30 (aisle be yours, sherrie hs company)

favours aprox £30 off ebay

Hair being done by my cousin

photography by a friend

rings being made by a friend

register office is expensive -£370!

makeup - unknown at present time

gifts for people will be whatever i can once all is paid! along with extras like guest books etc etc

Table centres and decs are being done by my aunt and cousins as a wedding gift.

I cant think of anything else but im sure i have missed stuff out......

oh, and i do have to get a passport which isnt cheap but hey ho......

This brings me in around £500 quid over our budget, but im sure it will all sort out in the end....its just the drinks i have to worry about. I think we will end up spending around £1000 more than we have, and unfortunatly this will be on a credit card!

Blimey, glad i looked at all of that, might be time for a rethink!!!

We spent £4.5k in total. Our venue hire was £500, my dress was a BM dress so MUCH cheaper! made all my own invites/table plan/table numbers and decorations/bouquets/thank you gifts, We got married at 4pm so we only had to feed people once - had a hot buffet at £18 a head then used our wedding cake (an M and S job) for dessert. We had mates doing hair makeup and photography, didn't have cars to transport us to/from the venue (I got ready at the venue and H drove down in our car). In fact, the bigggest expense (after the food) was Hs kilt!!

We have a budget of 6k, we are having a small wedding tho of around 30 in day and 60 at night, honeymoon also included in budget. My mum's friend is a florist, our cake is being made by my sister in law. Get your family and friends to help with stuff. this also doubles as a wedding gift to you and keeps them involved.

I have planned my wedding and booked most stuff and it comes in at 7K.

Geting married in 2010 so it has helped that we booked things in advance and got that years prices. Reg office wedding, wedding buffet for 70 people with arrival drinks and wine with food package, buffet for 100 in evening all comes to £3500

Tog was £800, flowers were silk and for bridal party coming in at £175, cars £425, cake £250, DJ £450, £400 for bms and £300 for suits. Comes to £6300. We have £700 for a week away in the august, and will go to uk as we have kids. We have been very strict. Only things i am not buying is my dress, accessories etc. Mum buying those. Invites are being paid for by my dad.

x

I'm with you, it all does cost alot! I was hoping to spend no more than 5 grand. We were thinking of just not having a car, or many flowers just the bouquet and button holes. Also getting friends and family in on helping out with various things to make it a little more special and personal. The problem we are having is the cost of venues! Good luck with it all! xxx

Our wedding came to 6.5K. Our biggest expense was the food for 100 people. There's loads more but this is what I can think of...

• Bridesmaid dresses were bought on ebay (brand new!)
  
• My wedding dress was bought on ebay (after trying on at a wedding fair and deciding what I wanted I bought a second hand one on ebay) as was my tiara and veil (bought from a bride who has to cancel her wedding so unworn) and my shoes!!
• Bought mens suits from M&S £50 not the £200 we thought we'd have to pay each
• My FIL made our cake as a wedding present
• Booked a function room at a restaurant, chose a carvery meall so everybody had a lot to eat for not a lot of money
• Made our own invitations (being married to a graphic designer helps there)
• A friend took our photos - they're not as good of a quality as a professional but again the hubby comes in handy then
• A friend did our video too (once again hubby comes into play)
• A friend loaned us his brand new BMW for the day as our wedding car
• We shopped around for the best deal everywhere
• Went to a hairdresser in town for my hair, only asked for a blow dry and style (not bridal hair, they curled it for me and that's it)
• I did my own make up
• Thought of quirky favours rather than expensive ones (Yorkshire tea bags - £10 for 100 and Tarporley Chocolate)
• Our family and friends decorated the venues for us
• Wooden roses as flowers (8 button holes, bridal bouquet, 3 corsages, 4 bridesmaid bouquets and a table garland for £110!!!)

We're in Sueey, so not the cheapest part of the country. We didn't want a church wedding so that ruled that option out. So we redearched venues on the Surrey COunty Council Website which lists all of the licenced venues in the area.

We then narrowed down out choices based on the following critera:

a) per head price of £70 or less

b) must be an all-in-one place so ceremony and reception - reduced the cost of things like TOGs (not wasting time traveling between veues) and no need for fancy car hire

c) must have accommodation, so our relatives, coming from opposite directions have somewhere easy to stay

d) within easy commute of home, I drive enough getting to and from work without adding in this extra journey at weekends or to meet with suppliers.

This, incredibly narrowed the list down from about 150 down to 3. From there it was a visit all and go on gut instinct job.

I also think being ruthless with our guestlist has helped. We're hoping for 70 maximum. We're not having extra evening guests. Our thought was that if you're coming you're coming and if you don't make it on to the main list then you can't be THAT much of a close friend. I know that sounds very harsh, but if I'd invited everyone I consider mates then we'd easily be push 200 between us so no chance of coming in under £10k.

As it is, we think we'll come in at 9k and we've got loads of deals for the venue by being a) not peak season (although end Sept is still fairly peak and b) having it on a Sunday. Exactly the same package on a Saturday would cost an additional £2k.

The main way we've kept our budget down is by being ruthless about who we're inviting and keeping the numbers down to 26. H2B's parents weren't too pleased that we weren't inviting all the extended family but that was a decision we made very early on (and would have made whether money had been a consideration or not); it's not that we don't get on with them, but we don't have a wide circle of friends and we just didn't want our nearest and dearest to be outnumbered by a load of people we aren't close to and see maybe once a year at most.

Our final budget is going to come in at slightly over £4K, broken down (roughly) as follows:

Venue (inc. 3-course wedding breakfast with two glasses of champagne and two glasses of wine per guest, as well as a four-poster room for us on our wedding night and a variety of other extras such as flowers on the top table and place cards included in the price) - £1750.00

Registrar's Fees - £375.00

Wedding Dress (inc. alterations, tiara and veil hire) - £600.00

Shoes - £75.00

Groom's Suit Hire - £80.00

Flower Girl Outfit - £100.00

Rings - £500.00

Photography - £300.00

Flowers - £140.00

Chair Cover Hire - £100.00

Gifts - £100.00

Beauty (hair trial and on the day, plus manicure the day before the wedding) - £100.00

Stationery - £50.00

Wedding Insurance - £20.00

I really don't feel like we've scrimped and saved to meet our budget either. We knew we wanted a civil ceremony and finding a venue where we could have both the wedding and reception was convenient for reasons other than cost (and it's a *really* nice hotel with fantastic food). In lieu of gifts we asked members of the bridal party to pay for their own outfits, and my mum is making our wedding cake. In fact, the only thing we considered spending money on but didn't is that I'm doing my own make-up but that's because I had a couple of trials and they weren't suitable rather than anything to do with cost. The main money-saving tip I can offer is to shop around and don't be afraid to haggle. As long as you don't have your heart set on a particular supplier, you'll find that a lot of them are quite flexible with prices and packages (particularly in the current economic climate). At the end of the day, they can always just say no.

Lol mine is welllll below 10grand!

venue- including sit down buffett- £1200

photographer £500

videographer £225

dj- £210

cake £130

florist £180

register £375

chair covers £200

casino £300

dress £250

little bits- decs, shoes etc- 500

= £4grand

Wondered why I diddnt recognise anyone!