Small Wedding

Try your local hotels, especially chains like holiday Inn, village hotels and best western. They often do packages and if you go off peak (midweek) they may comprise on the guest numbers just to get a booking. (Small wedding is better than an empty room). Midweek also gives you bartering power with other suppliers as they also will bend on things to get business on an otherwise quiet day.

Your biggest costs will be:

Venue

Catering (sometimes included in those packages I mentioned)

Photographer

Honeymoon

Dress (you can go high street/ second hand or sample sale to reduce this one)

It's not going to be easy, but your budget might be possible

My friend managed to get married for less than £2000, her mum made her dress, they decorated white pre-iced cakes from Marks and Spencers. Groomsmen wore their own suits but had matching waistcoats and ties, the food was fish and chips in a box, not traditional 'weddingy' but I really enjoyed it.

Another friend of mine who is getting married in August has hired the local registry office, photos at a park, then hired out the local pub, they are giving them the whole pub, feeding all the guests then having a party in the pub. With most pubs you have to hit a certain amount to hire out the whole place, it has to be what the pub would take on that day. In a small pub that's out of the way on a weekday it won't be too expensive.

Some function rooms are free to hire, I don't know where you're based but where I am in Yorkshire there are three function rooms near me at least that belong to working mens clubs that are free hire, you could definitely pretty them up with some decorations and table cloths. If you look around I'm sure there will be similar places around you, also if you look in sample sales for a dress you can get them for as little as £99. I have what is technically a wedding dress outfit that I bought to wear to a gothic festival that only cost £60 in a sample sale because it was slightly damaged, I just fixed it. If you're willing to compromise and aren't moved by the whole it has to be a certain way to be a wedding your budget is more than doable.

Good luck x

I think you can have a wedding for £2000, but it wouldn't be a 'wedding magazine' style wedding. it would need a lot of compromise and some out of the box thinking.

I think Holiday Inn/Britannia Inn so a £999 wedding package, I'm not sure what that includes, as the ceremony might be one top of that? I'm not sure how much a registry office is, but my church wedding was £510 (included an organist).

Or as MetalBride said you can usually get a function room at a pub or working mens club for free/minamum spend. It all depends on the location/size of pub. Or 'Don't Tell the Bride' is great for inspiration for offbeat locations.Also check you local council for places to hire, they're usually cheap but still ~£500 and if you live in an old town/city there many be some nice buildings to pick from.

I can recommend Lindybop for cute tea length wedding dresses, my friend wore one for her wedding (she went for a blue polka dot!).

For my brothers wedding (I don't know exact amount but it wouldn't have been much as he/my family aren't well off). The ceremony was at the registry office (which had a lovely garden for photos - no idea why they have such a bad rep), we went for dinner at a pub (about 25 guests), then we had a function room (at another pub). The adults sat and talked and drank (there was a min spend, but my family are drinkers so we hit it easily, essentially as long as your guests drink enough you don't get charged). I imagine if you wanted to dance after you could go to a club. The cake was a git from a relative, and the bouquet was picked from a relatives garden. That was it, no other froof!

I'd definitely look at hotels that are licensed for marriages as many may have rooms that hold up to 30/40 etc. people. We're looking at central London hotels for this set up and have found a few. Agree that it may not be a full on bridal mag wedding but if that's not important to you (it's not to me, i'm not having most of what others would consider having at a regular/average wedding), then that's a moot point. Re: photographers, like anything else shop around. My brother in law had a photographer from group on (£300 I think) and he was absolutely fine and we're thinking of using them for our wedding. On the other end of the scale, a colleague is forking out £2k just for her photographer at which point, I just about managed to not fall off my chair. Don't feel like you have to have anything but what you and your fiance want.

We looked at venues that we decided against cos they had packages where things like chair covers came included and that was a detail I couldn't give a about, ditto cake stand and knife (we're not having a cake) and so many other details that we don't care about so we're looking at other venues. i'm also not spending a lot of money on my dress, I'll be wearing it for one day and my main objective will be to be able to dance in it so no long, puffy, flowy, standard wedding dress for me.

You don't sound stupid at all, wedding planning is new to us all when we start out and there's' definitely ways to keep costs to a minimum. A friend got a lot of her stuff (including dress and shoes) from eBay. Good luck ?

It could be done but you'd really have to think outside the box!

Dresses bought off the rail can have amazing discounts or even buy second hand. I would have done that but my OH insisted I bought new. To be honest it's a big expense for a dress that will be worn once!

We are only having 14 adults (including us) and 8 kids at our wedding. It's costing around £10k but we are getting married at a castle (just the wedding ceremony part) and that was just under £1k but we both really wanted to get married there.

A friend of mine got married at a registry office and it was actually a very beautiful building. Check out your local one and see what it's like. Go to a nice pub or restaurant for a meal. Keep it simple and just enjoy being with those you have chosen to invite

Not stupid at all, and very sensible I reckon! You just decide what's important to you, and keep off the 'you must have a perfect wedding' blogs. :-)

Just random suggestions, but they may help - why not keep the day a bit shorter than usual (especially if it includes lots of kids) - go for reg office, hire a village hall, have a buffet with pre-packed stuff (I went to one that did this last year, a mix of Iceland and M&S nibbles and it was great!), or have cake and sarnies like afternoon tea, if the hall has a bit of outside space and the weather is good have some games (or races!!), give it a village fete vibe. Have some babies breath as flowers - the pretty white stuff florists use as filler - in jars. Call in some favours for people to make a cake/BYOB (maybe you could ask folk to bring a bottle of prosecco as a wedding present so you all have fizz). Have disposable cameras for everyone to take shots (there is always someone who takes a decent picture!)

I reckon you could have a perfectly lovely, simple and chilled out day like this, without worrying about sit down meals etc; and it may suit you better if you're a more chilled person. :-)

We're going down a route that's similar to this, and it somehow feels like a lot of fun!

Good luck!

It's perfectly doable but it involves more work and being more creative! Our wedding budget was 4k and we came in at 4.5k. I don't feel like we compromised on anything and we had a great day.

We had 40 for ceremony in a registry office then a gorgeous (private) room in a waterside pub. The room was lovely, bare brick walls, big fireplaces etc and only cost £200 to hire and they set up all the tables with decorations etc. We had fish and chips or steak & ale pie for the meal, no starter as it's such a filling meal! That was £10 per head, instead of dessert we had our favourite coffee shop (friends of ours!) make 3 cheesecakes that were decorated beautifully and used them as our wedding cake/dessert. Cost us £70. We didn't provide wine or drinks just a glass of prossecco each for a toast so another £100 or so.

Our evening reception for 80 people was in another beautiful pub, similar in style but bigger. Again private room with it's own bar. That was £350 hire but that was refundable against food so we ordered £360 worth of food to go alongside the tiers of cheese and huge pork pie that we had ordered from other places!

Most of the decorations were bought from ebay and were really cheap! It just took time to tart them up a bit and everyone said how amazing both rooms looked! I've seen now that the poundshop have some awesome wedding bits, it's worth shopping around!

Things where we saved money were for example the table flowers. For the daytime I wanted jars with hessian and lace and white roses. We had six tables plus table plan table, cake table etc. Florist quoted me £300!!!! I made the jars myself - (begged jars from everyone!) used ebay decorations and £20 worth of M&S white roses and baby's breath! Did them the day before the wedding and they looked great!

Instead of a mua I booked at the Mac counter in local dept store! Couldn't have been nicer and really happy with it! (Had a lot of problems with other mua's so this was last resort but it was great!) Paid £30 for trial and another £30 on the day. This was refundable against makeup purchased so I ended up with new makeup for honeymoon!

We splashed out a bit on hotel for the night before the wedding and the wedding night, custom made wedding rings (awkward shape engagement ring!), alterations for my dress cost more than we were expecting. With careful planning and creativity it can be done but most importantly lose the idea of the "magazine" style wedding! That's not possible on a budget but you can still have a beautiful wedding day!

Good luck

Anna x

£2k is a perfectly acceptable amount for a small wedding and you can get way more than a registry and home wedding

many places offer wedding packages under £1000, from holiday inn to old english inns and you can also DIY your own wedding

many local halls can be hire cheaply or many pubs/clubs have cheap or even free hire

food can cost anything from 50p per person (things like spagetti) to £100s per person, we have local caterers that do buffets from £3pp (the less guests the cheaper total food cost aswell)

ASDA do wedding cakes from £35 or you can make your own or get creative

dresses can be bough for under £20 honestly, look on Ebay or Lindybop for example

many people I know have married under £2000 so dont feel you have to go expensive just because others say, the minimum cost in england to marry is £115 and everything else is extra, if you can throw a party for £2000 then you can throw a wedding for £2000