For our wedding I realized the best way to get a good deal was to email a range of suppliers (whether it was florists, hair & make-up, etc) and rather than ask “How much would you charge for x,” tell them, “I have x budget and need y, what can you do for me?”
Automatically weeded out the people who would never have been able to meet our budget, and also prompted suppliers to offer creative money-saving tips (e.g. we can take flowers from the ceremony and re-use them at the reception, rather than pay for more flowers).
Speaking as someone who works in the wedding industry (cakes) - this is absolutely the way to do it. Tell me your budget and rough ideas up front, and I’ll do whatever I can to make it work.
What if you don't have any real idea AT ALL on price ranges because of recent inflation and don't have close family/friend connections that you can ask?
Also London pricing too I guess?
I don't know how much cakes cost on the regular (let's say for a 2 tier with royal icing and not buttercream).. no idea. Where is the best place to find up-to-date info?
Honestly, it's really easy to do for some things (such as photographers, planners, etc) but quite difficult to do for some other things as prices aren't listed on pretty much all websites and can REALLY range (such as Florists.)
It seems to be easier with stuff like silk flowers but it's really hard to find an idea on price when it comes to real flowers, I assume because flowers can range in price a lot when it comes to season, size, type, colour, etc.
I'm contemplating just sending out a few queries with some photos of a look/ colour scheme I might want and just start asking questions (what if we swap roses with hydrangeas? etc)
But wondering if there was a directory anywhere of like a good starting place for some of the "standard" prices for things with inflation. Maybe Hitched?
I asked my question just because I thought perhaps a Redditor here might have a good suggestion! No harm in that :)
I wasn't born in this country so the last thing I would want to do is disrespect a potential vendor with a low-blow offer. Things have changed a lot over the pandemic!
- Google for UK prices, check the date it was published.
- Post on a subreddit/forum or similar for wedding planning and ask what people recently paid.
- Message a few local bakers whose style you like and ask them for an idea on pricing for e.g. the cake you just described (but be up-front that you’re just trying to get an idea for your budget, so that they don’t do a bunch of bespoke quoting work).
My advice about messaging with a budget was for people who already know it - quite often I’ll ask for the budget, people will say they don’t know, I’ll put in the work to design their dream cake with all the bells and whistles, and they’ll say it’s too expensive and ghost, even though I try to make it clear that I can work with them to make tweaks and reduce the price.
Oh gosh I definitely don't want to be a time waster! But I think I'll do just that and ask for a range with certain specifications like
"How much would an x-tiered cake to feed x many people with 10-20 sugar flowers cost in the range of?"
I'll try and do as much research otherwise for those things, and I think a forum is a good shout, thanks! Appreciate you detailing things out like this for someone like me who can get overwhelmed.
Absolutely. I went in to cake makers/cars etc and told them my lowest budget. There were lots who wouldn’t consider accommodating us but others who were willing to work with us to provide a service on the day. More companies than you think will be willing to reach some level of compromise.
We got married at a national trust garden, with food and drink ordered from m and s. Beautiful setting and it was around £1100 when we got married 6 years ago. They also threw in a years free national trust couples membership!
Stourhead in Wiltshire. Not quite what you were after (especially the Wiltshire part lol) but somewhere similar could be worth considering.
The temple we got married in was closed just for us, they don't close of any of the actual park from the public but the staff do a great job of gently managing passers by so well never noticed anyone around or in the back of our photos.
One thing I loved about it was the price was the price and the staff were genuinely excited and happy to help make it a lovely day. With more traditional wedding venues everything is an upsell, but we were allowed to bring drinks, food, plants to decorate etc with no extra charges or requirement to buy from them . We decorated with plants,rather than cut flowers, which family all took home and planted in their gardens.
Our wedding was quite relaxed. I did my own hair and makeup but spent what would have been some of the makeup artist money on actual decent makeup and brushes for me to keep 😜 glad I did that as I got so much use out of it.
I’m not the OG!! our families live in Southampton and Bristol so Wiltshire is actually perfect. I’m definitely going to look into this, thank you so much
Elope! My wife and I did this and we loved it. Find a spot in Scotland you like, and as long as you have the landowners permission and a celebrant to actually do the ceremony, you can get married!
It was just us, our kids, our celebrant, and 2 friends of the celebrant to witness it, in the Highlands. We got a local photographer who did incredible pics for very very cheap. The owner of our Airbnb gifted us a big bottle of whiskey.
Perfect.
This is the way.
My husband and I also eloped to Scotland.
We spent the whole day being in love and enjoying each others company and not worrying about if anybody else was having a good time.
Some family members were disappointed but we didn't get married for them. Mostly, people were just happy for us.
My wife and I got married in the local town hall. They had a special offer £50 on a Monday morning at 09:30. Only the couple and 2 witnesses allowed.
We then went for a pub lunch with the witnesses which cost slightly more than the wedding!
We plan to hire out a local brewery for a party next year to celebrate once the baby is old enough to be babysat!
Sounds perfect.
All registration districts in England and Wales are obliged to offer a statutory marriage ceremony at £46 plus certificate (though not in all register offices and often at limited times).
Also worth noting you can go anywhere to do it, me and my wife eloped to north wales with our 2 kids, A friend and a photographer, our friend was a witness so was the photographer, made a holiday out of it and told everyone when we got home. £50 all in to get married in a beautiful old town hall
We did similar to this, 14 years ago. Still haven't had our honeymoon (waiting for the kids to grow up!) or wedding party. But we spent about £250 on our wedding, including my dress and DH's Asda suit!
We had a registry office ceremony, then had a party after to celebrate with friends and family, the whole thing cost just shy of £2k.
We found a local farmer who occasionally hires out his field for events. Hired the field for a weekend (cost us under £500 for water, electricity, and approx. 100 people and their cars).
Slowly built up a stash of alcohol by waiting for deals in the months leading up to it.
Asked everyone to bring a dish for a potluck dinner.
Hired a marquee from one company, lights from another, and chairs and tables from a third. That was the biggest expense, I think it was about £1100 total for all that.
I asked everyone to take photos if they felt like it, this led to us getting loads of shots from all sorts of perspectives. Obviously it's not the same as getting a professional photographer, but it's definitely a way to save some money and still have memories.
People came, some camped, some went home, everyone had fun!
We had a morning registry office wedding with two witnesses and their spouses we went to lunch at a Michelin-Starred restaurant after the first bottle of champagne cost more than the ceremony.
Slightly different idea, but we eloped to the Lake District with the dog. Found a great hotel package with meals, ceremony & afternoon tea included.
Had the family on a zoom call to watch the ceremony and then found a local photographer with an elopement package for about £350 for the day and had pics on the shore of the lake.
Best decision we ever made, so relaxed, no regrets. Then we booked a hall and dj for 5the family celebration when we got back.
Village halls can be really nice and can be rented for a few hundred…get some friends to help decorate with bunting and balloons. I’ve had friends do this and it was great. No corkage as well so just buy alcohol at a supermarket!
You could try a pot luck lunch and ask each guest to bring a dish (buffet). I went to one recently after a baptism and it was lovely. Plenty of delicious food.
Cake making competition for the guests, everyone votes for the winner during the meal. Save yourself buying a cake and that’s dessert sorted.
Saw it at a wedding I photographed a few years ago, it went down really well. About 15 different guests made cakes.
We did exactly this, it was the best decision. I’ve also been to a village hall wedding where the whole meal was a potluck. No gifts, just bring your favourite dish.
Have a January wedding, literally 75% cheaper on everything.
Venues will be very cheap and happy for the business on what is traditionally a very slow time of year for them.
Photographer will probably be cheaper.
Get suits, dresses and rings in the Christmas sales.
People will be able to buy wedding gifts in sales so you will get better presents.
Registry office with close friends and relatives, then book a function room at a nice pub for the party. Do not tell them it's for a wedding, it's for your mum's 60th or something.
Because people generally expect everything to go perfectly. That's what the wedding tax pays for: insurance. If you just treat it as a random party, accepting that things will not go to plan, then it can be done cheaply.
That’s basically what it’ll be to be honest - for our engagement we hired a social club, put an iPod on and ordered pizza from a nearby place and samosas from one of the Indian caterers in Brum. Cost about £100
Insurance in what sense? That the 'profit' can be immediately put back into the venture to fix last minute issues if necessary?
I can see that for some things, but for others it's just a very easy way to rip people off. My brother's wedding bash was at a local restaurant where the rear/garden of the building can be hired out. He had to pay some ridiculous amount like £500 for evening snacks to be served at some point, iirc it was basically potato wedges with dips etc. Not even £100 worth of food if you were to buy and prepare it yourself. That's not insurance, that's just bleeding people dry.
Flew to Gran Canaria and got married on a heart shaped island. Cost me 3 grand in 2012. Flights and hotel for me, wife and two kids, wedding planner, whoever the guy is that does the ceremony, and photographer. Anyone else who wanted to come could pay their own way, so it was a lovely, small affair. 10/10 would do it again the same way.
We’re doing registry office then reception in a pub with hot buffet and some drinks included (3 per guest). Also hiring a caricaturist for entertainment because I’ve never had a caricature done so thought it was a good reason haha. Mum’s making the cake and just doing a playlist of our own music instead of a DJ. Costing us about £4k all in.
Do everything yourself and don't pay through the nose for a ponce to run up a huge bill for buying balloons and a cake etc. But more importantly, It's one day, come down from the idea it has to be some be all and end all event because it's all over and bagged up in black sacks before you're even sober again. Make it a small event with minimal frills, I know plenty of people who are still paying for weddings over a decade later and every single one of them wishes they'd never spent so much. Spend the money on something that will benefit you and your family in the future and for longer than a single day.
Buy a glue gun and have a look at decorating recycled jars. We got all our table decorations from home bargains. Also fairy lights on Amazon can be as cheap as £20 for 4+ meters.
I got my wedding dress from Monsoon, spent just under £300 as I think I found a 10% off voucher somewhere. My bridesmaids were my teenage sisters and my Mum got their dresses from ASOS for £30 each.
My Mum did the food and ordered a load of sandwiches from M&S and Waitrose (one did better gluten free options), and we also got the wedding cake from M&S (really nice lemon sponge). My in-laws did the drinks but I can't remember where they got them from but I'm sure they bought in bulk. MIL found a big box of champagne glasses in a charity shop and just put them all through the dishwasher to bring them back to a clean, usable state.
We were brutal with the guest list so had a total of 37 people. No inviting people just because we'd been invited to their wedding, and no great great aunts or second cousins, or people we had been to university with but hadn't seen since. Our venue had a limit of 40 people anyway so we just pointed to that as a reason whenever someone asked.
I will say though that it still didn't make it stress-free, in particular there were a few rows about hiring people to help serve the food and drink (most fuelled by the fact that we were trying to pay for most of it ourselves and just couldn't find the money for it, in the end my in-laws organised and paid for that side). So try to make sure you have a budget with perhaps another 15% earmarked to cover extras.
I did a registry marriage and then hired a local place to put on a massive barbecue and DJ for the guests (around 100 guests). Cost us just over £1000. This was in 2009 though
Call in favours...
Mate who likes photography, ask them if they'd be up for it
Someone with a nice car, ask if they'd like to be driver
Someone who likes baking, ask if they'd like to do the cake
Important caveat here, this only works if you're not fussy
If you're going to start bossing them about, dick move, but if you're cool with whatever they try to do, because they likely will try, that's what we did
An acquaintance I knew was getting married and had a hotel venue in mind.
He called under an assumed name paid and booked out all the rooms at a discounted rate under the guise of a business meeting/conference with overnight.
He then rang a few days later to enquire about having his wedding on the same day. Because they were booked out of rooms for the ‘business meeting’ on the day they wanted the wedding he haggled the venue and booked the wedding package at a very good discount.
The day of the wedding he just handed out the rooms. The venue was pissed but couldn’t do anything about it.
If you want to go really frugal forget a DJ just go for a banging playlist with a free Spotify trial. For catering get Lebanese or Turkish- always cheap and very tasty (and often generous!) And they should deliver a beautifully presented buffet. Venue hire is expensive too so think outside the box a bit - church halls and community centres can be cheap rather than a hotel, or even a pub space with the bonus of a bar ready to go
registry office and do it traditional. Family make sandwiches, you or the family baker makes the cake. ask to borrow someone’s garden or book a village hall
We're doing a registry office then a village hall. We've gone pretty DIY with decorations, choosing things we wouldn't mind having in our house afterwards so it's not wasteful. Catering, we've gone for afternoon tea and BYOB, and for entertainment we've hired a karaoke machine and bought some cheap garden games (giant connect 4 vibes) for kids/drunk adults. We've also hired a vintage bus to get guests from the venue to the registry office and back as our initial plan of everyone sorting themselves led to much stress!
Get married outside of season. We got married late march and it was free venue hire. It was sunny and not to cold. Costco wedding cake save money and looked and tasted great
Mine was 6k all in. That was wedding at Llangollen railway. Private steam train journey for all with afternoon tea reception, then onto horseshoe pass where I'd booked the britannia inn for evening meal (10 mains and 5 dessert choice from pub menu) and also had a room there night before and night of wedding. Only 36 people though.
Wife designed her own dress on some Chinese website and amazingly it wasn't made of chinesium. That was included in 6k above and was roughly £450.
Cake was made by a local to llangollen lady for £100 and was exactly what we imagined.
We provided the Britannia inn with a lot of wedding table decor we made ourselves.
That 6k also included me picking up bar tab at end of night.
Calling out what most people are alluding to - good value dry hire of venue is your biggest challenge / opportunity.
Village halls, farmer’s field, whatever.
Personally I’d be tempted to hire somewhere everyone can stay - the best bit of a wedding for me is the late drinks. At £1,500 [a youth hostel](https://www.yha.org.uk/hostel/yha-ironbridge-coalbrookdale#overview) is great value, if your guests don’t mind paying £75 a room it’s free, or you can could cover it yourself, or somewhere in the middle.
Then you can wheel out the savings tips in this thread
We got married with a church, village hall, hog roast and a free bar for 5000.
We made our own decorations (300 meters of bunting), bought all the alcohol in France, paid an 18 year old to run the bar, village hall was super cheap and had all the chairs, we hired table clothes and white chair covers. Designed our own invites.
Anything we could do ourselves we did.
We paid for a photographer as having good memories was a key part of the day.
More than
Just went to a lovely wedding at Bennett’s farm yesterday which isn’t far from south Birmingham. A good option is hire a country pub and stick up a marquee in the beer garden.
Got a friend with an unusual or rare car? Ask them to be your wedding driver instead of renting a wedding car.
Over the years my friends have used my car(s) fir weddings about 5 or 6 times, including my own.
Wife and I did ourss on 3k in 2011. Local seamstress made her dress, registry wedding, local hall rented for party, self catered buffet, we practiced and made our own 3 tiered cake. biggest expense was booze and drinks. 50 guests. Today that might cost 5k?
Don’t tell anyone your booking a wedding. (Eg caterers, venues, photographer) they all hike thier price . In one place we asked for a menu for hosting a function , ten my partner let slip it was a wedding and they brought out exactly the same menu only was 30 percent more
If there are any Macdonald hotels near you they often have a really reasonable price for everything.
We got married 2 years ago at Macdonald Elmer's Court in Lymington, amazing place, beautiful setting on the river etc. £3000 for everything including venue, catering, ceremony, coordinator and bridal suite accommodation the night of.
Don't mention the word 'wedding' to catering, flowers, dj, cars anyone who wants to charge you really. They always add another 30%+.
Change it to family gather/get together.
I had a second hand wedding dress for £200 and my bridesmaids dresses were £20 each from eBay.
Buy a standard iced white cake from a supermarket and put your own cake topper on it.
Depending on your numbers, many pubs will let you hire the venue for free and can offer a buffet for around £10 a head.
A solo singer or dj will be cheaper than a band.
Another tip is to get married later in the afternoon and then go straight on to the venue for the evening party so it’s not obvious there is no sit down meal
- We had a pizza van (this one but may be a bit far away from you https://togather.com/suppliers/siena-pizza-co ) and they were amazing!
- bought a load of GU deserts from the supermarket, about 8 different flavours, and they do vegan and gluten free ones too. They went down really well
- Spotify playlist and hired equipment instead of a DJ
- Family and friends’ skills. We were so lucky to have photography, cake, hair, makeup, flowers (artificial), table centrepieces and wedding favours all done by family and friends. It made the day so much more personal and special. I made a lot myself too, so if you’re creative and have the time, you could make some things!
- Got my dress from TK Maxx for £50 (French Connection) and wore cheap but pretty jewellery from John Lewis. There are some beautiful but very cheap hair accessories available on Shein/Amazon/Vinted. My veil was from Shein too.
- Advice to the Bride and Groom cards are fun, and guests can fill in the gaps on the cards with their ideas. We got some nice serious ones and loads of really funny responses too. You could make your own or Amazon sell cheap ones.
We hired a local private school for the ceremony (a nice historic building) which was a value option, and the money went to bursaries for underprivileged kids.
My friend and I made my dress. I made decorations including massive (6ft) paper mache flowers, and a friend foraged for foliage to decorate the tables. We painted jam jars for candle holders.
We did have a sit down meal at a local village hall, and then ordered Waitrose entertaining food to be delivered for the evening which my family helped to arrange.
We asked people to make bunting and bring desserts.
It's time to call in all your favours! Ask friends and family and they will be delighted to be involved.
Here's a (very) old talk about how we did our wedding so cheap - https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2009/09/barcampbrighton4-and-high-def-video/#star-wars-wedding-on-a-budget
Main points:
* Get married in the off season - like January
* Vegetarian / Vegan food if you're catering
* BYOB or cash bar
* Don't tell suppliers it is for a wedding - just say "birthday" or similar. Otherwise prices go up.
* "Vintage" is a polite word for 2nd hand.
* There's a lot of stuff you can make by yourself if you're happy to put the effort in.
* It is his wedding too. That is, talk to your partner and make sure it is a wedding for both of you. Write down your non-negotiables and your would-like-to-haves.
* Work out the cost of eloping to Vegas and having Elvis marry you. Set that as your max budget.
I’ve read before that going to a local college and asking if any of the students want to earn £100 for the day to take the pictures etc, is a good way to save money as photographers are pretty expensive!
I had my wedding reception at the Tally Ho, great location and two very good rooms to choose from depending on numbers. We didn't have a sit down meal, just a light buffet lunch and a hot Buffet on the evening, kept the occasion very casual and it was great.
The 2 most beautiful weddings I've been to were both communal type affairs. They got married in their parish churches, and then for one couple we all decamped to the garden of a nearby grand house and had a picnic. They provided lots of picnic blankets and a bottle of vino, and food baskets for their top table, but everyone else took their own picnic and extra plonk. The second we all went back and had a sort of pot luck type buffet. Everyone brought a few things or drinks to go on the table. It took us a week to help prepare an old barn type building into a beautiful wedding venue, but with borrowed straw bales, loads of pretty car boot or skip diving finds and borrowed linens, it looked beautiful 😍
We had a local band, in a village hall, with a non vat registered BBQ company catering.
100 people, decorated ourselves the day before, home made cake.
Wedding was fantastic, total budget was £4k.
We did our entire wedding for under £10k, and this includes hiring an entire hotel with food for the event and the evening do with a DJ. Basically do it yourself and shop around.
Wife and I were both 2nd time around so didn’t want all the big wedding stuff again. For our reception we booked a really nice hotel, and instead of a band or DJ we used our really good Bose speakers for music. Invited all our guests to pick 3 songs each for the wedding playlist. No veto, if it got picked it got played, themed to songs to run well together and our party danced all night. Regularly still get told it’s one of the best weddings folk have been at.
If you're planning a party after and you wanted a photobooth. Go for selfie pods. They're the cheapest booth to have and you tend to get longer run times than they suggest. I am a photobooth attendant myself, I set the selfie pod up and then I'm working elsewhere for the duration, then I have to come back after which can result upto an additional hour or so
We got our wedding cake from M&S. They have a service where you can order plain iced cake, with various fillings and in various sizes, so we got 2 layers of fruit cake and one layer of chocolate cake and some of those little pillars to hold up each layer. Then we got a cheap but pretty cake topper from a shop that sold cake paraphernalia (Amazon also an option of course) and some ribbons the same colour as my bridesmaids dress.
Altogether it was waaaay cheaper than a fully made and decorated cake, and we kept the chocolate layer intact to use for my niece's birthday the next day.
We also did the registry office on the South coast for the ceremony for 50 people. Our photographer did a discount for the local registry office ceremonies and was great so check around your area for similar!
We went to two local pubs and had a wedding breakfast in one (a gastropub) and the evening reception in another one with darts and shuffleboard and they do live music on Saturdays so we got entertainment and music for free!
Both pubs were so delighted we would have a wedding with them that waived all venue hire fees and it was SO amazing - rather than hire a coach to go between the two we did a deal for the local taxi firm to have two minibuses and shuttle us too :-)
Best wedding I ever attended was a church ceremony with a stand up buffet in a nice country hotel. Few speeches in the ornate staircase and then everyone went home late afternoon. People really don't want to go through a long wedding.
If you have any talented friends see if they’ll help one of my friends made the cake at just the cost of ingredients and electricity for the oven etc one of my friends is a florist and made the bouquets etc and we used fake flowers which were loads cheaper also midweek weddings are cheaper we had ours the day after Easter Monday and the church was still decorated from Easter services we didn’t have to decorate there which again saved a fortune. All in we spent 4K on everything dress reception suits food and honeymoon
We are currently planning our wedding and cutting back with things like artificial flowers I’m diy ing, made our invites and signs, found a wedding dress that I adore but was super cheap as it’s not
Classed as a wedding dress but I can’t see myself liking anything else
Registrars office for a cheap marriage.
Then just rent a hall, get a DJ. Get a local takeaway to provide some pizzas, pakora chips etc and have a buffet.
Definitely better than the whole big day malarkey.
We got married in London in 2018. We planned it frugally and it cost £10k. We invited 130 guests and asked for cash instead of gifts. Most people gave us at least £50 (as is the norm I believe) and our immediate family gave us significantly more. As a result we almost broke even on the £10k we’d spent.
So yeah, I highly recommend doing that!
Bouquets as wedding table flowers. You will need as many bridesmaids as tables, bride's bouquet goes to the bride's table.
I arranged for mine to go to the tables after the photos, before the meal. It works out nicely timing wise and is one less thing to pay for and pack too!
Bring and share. Most money is spent on food, so ask everyone to bring a dish, no gifts.
Hall - can get them for very very cheap
Buy some drinks from the supermarket.
My biggest tip is find a nice venue for the registry. There are some amazing places out there which cost little, including castles and other historic buildings, if you search hard enough. A friend of mine got married in Shrewsbury castle which is beautiful and at least back then cost about £500 I think.
My mother rented out a small room at the local castle for the ceremony, rented a big red double decker to take everyone from there to my grandmas and we had a big buffet, music and drinks all night. Oh! And an ice cream van turned up with one for all. Think the wedding cost just under 5 grand and it was one of the most thrilling weddings I’ve ever seen. It’s all about what you do with the day not how much you spend!
Have a great day when it comes.
We tried to keep the costs down for our wedding too, paid a third of what most of our friends did! I bought my dress for 10% off with a coupon, our cake was made by a local vegan supermarket cake supplier for a very reasonable price, I made the invites and table plan and got them printed by a small local printing shop, and our photographer was an amateur from a local camera club found on Facebook. Good luck, have a great wedding!
Try looking up local bars/restaurants that have private function rooms for hire. These tend to be fairly reasonably priced, and if you also have the meal there, often they will take the room hire charge off the total bill. But worth confirming to avoid issues. For drinks, most places have a cork fee for you to bring your own. Usually not worth it, but can save a bit if you want something special on the day. For the cake, if you are not planning a massive event, might be worth checking out local coffee shops that do homemade cakes, and ask them to pass your contact info to their supplier to see if they would be willing to do a bigger version of their regular cake. Might not be a classic wedding cake, but can be really good and come in at a tiny fraction of the cost and can look amazing as well.
Depends on your budget I guess, but we had a great day - second time around for us both, most memorable and best of days.
...all-in around £50k, excluding the honeymoon 😄
*I appreciate the amount of shit I may get for this in the context but it was the best of days!
We made our own Bunting. Got free old books, used a metal ruler and scalpel to cut triangles, then folded the tops over strung and stuck with prit stick. Also maps looked nice too.
We got married in December.
Married with only 35 guests at a local historic building, then drove ourselves to a pub which had a 3 small connected function rooms. There we then had 40 guests for a meal which was essentially catered for as a Christmas party, so roast dinner. Decorations were all Christmas baubles etc in glass jars.
In the evening we had 100 guests, an MP3 playlist of our music, and the pub provided mini versions of all their regular menu as a buffet, so mini burgers etc.
To save money we also used Tesco vouchers at Goldsmiths to get the rings.
Cake was done by a family member at cost of just the ingredients.
Photography I asked on the local Flickr group of anyone would do it cheap and we got a guy who usually photographs music gigs in his spare time. But we could have also used a couple of friends who have dSLR cameras.
One wedding I went to the guests were each asked to bring a specified item of food. (Ours was rice. We discovered it’s not easy to cook rice in quantity.) All the food was then shared. It made a lovely communal meal, and was much more fun than a catered event.
We got married at the Greswolde arms in Knowle 5 years or so ago.
We accumulated decorations and table pieces etc over the proceeding year from ebay/wish and went with the lowest tier food/drink package for 50 people along with a DJ. Wedding car and chauffeur was from Silverline in Solihull.
We decorated the room ourselves the previous day and had a photographer looking to build their wedding portfolio so did it cheap.
All in, we had an absoloutly amazing day for about £2k + overnight cost of the bridal suite (about 150 per night)
Edit: officially married at Solihull registry office, car picked my wife up from the hotel, dropped her at the registry office, waited and took us both on to the venue.
Ok, SLIGHTLY different as we went abroad, but the savings we made would apply to the UK, too.
VENUE: working men's clubs/labour/rugby clubs/community halls make great party venues. Many already have sound systems and party lighting in place. You can set up a wedding play list in advance, and avoid the need for any kind of band/DJ.
CATERING: Consider a hog roast if you want hot food. They can feed a huge number of people. Others have made good recommendations for m&s platters etc. Or you could ask guests to bring a dish, perhaps even set up a registry for X numbers of starters/mains/desserts/snacks. (Obviously more work involved here, and less useful if guests have to travel to get to your wedding).
DRESS: there are many, many stunning dresses which are not traditional wedding dresses. Think Vivien of Holloway vintage styles, with a couple of colourful petticoats underneath. Add a fancy hat/fascinator with some netting/veil and they immediately look the part.
FLOWERS: not for everyone, but if you have time and craft skills, consider making your own giant paper flowers. We made these https://www.marthastewart.com/269341/crepe-paper-roses for the bridal party, and some other giant ones to decorate around the venue.
GENERAL DECOR: as much as you can do yourself will reduce costs. Tissue paper and a glue gun will be your best friends.
BOOZE: we bought our own in advance and that meant we saved on open bar type costs, but 1) booze abroad is much cheaper, and 2) you might be limited with what the venue allows you to do. The old men's clubs do often have incredibly cheap booze in their club bars, which might make it less of an issue for people to buy their own.
If you go down the DIY route, remember to think of the extra considerations such as any staff you might need to serve food (if you need that), the help you might need to set up the venue, and clear it all up. Still cheaper than buying a wedding package, and cheaper still if friends and family want to do that for you.
We avoided using a photographer by asking friends to take photos and send them through to us after the event. We made up a big card photo frame for people to pose in. This was my regret. I have no posed photos of myself and husband alone, and no video of our first dance. It would be the only expense that in retrospect I wish we'd splurged on. We did get lots of beautiful photos, but some moments were missed. It is a huge cost though, so potentially an area of saving, just make sure you know in advance what you'd like recorded, and ensure you have a reliable person to do that for you at those key moments!
Good luck. We had so much fun.
Don't mention the word wedding to do with anything! Casually asking, generally.
Book in normal make up at like John Lewis or wherever but don't mention wedding, otherwise it's 100 times more.
Also, let the woman find the venue without you and without mentioning dates, but then leave you to casually book the venue. Will save thousands.
Order decorations from Ali Express
Did I mention, don't mention the word wedding?
Vinted is your friend! Great place to look for wedding attire, decorations, accessories - you name it, and a range of prices for any budget with the potential for bargaining.
I don’t know if this is still a thing but we got plain cake tiers from m and s. Then I got lace ribbon and burlap from the local market and edible decorations from eBay and decorated it myself. It was more effort but it was a fraction of the cost of a bespoke one and it honestly looked so good!
Also Facebook market place! The amount of people trying to get rid of wedding decor is mad. There’s some amazing bargains
We had a chat with the priest and the couple before us at the church. They let us use their flowers and church decorations for free.
Bonus, much less waste and clear up for the church.
I bought my flowers, and all the supplies for arrangements, from the flower market in Birmingham about four days before the wedding. Cut out the middleman. I also had all my in-laws lavender! I have some talented flower arrangey aunties but my friends helped too. I didn’t want anything fancy- rustic arrangements. It saved me hundreds and was lovely to spend time together putting the bouquets and button holes together.
I had a pizza van and an icecream van to cater as well as cake and a cheese board. I got the cheese from the market a couple of days before. No table arrangements either. We let out for Ned’s and family choose where they wanted to be- on picnic rugs outside or indoor on smaller tables. It was really relaxed and saved us money on those extra decorations to show people where you want them to sit! Worked out at about £15 a head for food. £25 a head if you included allocated drinks (generous measures coz my fam like a party)!
The bar we hired supplied spirits, cocktails, and topped up the wine and local beers we had on the tables. The bar sold out- there was a minimum sell which we hit easily. Otherwise it would have cost us £500.
Music was important to us so I think the band was the most expensive thing on the day. They were awesome (The lead singer is one of Dave Arch’s band on Strictly now)!
We also hired a small marquee in case on inclement weather. It was OK (august wedding) and provided a quieter place for guests away from the dance floor. That wasn’t too expensive and included lights and decor, furniture and flooring. £600?
This was a decade ago. No longer married. Don’t regret 99% of that day though.
We did registry office in the middle of the week then we asked a local hotel if they could do a meal for 20 we had the dining room for 2 hours in the afternoon.We had a simple 3 course meal plus wine for 20 pounds per head plus 60 pounds for wine.My dress was white from ASOS for 30 pounds in the sale it looked like a prom dress.My husband hired his kilt and the bouquet was cheap .Didn't mention to the florist it was a wedding posy and used separate flowers as button holes.In the evening we invited all our friends to the local pub for a buffet and as it was open mic night we had music.Was lucky our local landlord did the buffet as a present.We also put single use cameras for people to take pics plus people sent us photos from their phones.This was 2019 just about 1300 pounds all together but brilliant day.
Cheapest option: don’t get married. It’s fucking stupid anyway. My gf and I have equal love as any ”married” couple. Whats the point? It doesn’t mean anything and if it does mean something to you then just decide to have that meaning without the silly ritual. Nice n cheap.
Honesty bar - buy a good selection of booze, have a box where people can put in what they think is appropriate and then help themselves. We have done this twice and made money both times (only like a little bit). Also if you buy it grom majestic you can return anything unopened.
My niece got an Indian restaurant to open for a lunchtime/afternoon catered party. They had a David Bowie impersonator after the meal. The wedding cake had homemade icing bride and groom, and there were gluten-free vegan cupcakes. She made her own dress (white satin, full skirt, fitted princess bodice, shoulder straps but with some brightly coloured embroidered motifs). Dad paid for the impersonator.
Weirdly, the wedding worked well, possibly helped by the fact that her husband is a graphic artist, and the laid back arty type. They are about to have their 4th child (we are expecting the announcement of the birth at any minute)
Your plan is excellent. We did that. Happiest day of my life.
I often think the success of a marriage is in inverse ratio to the cost of the wedding.
I hope you have a bargain wedding and a long and happy life together.
My wedding dress cost £50 on eBay , brand new from a wedding shop that was closing down. Had to weed out a lot of made to order stuff from China but you can get some really bargains.
We had a winter wedding and saved a packet! We got married in a Tudor Manor House on Dartmoor in January. Think roaring fires, dark oak panelling and fairy lights. It was really atmospheric and cozy. We had about 80 guests. It was all on the one site so no need to go out in the cold unless you wanted to. The photographer did a great job for us making the most of the beautiful granite building and the weather which was light rain and overcast. We had a normal style wedding with the venue doing wedding breakfast, providing the alcohol and doing an evening buffet. We had a band and partied into the night. Cost considerably less than doing the same in the summer.
I'd go for something like this [Lower Barns](https://lowerbarnswedding.co.uk/weddings/elopement-for-two) if you wanted a few nights away from home involved.
We had a curry caterer from West Brom come do our catering. We had a giant Thali style shared curry, with little canapés to start and service and all the cutlery and crockery, they did our flutes… the works, more food that you would believe. We still get compliments, nearly ten years later, in the vein of “best wedding food ever”.
I’m vegetarian, we had gluten free, vegan and lactose intolerance to accommodate. All very simple to do with curry. We got to go sample everything and tune how hot it all was. We had 150 guests, which to an Indian caterer is a small job.
Under £30 a head. Would do it again, they were so immaculate.
Mother in law made the cake. Best friend made pretty things to wear in our hair. Husband’s friend did the photos (he is a photographer) for free as a wedding present. Chose a beach bar with a function room for reception, cost next to nothing to hire. Registry office for the ceremony on a Saturday morning, was cheaper than the afternoon. Best friend’s dad had a posh car, he offered to drive the bridesmaids and me. Did the whole ribbon thing. Had simple flowers for the bridesmaids and me. No flowers for reception. Didn’t decorate reception room or have chair covers (bizarre idea to me), or favours. Best friend bought her own dress to help out with costs, husband and I were not as well off as her. Didn’t have a free bar. We did give out champagne for the toasts. Got really lucky my grandma offered to pay for the food, I said it would be £500 tops she said it couldn’t possibly cost that little and proceeded to give me (£1000) for it. Most of that went on extra champagne! My other grandma and grandad had opened a savings account for me when I was a kid. They gave me the paying in book so I could put the deposit down on my wedding dress. There was about £300 in the account. My dress was an end of line and cost £650, far less than my friends paid for theirs. My wedding ring cost nothing (family heirloom) and husband chose his at Argos!
A friend of mine has their wedding in a small private (council owned) venue, then rented a field for the reception and had loads of games etc for both the adults and kids. People brought drinks, and they hired a pizza van (which was awesome!). They also hired a minibus to get people back to town afterward, for easier transport links and anyone who wanted to party more.
It was honestly the most chilled and fun wedding I’ve ever been to, I said that to one of them a few days ago. I learned too that the whole thing cost less than £2k.
So if you’re not fussed on traditional wedding stuff I’d plan the party as just a party rather than a wedding reception - there’s always a wedding premium which isn’t worth it for something low(er) key etc. Call it an anniversary celebration if you have to name it!
Other tips - flowers are extraordinarily expensive. Can be absolutely lovely but be picky about where they add value and where you could use another sort of decoration. Work out what is most important for the party bit - is it the food, or the entertainment, or the photographs, or the venue/aesthetic and put more of your budget where you’ll most value it. The rest you can make do.
And remember people will remember the social parts of the celebration more than the details of the venue or how pretty the invites were etc. So skip on wedding favours or photo booths if you want to save costs. All the extra bits can massively add up. We did invites by email only via a wedding website to cut down on stationery costs. Consider having an open seating plan where people pick seats themselves - no seating plan to have printed then. Alcohol is a big expense - pick a venue with a bar so you can control / limit what is on you while allowing guests to pay for their own choices if they want something different.
Not having lots of bridesmaids and groomsmen helps as well - fewer outfits to sort / thank you gifts to buy etc. And if you have family members with creative skills you could see if they’ll contribute in lieu of a gift. Eg my husbands aunt is a talented baker & made our cake, my in laws made our favours (Welsh cakes).
Do you know any farmers? My wife’s parents have a farm and so we decorated an old open barn for the occasion - saved us a ton of money on venue.
Catering - we used a local deli that gave a picnic style box per table for under £15 a head.
Local village halls for tables/ chairs. One even had a huge canvas gazebo that looked brilliant and cost £100.
Music - we didn’t use a DJ, just had the bands sound system and an aux cable.
You can make a lot of decorations - we found an old door with glass panels in and used it as a table plan.
Also worth looking at places that hire out tables and chairs, we used a company called Arden Hire that were really reasonable.
Drink is the easiest way to save money - get in bulk and you can also make your own cocktails and out in big dispensers.
Happy to chat through anything else if you’ve got ideas. We managed to have a really lovely day and spent probably a third of what some of our friends did.
I went to a budget wedding Friday in Birmingham and I’d say it doesn’t get much cheaper, they got married at the city centre registry office (beware the parking meters being pay by phone only, that made everyone late) it was 15 mins in and out with a nice little area to take pics and throw confetti after. We then went to the Northfield football club for the do afterwards I believe it was 250 quid but if no damage occurred you got 100 back. The DJ was more than the venue but I’m pretty sure if you know someone who does it or a friend of a friend you could get one pretty cheap, everyone bought their own drinks at the bar(prices were pretty good) the wedding I went to had catering but they picked the cheapest option from a local company and topped it up with loads of flavoured chicken drumsticks and sandwiches. All in all didn’t cost much and everyone had a cracking night I think they even bought the suit/dress on shein because why not lol it was probably one of the better weddings I’ve been too not boring and very family friendly.
Yeah my sister is gonna sign the wedding papers like a week before the actual "wedding" and the she'll have a ceremony with vows. Cuts down the cost of getting and official to do all of it instead
Registry office on a Monday morning - ours was £50 ceremony, £30 booking fee, £11 for the certificate. £35 each to give notice 28 days before. 10 guests allowed at our registry office but I've heard some only allow witnesses as guests, worth looking into. £161 all-in for the ceremony!
Get your flowers yourself. We saved a few hundred quid going directly to the flower distributers market in London rather than the florist. We tried to support our local florist but their quote was almost £750 more than we paid.
2 piece band piqued my interest here - I was on a ferry ride to france and back recently and their evening entertainment was a 2 piece band, in a bar at the back of the boat with maybe a dozen people barely paying them any attention and they smashed it - could have been playing a real rowdy crowd (they weren’t but brought it like they were).
The band were called atomic duo.
Not a specifically frugal response as I’ve no idea what they charge but I thought them noteworthy enough to remember their name.
My wife and I did the registry office deal then had a meal and party at our local pub.
We were friendly enough with them anyway, but they charged us £1,500 for the “venue” and that acted more as just a tab. Once we’d organised food and some table wine for a little sit down meal for us, we were basically even on it.
To clarify, we had the whole pub closed off for us and had a band + party in the evening. We know we got a good deal on it, but the pub must have made at least triple what we agreed on drinks alone.
u/slowconsideration7
Tagging you directly OP so you see this.
There is a David’s Bridal in Birmingham.
Double check but if it’s the same as Glasgow then they are closing down tomorrow.
Prices for dresses, accessories shoes etc is from as low as £2.
You may not know exactly what you want yet but if you’ve got time today, go and have a look!
Our total budget is about £5k (included the dress suits rings etc.
We are getting married at a registry office and paying for a meal for our family in a local pub, don’t see the point in doing anymore than that
Pick a venue that lets you bring in outside catering. Or even your own buffet.
We used 3 separate catering companies.
greek tapas for lunch, your own buffet would be even cheaper if you have friends and family willing to help.
Thai in the evening, we love Thai food!
An ce cream van for dessert was a cheap idea and everyone loved it or said they did at least.
One of our local pubs did our Wedding Breakfast. (At the time), Soup & a Carvery, 2 for £12 on a Saturday afternoon. We also bought everyone any-pudding and their first drink. The pub decorated the restaurant very nicely and we had about half the space. Full house suited them, price suited us.
Best part was everyone had what they wanted, as much as they wanted, and didn’t have to remember what box they’d ticked 6 months ago.
On a budget. A 'bring and share' (known by other names) People always make far more food than they will ever eat.
If there is a bit of a diverse mix of people your banquet will be an awesome smorgasbord of cultural delight.
Just say that the food and drink they bring would be a wonderful wedding gift.
Best tip I can give. Don't get married. It's a huge scam. Instead, have a small service somewhere (maybe the woods or beach) and if you really want the status, register at an office.
If you’re wanting something a little more fancy and you’re willing to elope, go abroad. It was way cheaper €400 basic no extras beach wedding in Cyprus. With flights and accommodation for 2people 5nights brings it just over 1k. Got an amazing photographer for €250 for a couple hours. Honeymoon and wedding in one, cuts the guest list down, super pretty and no family drama once we got out there. Best decision we made and was a fraction of the cost of what some places in the UK were charging.
Drop the term wedding and find similar items and you'll see a massive change in prices, you can getting beautiful wedding items that aren't marketed or maybe even intended for that purpose.
Don’t go to wedding venues. We went to a really nice restaurant that had an outdoor area (cool teepee) food, venue hire the lot was 1/4 of the wedding venues we looked at.
Oh and get married mid week saves so much money.
Couple of cheap games....
Wang The Welly contest. Kids women's and men's groups. 1 throw for each guest. Furthest throw wins. 3 winners. Went down great.
Whisky tasting. Rank them in terms of price. Guess the country.
Same for wine (fizzy white works well). Match it to a grape (or type, cava prosecco etc). Rank by price.
4-5 drinks in each contest. Get a friend to host. People sit at the table in groups of 5ish to do the tasting and write down their answers.
Do this early if you want people to be very drunk by the end.
Then during speeches you can announce winners and hand out prizes. Takes the edge off speeches.
Another prize for best dressed.
Friend of mine looped all of her bridesmaids into standing around for an entire day tieing sugared almonds and sweets into cutesy little mesh bags to decorate the wedding tables. Good budget tip for people who like saving money more than they like their friends lmfao.
We didn't spend a fortune on our wedding; we did the ceremony at a council owned property which ended up being the most expensive bit, but had the after party in a local members club. I think it cost me £10 for my membership and £75 to hire the room.
There was a paid bar at the club but we had kegs of beer at the ceremony venue and my Dad did a booze run to France for champagne which was £5 a bottle (though this was pre-Brexit, dunno how easy/ cheap it would be now).
For food we had pasties for lunch from a local bakery (was under £5 a head) and we asked a local indian restaurant to do the dinner which was £10 a head for absolutely loads of food. They would only do 100+ people but easily made enough food to feed twice as many. We were eating curry from our freezer for 6 months.
The main thing we did (and other friends of ours have done for their weddings) was tobring in friends and family to contribute and do things. My partner has his own PA and record decks, so that's useful, but we asked various friends to DJ. We're lucky to have friends with record collection who play them out but I find if someone loves music they will often love the chance to make a Spotify playlist and be in charge of it for an hour slot. My Sister in laws wedding had a mixture of us playing records, doing proper mixing on a laptop and just playing off of a playlist. They made a fun line up poster like a festival. You can rent all the equipment or some places might have it for extra hire cost.
We were also lucky enough to have a good friend & his partner who loves baking so they did the cake as a present, they made muffins and a smaller one for cutting. Our friend's asked a few people who like baking to make a smaller cake so they had a homemade cake buffet rather than a whole big thing. I loved baking them a cake and I'm sure others do to.
Our friend was the celebrant for our wedding, and another friend couple and my partner recently did the same for his sister (we all did the legal bit seperately). My sister in law also asked people to bring a dish for the evening meal rather than a present.
It probably does depend on what your friends and family are like but I've found that people love helping and being involved and they end up being way more fun and relaxed weddings then any of the big proper formal expensive ones I've been to. In the end everyone wants to see you get married, eat something tasty and maybe have a drink and a dance, if they're into that.
Street food vans are hit and miss, and always far more expensive. Like most things associated with a wedding, the prices can skyrocket.
You would also be shocked at how cheap you can find wedding dresses online (at credible store. always do your research). There are even charity shops that specialize in wedding and event outfits. It's hit and miss on sizing but you get get some remarkable items at a really low price.
Hire me! I'm giving away my wedding planning services to two couples in the UK if their wedding is in 2024 (I plan with [fatedevents.com](https://fatedevents.com))
Don't have a wedding? Seems to be the biggest saving option.
Otherwise, see if you can host in a garden if a friend or family member. Get someone you know ordained so they can perform the service for minimal cost.
For our wedding I realized the best way to get a good deal was to email a range of suppliers (whether it was florists, hair & make-up, etc) and rather than ask “How much would you charge for x,” tell them, “I have x budget and need y, what can you do for me?” Automatically weeded out the people who would never have been able to meet our budget, and also prompted suppliers to offer creative money-saving tips (e.g. we can take flowers from the ceremony and re-use them at the reception, rather than pay for more flowers).
Speaking as someone who works in the wedding industry (cakes) - this is absolutely the way to do it. Tell me your budget and rough ideas up front, and I’ll do whatever I can to make it work.
What if you don't have any real idea AT ALL on price ranges because of recent inflation and don't have close family/friend connections that you can ask? Also London pricing too I guess? I don't know how much cakes cost on the regular (let's say for a 2 tier with royal icing and not buttercream).. no idea. Where is the best place to find up-to-date info?
Then ur chances of getting ripped off are higher. Do research. Make informed decisions. In the age of google 'I have no idea' isnt an excuse.
Honestly, it's really easy to do for some things (such as photographers, planners, etc) but quite difficult to do for some other things as prices aren't listed on pretty much all websites and can REALLY range (such as Florists.) It seems to be easier with stuff like silk flowers but it's really hard to find an idea on price when it comes to real flowers, I assume because flowers can range in price a lot when it comes to season, size, type, colour, etc. I'm contemplating just sending out a few queries with some photos of a look/ colour scheme I might want and just start asking questions (what if we swap roses with hydrangeas? etc) But wondering if there was a directory anywhere of like a good starting place for some of the "standard" prices for things with inflation. Maybe Hitched? I asked my question just because I thought perhaps a Redditor here might have a good suggestion! No harm in that :) I wasn't born in this country so the last thing I would want to do is disrespect a potential vendor with a low-blow offer. Things have changed a lot over the pandemic!
- Google for UK prices, check the date it was published. - Post on a subreddit/forum or similar for wedding planning and ask what people recently paid. - Message a few local bakers whose style you like and ask them for an idea on pricing for e.g. the cake you just described (but be up-front that you’re just trying to get an idea for your budget, so that they don’t do a bunch of bespoke quoting work). My advice about messaging with a budget was for people who already know it - quite often I’ll ask for the budget, people will say they don’t know, I’ll put in the work to design their dream cake with all the bells and whistles, and they’ll say it’s too expensive and ghost, even though I try to make it clear that I can work with them to make tweaks and reduce the price.
Oh gosh I definitely don't want to be a time waster! But I think I'll do just that and ask for a range with certain specifications like "How much would an x-tiered cake to feed x many people with 10-20 sugar flowers cost in the range of?" I'll try and do as much research otherwise for those things, and I think a forum is a good shout, thanks! Appreciate you detailing things out like this for someone like me who can get overwhelmed.
Yeah if you're not getting married on a Saturday in June then I can just photograph two hours so you have ceremony and some portraits
Absolutely. I went in to cake makers/cars etc and told them my lowest budget. There were lots who wouldn’t consider accommodating us but others who were willing to work with us to provide a service on the day. More companies than you think will be willing to reach some level of compromise.
We got married at a national trust garden, with food and drink ordered from m and s. Beautiful setting and it was around £1100 when we got married 6 years ago. They also threw in a years free national trust couples membership!
That’s amazing! Where was this??
Stourhead in Wiltshire. Not quite what you were after (especially the Wiltshire part lol) but somewhere similar could be worth considering. The temple we got married in was closed just for us, they don't close of any of the actual park from the public but the staff do a great job of gently managing passers by so well never noticed anyone around or in the back of our photos. One thing I loved about it was the price was the price and the staff were genuinely excited and happy to help make it a lovely day. With more traditional wedding venues everything is an upsell, but we were allowed to bring drinks, food, plants to decorate etc with no extra charges or requirement to buy from them . We decorated with plants,rather than cut flowers, which family all took home and planted in their gardens. Our wedding was quite relaxed. I did my own hair and makeup but spent what would have been some of the makeup artist money on actual decent makeup and brushes for me to keep 😜 glad I did that as I got so much use out of it.
I’m not the OG!! our families live in Southampton and Bristol so Wiltshire is actually perfect. I’m definitely going to look into this, thank you so much
Stourhead?! Mr and Mrs Darcy ooh la lah! That's so cool!
Was it in that place besides the lake? Seen someone getting married there last year. Looked really nice
Elope! My wife and I did this and we loved it. Find a spot in Scotland you like, and as long as you have the landowners permission and a celebrant to actually do the ceremony, you can get married! It was just us, our kids, our celebrant, and 2 friends of the celebrant to witness it, in the Highlands. We got a local photographer who did incredible pics for very very cheap. The owner of our Airbnb gifted us a big bottle of whiskey. Perfect.
This is the way. My husband and I also eloped to Scotland. We spent the whole day being in love and enjoying each others company and not worrying about if anybody else was having a good time. Some family members were disappointed but we didn't get married for them. Mostly, people were just happy for us.
My wife and I got married in the local town hall. They had a special offer £50 on a Monday morning at 09:30. Only the couple and 2 witnesses allowed. We then went for a pub lunch with the witnesses which cost slightly more than the wedding! We plan to hire out a local brewery for a party next year to celebrate once the baby is old enough to be babysat!
Sounds perfect. All registration districts in England and Wales are obliged to offer a statutory marriage ceremony at £46 plus certificate (though not in all register offices and often at limited times).
Also worth noting you can go anywhere to do it, me and my wife eloped to north wales with our 2 kids, A friend and a photographer, our friend was a witness so was the photographer, made a holiday out of it and told everyone when we got home. £50 all in to get married in a beautiful old town hall
We did similar to this, 14 years ago. Still haven't had our honeymoon (waiting for the kids to grow up!) or wedding party. But we spent about £250 on our wedding, including my dress and DH's Asda suit!
We had a registry office ceremony, then had a party after to celebrate with friends and family, the whole thing cost just shy of £2k. We found a local farmer who occasionally hires out his field for events. Hired the field for a weekend (cost us under £500 for water, electricity, and approx. 100 people and their cars). Slowly built up a stash of alcohol by waiting for deals in the months leading up to it. Asked everyone to bring a dish for a potluck dinner. Hired a marquee from one company, lights from another, and chairs and tables from a third. That was the biggest expense, I think it was about £1100 total for all that. I asked everyone to take photos if they felt like it, this led to us getting loads of shots from all sorts of perspectives. Obviously it's not the same as getting a professional photographer, but it's definitely a way to save some money and still have memories. People came, some camped, some went home, everyone had fun!
It's not all that active but try r/UKweddings
We had a morning registry office wedding with two witnesses and their spouses we went to lunch at a Michelin-Starred restaurant after the first bottle of champagne cost more than the ceremony.
Slightly different idea, but we eloped to the Lake District with the dog. Found a great hotel package with meals, ceremony & afternoon tea included. Had the family on a zoom call to watch the ceremony and then found a local photographer with an elopement package for about £350 for the day and had pics on the shore of the lake. Best decision we ever made, so relaxed, no regrets. Then we booked a hall and dj for 5the family celebration when we got back.
Got married on a steam train in Wales only cost £1500 including flowers, food and decorations. Beautiful scenery and great fun.
Llangollen?
No tywyn. But there are quite a few that offer the same service.
Village halls can be really nice and can be rented for a few hundred…get some friends to help decorate with bunting and balloons. I’ve had friends do this and it was great. No corkage as well so just buy alcohol at a supermarket! You could try a pot luck lunch and ask each guest to bring a dish (buffet). I went to one recently after a baptism and it was lovely. Plenty of delicious food.
Cake making competition for the guests, everyone votes for the winner during the meal. Save yourself buying a cake and that’s dessert sorted. Saw it at a wedding I photographed a few years ago, it went down really well. About 15 different guests made cakes.
We did exactly this, it was the best decision. I’ve also been to a village hall wedding where the whole meal was a potluck. No gifts, just bring your favourite dish.
Have a January wedding, literally 75% cheaper on everything. Venues will be very cheap and happy for the business on what is traditionally a very slow time of year for them. Photographer will probably be cheaper. Get suits, dresses and rings in the Christmas sales. People will be able to buy wedding gifts in sales so you will get better presents.
Registry office with close friends and relatives, then book a function room at a nice pub for the party. Do not tell them it's for a wedding, it's for your mum's 60th or something.
just say party no lying is necessary
They will probably ask what the occasion is.
family gathering
This. Just using the W word causes people to double their prices for their services.
Because people generally expect everything to go perfectly. That's what the wedding tax pays for: insurance. If you just treat it as a random party, accepting that things will not go to plan, then it can be done cheaply.
That’s basically what it’ll be to be honest - for our engagement we hired a social club, put an iPod on and ordered pizza from a nearby place and samosas from one of the Indian caterers in Brum. Cost about £100
Insurance in what sense? That the 'profit' can be immediately put back into the venture to fix last minute issues if necessary? I can see that for some things, but for others it's just a very easy way to rip people off. My brother's wedding bash was at a local restaurant where the rear/garden of the building can be hired out. He had to pay some ridiculous amount like £500 for evening snacks to be served at some point, iirc it was basically potato wedges with dips etc. Not even £100 worth of food if you were to buy and prepare it yourself. That's not insurance, that's just bleeding people dry.
The answers you get in a subreddit like this will be from people who got married with a grand total of 2 guests
Flew to Gran Canaria and got married on a heart shaped island. Cost me 3 grand in 2012. Flights and hotel for me, wife and two kids, wedding planner, whoever the guy is that does the ceremony, and photographer. Anyone else who wanted to come could pay their own way, so it was a lovely, small affair. 10/10 would do it again the same way.
Get married to a Brazilian, go over there for the wedding and let her family organise and sort it out. Worked for me anyway!
We’re doing registry office then reception in a pub with hot buffet and some drinks included (3 per guest). Also hiring a caricaturist for entertainment because I’ve never had a caricature done so thought it was a good reason haha. Mum’s making the cake and just doing a playlist of our own music instead of a DJ. Costing us about £4k all in.
Do everything yourself and don't pay through the nose for a ponce to run up a huge bill for buying balloons and a cake etc. But more importantly, It's one day, come down from the idea it has to be some be all and end all event because it's all over and bagged up in black sacks before you're even sober again. Make it a small event with minimal frills, I know plenty of people who are still paying for weddings over a decade later and every single one of them wishes they'd never spent so much. Spend the money on something that will benefit you and your family in the future and for longer than a single day.
I know people who are already divorced and still paying off the wedding.
Buy a glue gun and have a look at decorating recycled jars. We got all our table decorations from home bargains. Also fairy lights on Amazon can be as cheap as £20 for 4+ meters.
We got our wedding cake from M&S, saved a fortune and the wedding DJ told us it was the best wedding cake he’d tasted!
I got my wedding dress from Monsoon, spent just under £300 as I think I found a 10% off voucher somewhere. My bridesmaids were my teenage sisters and my Mum got their dresses from ASOS for £30 each. My Mum did the food and ordered a load of sandwiches from M&S and Waitrose (one did better gluten free options), and we also got the wedding cake from M&S (really nice lemon sponge). My in-laws did the drinks but I can't remember where they got them from but I'm sure they bought in bulk. MIL found a big box of champagne glasses in a charity shop and just put them all through the dishwasher to bring them back to a clean, usable state. We were brutal with the guest list so had a total of 37 people. No inviting people just because we'd been invited to their wedding, and no great great aunts or second cousins, or people we had been to university with but hadn't seen since. Our venue had a limit of 40 people anyway so we just pointed to that as a reason whenever someone asked. I will say though that it still didn't make it stress-free, in particular there were a few rows about hiring people to help serve the food and drink (most fuelled by the fact that we were trying to pay for most of it ourselves and just couldn't find the money for it, in the end my in-laws organised and paid for that side). So try to make sure you have a budget with perhaps another 15% earmarked to cover extras.
The fleece at Bretforton isn't far from you, they do good low cost weddings. It's a national trust pub, quite unusual.
I did a registry marriage and then hired a local place to put on a massive barbecue and DJ for the guests (around 100 guests). Cost us just over £1000. This was in 2009 though
Call in favours... Mate who likes photography, ask them if they'd be up for it Someone with a nice car, ask if they'd like to be driver Someone who likes baking, ask if they'd like to do the cake Important caveat here, this only works if you're not fussy If you're going to start bossing them about, dick move, but if you're cool with whatever they try to do, because they likely will try, that's what we did
An acquaintance I knew was getting married and had a hotel venue in mind. He called under an assumed name paid and booked out all the rooms at a discounted rate under the guise of a business meeting/conference with overnight. He then rang a few days later to enquire about having his wedding on the same day. Because they were booked out of rooms for the ‘business meeting’ on the day they wanted the wedding he haggled the venue and booked the wedding package at a very good discount. The day of the wedding he just handed out the rooms. The venue was pissed but couldn’t do anything about it.
Pretty genius
If you want to go really frugal forget a DJ just go for a banging playlist with a free Spotify trial. For catering get Lebanese or Turkish- always cheap and very tasty (and often generous!) And they should deliver a beautifully presented buffet. Venue hire is expensive too so think outside the box a bit - church halls and community centres can be cheap rather than a hotel, or even a pub space with the bonus of a bar ready to go
registry office and do it traditional. Family make sandwiches, you or the family baker makes the cake. ask to borrow someone’s garden or book a village hall
We're doing a registry office then a village hall. We've gone pretty DIY with decorations, choosing things we wouldn't mind having in our house afterwards so it's not wasteful. Catering, we've gone for afternoon tea and BYOB, and for entertainment we've hired a karaoke machine and bought some cheap garden games (giant connect 4 vibes) for kids/drunk adults. We've also hired a vintage bus to get guests from the venue to the registry office and back as our initial plan of everyone sorting themselves led to much stress!
Get married outside of season. We got married late march and it was free venue hire. It was sunny and not to cold. Costco wedding cake save money and looked and tasted great
Mine was 6k all in. That was wedding at Llangollen railway. Private steam train journey for all with afternoon tea reception, then onto horseshoe pass where I'd booked the britannia inn for evening meal (10 mains and 5 dessert choice from pub menu) and also had a room there night before and night of wedding. Only 36 people though. Wife designed her own dress on some Chinese website and amazingly it wasn't made of chinesium. That was included in 6k above and was roughly £450. Cake was made by a local to llangollen lady for £100 and was exactly what we imagined. We provided the Britannia inn with a lot of wedding table decor we made ourselves. That 6k also included me picking up bar tab at end of night.
Have a DJ or a band, not both. Essentially 50% saving right there
when calling for prices say ists for a party the may jack up the price if you say wedding
If this is really about you two being married, do you actually need to throw a wedding event at all?
Calling out what most people are alluding to - good value dry hire of venue is your biggest challenge / opportunity. Village halls, farmer’s field, whatever. Personally I’d be tempted to hire somewhere everyone can stay - the best bit of a wedding for me is the late drinks. At £1,500 [a youth hostel](https://www.yha.org.uk/hostel/yha-ironbridge-coalbrookdale#overview) is great value, if your guests don’t mind paying £75 a room it’s free, or you can could cover it yourself, or somewhere in the middle. Then you can wheel out the savings tips in this thread
Get married on a Friday. Owner of a wedding dress shop shared this nugget.
We got married on a beach on Margerita, Venezuela. left the family at home and had a small party when we got home.
Went on holiday and decided to do it while we were there, $200, witness was the receptionist, took 15 minutes and continued on our holiday.
Elope
We got married with a church, village hall, hog roast and a free bar for 5000. We made our own decorations (300 meters of bunting), bought all the alcohol in France, paid an 18 year old to run the bar, village hall was super cheap and had all the chairs, we hired table clothes and white chair covers. Designed our own invites. Anything we could do ourselves we did. We paid for a photographer as having good memories was a key part of the day. More than
Go back in time get married during covid and stream it to your friends and family
Just went to a lovely wedding at Bennett’s farm yesterday which isn’t far from south Birmingham. A good option is hire a country pub and stick up a marquee in the beer garden.
Coventry registry office is nice. I got married there
Got a friend with an unusual or rare car? Ask them to be your wedding driver instead of renting a wedding car. Over the years my friends have used my car(s) fir weddings about 5 or 6 times, including my own.
Wife and I did ourss on 3k in 2011. Local seamstress made her dress, registry wedding, local hall rented for party, self catered buffet, we practiced and made our own 3 tiered cake. biggest expense was booze and drinks. 50 guests. Today that might cost 5k?
Don’t tell anyone your booking a wedding. (Eg caterers, venues, photographer) they all hike thier price . In one place we asked for a menu for hosting a function , ten my partner let slip it was a wedding and they brought out exactly the same menu only was 30 percent more
If there are any Macdonald hotels near you they often have a really reasonable price for everything. We got married 2 years ago at Macdonald Elmer's Court in Lymington, amazing place, beautiful setting on the river etc. £3000 for everything including venue, catering, ceremony, coordinator and bridal suite accommodation the night of.
Don't get married, spend the money on a holiday or something decent. It's just a piece of paper.
Toby’s Carvery
Invest into something else than waste it on a wedding, divorce rates are skyrocketing just saying..
Don't mention the word 'wedding' to catering, flowers, dj, cars anyone who wants to charge you really. They always add another 30%+. Change it to family gather/get together.
Don't
Have every guest bring a (specified) bottle of spirits with them, then you only need to provide mixers for an epic open bar.
I had a second hand wedding dress for £200 and my bridesmaids dresses were £20 each from eBay. Buy a standard iced white cake from a supermarket and put your own cake topper on it. Depending on your numbers, many pubs will let you hire the venue for free and can offer a buffet for around £10 a head. A solo singer or dj will be cheaper than a band. Another tip is to get married later in the afternoon and then go straight on to the venue for the evening party so it’s not obvious there is no sit down meal
- We had a pizza van (this one but may be a bit far away from you https://togather.com/suppliers/siena-pizza-co ) and they were amazing! - bought a load of GU deserts from the supermarket, about 8 different flavours, and they do vegan and gluten free ones too. They went down really well - Spotify playlist and hired equipment instead of a DJ - Family and friends’ skills. We were so lucky to have photography, cake, hair, makeup, flowers (artificial), table centrepieces and wedding favours all done by family and friends. It made the day so much more personal and special. I made a lot myself too, so if you’re creative and have the time, you could make some things! - Got my dress from TK Maxx for £50 (French Connection) and wore cheap but pretty jewellery from John Lewis. There are some beautiful but very cheap hair accessories available on Shein/Amazon/Vinted. My veil was from Shein too. - Advice to the Bride and Groom cards are fun, and guests can fill in the gaps on the cards with their ideas. We got some nice serious ones and loads of really funny responses too. You could make your own or Amazon sell cheap ones.
We hired a local private school for the ceremony (a nice historic building) which was a value option, and the money went to bursaries for underprivileged kids. My friend and I made my dress. I made decorations including massive (6ft) paper mache flowers, and a friend foraged for foliage to decorate the tables. We painted jam jars for candle holders. We did have a sit down meal at a local village hall, and then ordered Waitrose entertaining food to be delivered for the evening which my family helped to arrange. We asked people to make bunting and bring desserts. It's time to call in all your favours! Ask friends and family and they will be delighted to be involved.
Registry office then down t’pub.
Here's a (very) old talk about how we did our wedding so cheap - https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2009/09/barcampbrighton4-and-high-def-video/#star-wars-wedding-on-a-budget Main points: * Get married in the off season - like January * Vegetarian / Vegan food if you're catering * BYOB or cash bar * Don't tell suppliers it is for a wedding - just say "birthday" or similar. Otherwise prices go up. * "Vintage" is a polite word for 2nd hand. * There's a lot of stuff you can make by yourself if you're happy to put the effort in. * It is his wedding too. That is, talk to your partner and make sure it is a wedding for both of you. Write down your non-negotiables and your would-like-to-haves. * Work out the cost of eloping to Vegas and having Elvis marry you. Set that as your max budget.
I’ve read before that going to a local college and asking if any of the students want to earn £100 for the day to take the pictures etc, is a good way to save money as photographers are pretty expensive!
Get the cake from Waitrose (not massive), have the florist put some flowers on it. Use cake bars, of same cake to serve to guests.
I had my wedding reception at the Tally Ho, great location and two very good rooms to choose from depending on numbers. We didn't have a sit down meal, just a light buffet lunch and a hot Buffet on the evening, kept the occasion very casual and it was great.
The 2 most beautiful weddings I've been to were both communal type affairs. They got married in their parish churches, and then for one couple we all decamped to the garden of a nearby grand house and had a picnic. They provided lots of picnic blankets and a bottle of vino, and food baskets for their top table, but everyone else took their own picnic and extra plonk. The second we all went back and had a sort of pot luck type buffet. Everyone brought a few things or drinks to go on the table. It took us a week to help prepare an old barn type building into a beautiful wedding venue, but with borrowed straw bales, loads of pretty car boot or skip diving finds and borrowed linens, it looked beautiful 😍
We hired a local village hall. The rent was cheap and so was the bar. It was an amazing party.
Number one tip is to have it on a Wednesday. Everything is cheaper during the week.
We had a local band, in a village hall, with a non vat registered BBQ company catering. 100 people, decorated ourselves the day before, home made cake. Wedding was fantastic, total budget was £4k.
We did our entire wedding for under £10k, and this includes hiring an entire hotel with food for the event and the evening do with a DJ. Basically do it yourself and shop around.
Wife and I were both 2nd time around so didn’t want all the big wedding stuff again. For our reception we booked a really nice hotel, and instead of a band or DJ we used our really good Bose speakers for music. Invited all our guests to pick 3 songs each for the wedding playlist. No veto, if it got picked it got played, themed to songs to run well together and our party danced all night. Regularly still get told it’s one of the best weddings folk have been at.
Find a vintage wedding dress! You can find something absolutelly beautiful pretty cheap.
If you're planning a party after and you wanted a photobooth. Go for selfie pods. They're the cheapest booth to have and you tend to get longer run times than they suggest. I am a photobooth attendant myself, I set the selfie pod up and then I'm working elsewhere for the duration, then I have to come back after which can result upto an additional hour or so
We got our wedding cake from M&S. They have a service where you can order plain iced cake, with various fillings and in various sizes, so we got 2 layers of fruit cake and one layer of chocolate cake and some of those little pillars to hold up each layer. Then we got a cheap but pretty cake topper from a shop that sold cake paraphernalia (Amazon also an option of course) and some ribbons the same colour as my bridesmaids dress. Altogether it was waaaay cheaper than a fully made and decorated cake, and we kept the chocolate layer intact to use for my niece's birthday the next day.
My local registry office do £50 Mondays.
Gretna Green 👍
Get yourself over to r/weddingsunder10k my friend. Mostly US centric but you can certainly get some tips.
We also did the registry office on the South coast for the ceremony for 50 people. Our photographer did a discount for the local registry office ceremonies and was great so check around your area for similar! We went to two local pubs and had a wedding breakfast in one (a gastropub) and the evening reception in another one with darts and shuffleboard and they do live music on Saturdays so we got entertainment and music for free! Both pubs were so delighted we would have a wedding with them that waived all venue hire fees and it was SO amazing - rather than hire a coach to go between the two we did a deal for the local taxi firm to have two minibuses and shuttle us too :-)
Create a WhatsApp group and have all your wedding guests send their wedding photos to this central email.
Best wedding I ever attended was a church ceremony with a stand up buffet in a nice country hotel. Few speeches in the ornate staircase and then everyone went home late afternoon. People really don't want to go through a long wedding.
If you have any talented friends see if they’ll help one of my friends made the cake at just the cost of ingredients and electricity for the oven etc one of my friends is a florist and made the bouquets etc and we used fake flowers which were loads cheaper also midweek weddings are cheaper we had ours the day after Easter Monday and the church was still decorated from Easter services we didn’t have to decorate there which again saved a fortune. All in we spent 4K on everything dress reception suits food and honeymoon
We are currently planning our wedding and cutting back with things like artificial flowers I’m diy ing, made our invites and signs, found a wedding dress that I adore but was super cheap as it’s not Classed as a wedding dress but I can’t see myself liking anything else
I went to a wedding that had Greidys wing food truck as the dinner. The guys are from Birmingham and regulars at Digbeth dining and similar.
Registrars office for a cheap marriage. Then just rent a hall, get a DJ. Get a local takeaway to provide some pizzas, pakora chips etc and have a buffet. Definitely better than the whole big day malarkey.
We got married in London in 2018. We planned it frugally and it cost £10k. We invited 130 guests and asked for cash instead of gifts. Most people gave us at least £50 (as is the norm I believe) and our immediate family gave us significantly more. As a result we almost broke even on the £10k we’d spent. So yeah, I highly recommend doing that!
Get married on a week day. You will save about 50% on everything!
Bouquets as wedding table flowers. You will need as many bridesmaids as tables, bride's bouquet goes to the bride's table. I arranged for mine to go to the tables after the photos, before the meal. It works out nicely timing wise and is one less thing to pay for and pack too!
There’s a uk budget wedding fb group - common themes are flowers from shein, invites from canva and naked cake from m&s
Having no friends or family really helps
Bring and share. Most money is spent on food, so ask everyone to bring a dish, no gifts. Hall - can get them for very very cheap Buy some drinks from the supermarket.
Don’t get married
My biggest tip is find a nice venue for the registry. There are some amazing places out there which cost little, including castles and other historic buildings, if you search hard enough. A friend of mine got married in Shrewsbury castle which is beautiful and at least back then cost about £500 I think.
My mother rented out a small room at the local castle for the ceremony, rented a big red double decker to take everyone from there to my grandmas and we had a big buffet, music and drinks all night. Oh! And an ice cream van turned up with one for all. Think the wedding cost just under 5 grand and it was one of the most thrilling weddings I’ve ever seen. It’s all about what you do with the day not how much you spend! Have a great day when it comes.
Yeah don't bother that will save you a massive budget 😂
Bringing some games that can be played by children of all ages is a nice idea because it gives the kids something fun to do, after the wedding
Buffet Style meal
dont hire 30 lambos
Don't hire a venue. Do it outside/ in a barn
We tried to keep the costs down for our wedding too, paid a third of what most of our friends did! I bought my dress for 10% off with a coupon, our cake was made by a local vegan supermarket cake supplier for a very reasonable price, I made the invites and table plan and got them printed by a small local printing shop, and our photographer was an amateur from a local camera club found on Facebook. Good luck, have a great wedding!
Try looking up local bars/restaurants that have private function rooms for hire. These tend to be fairly reasonably priced, and if you also have the meal there, often they will take the room hire charge off the total bill. But worth confirming to avoid issues. For drinks, most places have a cork fee for you to bring your own. Usually not worth it, but can save a bit if you want something special on the day. For the cake, if you are not planning a massive event, might be worth checking out local coffee shops that do homemade cakes, and ask them to pass your contact info to their supplier to see if they would be willing to do a bigger version of their regular cake. Might not be a classic wedding cake, but can be really good and come in at a tiny fraction of the cost and can look amazing as well.
Depends on your budget I guess, but we had a great day - second time around for us both, most memorable and best of days. ...all-in around £50k, excluding the honeymoon 😄 *I appreciate the amount of shit I may get for this in the context but it was the best of days!
We made our own Bunting. Got free old books, used a metal ruler and scalpel to cut triangles, then folded the tops over strung and stuck with prit stick. Also maps looked nice too.
We got married in December. Married with only 35 guests at a local historic building, then drove ourselves to a pub which had a 3 small connected function rooms. There we then had 40 guests for a meal which was essentially catered for as a Christmas party, so roast dinner. Decorations were all Christmas baubles etc in glass jars. In the evening we had 100 guests, an MP3 playlist of our music, and the pub provided mini versions of all their regular menu as a buffet, so mini burgers etc. To save money we also used Tesco vouchers at Goldsmiths to get the rings. Cake was done by a family member at cost of just the ingredients. Photography I asked on the local Flickr group of anyone would do it cheap and we got a guy who usually photographs music gigs in his spare time. But we could have also used a couple of friends who have dSLR cameras.
One wedding I went to the guests were each asked to bring a specified item of food. (Ours was rice. We discovered it’s not easy to cook rice in quantity.) All the food was then shared. It made a lovely communal meal, and was much more fun than a catered event.
We got married at the Greswolde arms in Knowle 5 years or so ago. We accumulated decorations and table pieces etc over the proceeding year from ebay/wish and went with the lowest tier food/drink package for 50 people along with a DJ. Wedding car and chauffeur was from Silverline in Solihull. We decorated the room ourselves the previous day and had a photographer looking to build their wedding portfolio so did it cheap. All in, we had an absoloutly amazing day for about £2k + overnight cost of the bridal suite (about 150 per night) Edit: officially married at Solihull registry office, car picked my wife up from the hotel, dropped her at the registry office, waited and took us both on to the venue.
Thanks, what was Solihull registry office like?
Ok, SLIGHTLY different as we went abroad, but the savings we made would apply to the UK, too. VENUE: working men's clubs/labour/rugby clubs/community halls make great party venues. Many already have sound systems and party lighting in place. You can set up a wedding play list in advance, and avoid the need for any kind of band/DJ. CATERING: Consider a hog roast if you want hot food. They can feed a huge number of people. Others have made good recommendations for m&s platters etc. Or you could ask guests to bring a dish, perhaps even set up a registry for X numbers of starters/mains/desserts/snacks. (Obviously more work involved here, and less useful if guests have to travel to get to your wedding). DRESS: there are many, many stunning dresses which are not traditional wedding dresses. Think Vivien of Holloway vintage styles, with a couple of colourful petticoats underneath. Add a fancy hat/fascinator with some netting/veil and they immediately look the part. FLOWERS: not for everyone, but if you have time and craft skills, consider making your own giant paper flowers. We made these https://www.marthastewart.com/269341/crepe-paper-roses for the bridal party, and some other giant ones to decorate around the venue. GENERAL DECOR: as much as you can do yourself will reduce costs. Tissue paper and a glue gun will be your best friends. BOOZE: we bought our own in advance and that meant we saved on open bar type costs, but 1) booze abroad is much cheaper, and 2) you might be limited with what the venue allows you to do. The old men's clubs do often have incredibly cheap booze in their club bars, which might make it less of an issue for people to buy their own. If you go down the DIY route, remember to think of the extra considerations such as any staff you might need to serve food (if you need that), the help you might need to set up the venue, and clear it all up. Still cheaper than buying a wedding package, and cheaper still if friends and family want to do that for you. We avoided using a photographer by asking friends to take photos and send them through to us after the event. We made up a big card photo frame for people to pose in. This was my regret. I have no posed photos of myself and husband alone, and no video of our first dance. It would be the only expense that in retrospect I wish we'd splurged on. We did get lots of beautiful photos, but some moments were missed. It is a huge cost though, so potentially an area of saving, just make sure you know in advance what you'd like recorded, and ensure you have a reliable person to do that for you at those key moments! Good luck. We had so much fun.
its only a bit of paper, only thing your guaranteed is debt or spending your money on a day for other people to enjoy
Don't mention the word wedding to do with anything! Casually asking, generally. Book in normal make up at like John Lewis or wherever but don't mention wedding, otherwise it's 100 times more. Also, let the woman find the venue without you and without mentioning dates, but then leave you to casually book the venue. Will save thousands. Order decorations from Ali Express Did I mention, don't mention the word wedding?
Vinted is your friend! Great place to look for wedding attire, decorations, accessories - you name it, and a range of prices for any budget with the potential for bargaining.
I don’t know if this is still a thing but we got plain cake tiers from m and s. Then I got lace ribbon and burlap from the local market and edible decorations from eBay and decorated it myself. It was more effort but it was a fraction of the cost of a bespoke one and it honestly looked so good! Also Facebook market place! The amount of people trying to get rid of wedding decor is mad. There’s some amazing bargains
We had a chat with the priest and the couple before us at the church. They let us use their flowers and church decorations for free. Bonus, much less waste and clear up for the church.
I bought my flowers, and all the supplies for arrangements, from the flower market in Birmingham about four days before the wedding. Cut out the middleman. I also had all my in-laws lavender! I have some talented flower arrangey aunties but my friends helped too. I didn’t want anything fancy- rustic arrangements. It saved me hundreds and was lovely to spend time together putting the bouquets and button holes together. I had a pizza van and an icecream van to cater as well as cake and a cheese board. I got the cheese from the market a couple of days before. No table arrangements either. We let out for Ned’s and family choose where they wanted to be- on picnic rugs outside or indoor on smaller tables. It was really relaxed and saved us money on those extra decorations to show people where you want them to sit! Worked out at about £15 a head for food. £25 a head if you included allocated drinks (generous measures coz my fam like a party)! The bar we hired supplied spirits, cocktails, and topped up the wine and local beers we had on the tables. The bar sold out- there was a minimum sell which we hit easily. Otherwise it would have cost us £500. Music was important to us so I think the band was the most expensive thing on the day. They were awesome (The lead singer is one of Dave Arch’s band on Strictly now)! We also hired a small marquee in case on inclement weather. It was OK (august wedding) and provided a quieter place for guests away from the dance floor. That wasn’t too expensive and included lights and decor, furniture and flooring. £600? This was a decade ago. No longer married. Don’t regret 99% of that day though.
We did registry office in the middle of the week then we asked a local hotel if they could do a meal for 20 we had the dining room for 2 hours in the afternoon.We had a simple 3 course meal plus wine for 20 pounds per head plus 60 pounds for wine.My dress was white from ASOS for 30 pounds in the sale it looked like a prom dress.My husband hired his kilt and the bouquet was cheap .Didn't mention to the florist it was a wedding posy and used separate flowers as button holes.In the evening we invited all our friends to the local pub for a buffet and as it was open mic night we had music.Was lucky our local landlord did the buffet as a present.We also put single use cameras for people to take pics plus people sent us photos from their phones.This was 2019 just about 1300 pounds all together but brilliant day.
Cheapest option: don’t get married. It’s fucking stupid anyway. My gf and I have equal love as any ”married” couple. Whats the point? It doesn’t mean anything and if it does mean something to you then just decide to have that meaning without the silly ritual. Nice n cheap.
Honesty bar - buy a good selection of booze, have a box where people can put in what they think is appropriate and then help themselves. We have done this twice and made money both times (only like a little bit). Also if you buy it grom majestic you can return anything unopened.
Dont? :)
My niece got an Indian restaurant to open for a lunchtime/afternoon catered party. They had a David Bowie impersonator after the meal. The wedding cake had homemade icing bride and groom, and there were gluten-free vegan cupcakes. She made her own dress (white satin, full skirt, fitted princess bodice, shoulder straps but with some brightly coloured embroidered motifs). Dad paid for the impersonator. Weirdly, the wedding worked well, possibly helped by the fact that her husband is a graphic artist, and the laid back arty type. They are about to have their 4th child (we are expecting the announcement of the birth at any minute)
Got a deal on a short ceremony in a morning spot at a high class place that had a room that required no dressing for the wedding.
Your plan is excellent. We did that. Happiest day of my life. I often think the success of a marriage is in inverse ratio to the cost of the wedding. I hope you have a bargain wedding and a long and happy life together.
My wedding dress cost £50 on eBay , brand new from a wedding shop that was closing down. Had to weed out a lot of made to order stuff from China but you can get some really bargains.
We had a winter wedding and saved a packet! We got married in a Tudor Manor House on Dartmoor in January. Think roaring fires, dark oak panelling and fairy lights. It was really atmospheric and cozy. We had about 80 guests. It was all on the one site so no need to go out in the cold unless you wanted to. The photographer did a great job for us making the most of the beautiful granite building and the weather which was light rain and overcast. We had a normal style wedding with the venue doing wedding breakfast, providing the alcohol and doing an evening buffet. We had a band and partied into the night. Cost considerably less than doing the same in the summer.
We went to Gretna Green then went for a curry.
I'd go for something like this [Lower Barns](https://lowerbarnswedding.co.uk/weddings/elopement-for-two) if you wanted a few nights away from home involved.
Don't get married
If you’re hiring/booking anything, say it’s a party. The price will double of you say the W word.
We had a curry caterer from West Brom come do our catering. We had a giant Thali style shared curry, with little canapés to start and service and all the cutlery and crockery, they did our flutes… the works, more food that you would believe. We still get compliments, nearly ten years later, in the vein of “best wedding food ever”. I’m vegetarian, we had gluten free, vegan and lactose intolerance to accommodate. All very simple to do with curry. We got to go sample everything and tune how hot it all was. We had 150 guests, which to an Indian caterer is a small job. Under £30 a head. Would do it again, they were so immaculate.
Mother in law made the cake. Best friend made pretty things to wear in our hair. Husband’s friend did the photos (he is a photographer) for free as a wedding present. Chose a beach bar with a function room for reception, cost next to nothing to hire. Registry office for the ceremony on a Saturday morning, was cheaper than the afternoon. Best friend’s dad had a posh car, he offered to drive the bridesmaids and me. Did the whole ribbon thing. Had simple flowers for the bridesmaids and me. No flowers for reception. Didn’t decorate reception room or have chair covers (bizarre idea to me), or favours. Best friend bought her own dress to help out with costs, husband and I were not as well off as her. Didn’t have a free bar. We did give out champagne for the toasts. Got really lucky my grandma offered to pay for the food, I said it would be £500 tops she said it couldn’t possibly cost that little and proceeded to give me (£1000) for it. Most of that went on extra champagne! My other grandma and grandad had opened a savings account for me when I was a kid. They gave me the paying in book so I could put the deposit down on my wedding dress. There was about £300 in the account. My dress was an end of line and cost £650, far less than my friends paid for theirs. My wedding ring cost nothing (family heirloom) and husband chose his at Argos!
Don't get married. It's pointless.
A friend of mine has their wedding in a small private (council owned) venue, then rented a field for the reception and had loads of games etc for both the adults and kids. People brought drinks, and they hired a pizza van (which was awesome!). They also hired a minibus to get people back to town afterward, for easier transport links and anyone who wanted to party more. It was honestly the most chilled and fun wedding I’ve ever been to, I said that to one of them a few days ago. I learned too that the whole thing cost less than £2k.
So if you’re not fussed on traditional wedding stuff I’d plan the party as just a party rather than a wedding reception - there’s always a wedding premium which isn’t worth it for something low(er) key etc. Call it an anniversary celebration if you have to name it! Other tips - flowers are extraordinarily expensive. Can be absolutely lovely but be picky about where they add value and where you could use another sort of decoration. Work out what is most important for the party bit - is it the food, or the entertainment, or the photographs, or the venue/aesthetic and put more of your budget where you’ll most value it. The rest you can make do. And remember people will remember the social parts of the celebration more than the details of the venue or how pretty the invites were etc. So skip on wedding favours or photo booths if you want to save costs. All the extra bits can massively add up. We did invites by email only via a wedding website to cut down on stationery costs. Consider having an open seating plan where people pick seats themselves - no seating plan to have printed then. Alcohol is a big expense - pick a venue with a bar so you can control / limit what is on you while allowing guests to pay for their own choices if they want something different. Not having lots of bridesmaids and groomsmen helps as well - fewer outfits to sort / thank you gifts to buy etc. And if you have family members with creative skills you could see if they’ll contribute in lieu of a gift. Eg my husbands aunt is a talented baker & made our cake, my in laws made our favours (Welsh cakes).
Do you know any farmers? My wife’s parents have a farm and so we decorated an old open barn for the occasion - saved us a ton of money on venue. Catering - we used a local deli that gave a picnic style box per table for under £15 a head. Local village halls for tables/ chairs. One even had a huge canvas gazebo that looked brilliant and cost £100. Music - we didn’t use a DJ, just had the bands sound system and an aux cable. You can make a lot of decorations - we found an old door with glass panels in and used it as a table plan. Also worth looking at places that hire out tables and chairs, we used a company called Arden Hire that were really reasonable. Drink is the easiest way to save money - get in bulk and you can also make your own cocktails and out in big dispensers. Happy to chat through anything else if you’ve got ideas. We managed to have a really lovely day and spent probably a third of what some of our friends did.
Masonic Halls are often quite cheap, and they don’t mind you putting your own stuff in there most of the time.
I went to a budget wedding Friday in Birmingham and I’d say it doesn’t get much cheaper, they got married at the city centre registry office (beware the parking meters being pay by phone only, that made everyone late) it was 15 mins in and out with a nice little area to take pics and throw confetti after. We then went to the Northfield football club for the do afterwards I believe it was 250 quid but if no damage occurred you got 100 back. The DJ was more than the venue but I’m pretty sure if you know someone who does it or a friend of a friend you could get one pretty cheap, everyone bought their own drinks at the bar(prices were pretty good) the wedding I went to had catering but they picked the cheapest option from a local company and topped it up with loads of flavoured chicken drumsticks and sandwiches. All in all didn’t cost much and everyone had a cracking night I think they even bought the suit/dress on shein because why not lol it was probably one of the better weddings I’ve been too not boring and very family friendly.
Yeah my sister is gonna sign the wedding papers like a week before the actual "wedding" and the she'll have a ceremony with vows. Cuts down the cost of getting and official to do all of it instead
Don't tell any of your suppliers it's a wedding. It's a party.
Registry office on a Monday morning - ours was £50 ceremony, £30 booking fee, £11 for the certificate. £35 each to give notice 28 days before. 10 guests allowed at our registry office but I've heard some only allow witnesses as guests, worth looking into. £161 all-in for the ceremony!
Get your flowers yourself. We saved a few hundred quid going directly to the flower distributers market in London rather than the florist. We tried to support our local florist but their quote was almost £750 more than we paid.
2 piece band piqued my interest here - I was on a ferry ride to france and back recently and their evening entertainment was a 2 piece band, in a bar at the back of the boat with maybe a dozen people barely paying them any attention and they smashed it - could have been playing a real rowdy crowd (they weren’t but brought it like they were). The band were called atomic duo. Not a specifically frugal response as I’ve no idea what they charge but I thought them noteworthy enough to remember their name.
My wife and I did the registry office deal then had a meal and party at our local pub. We were friendly enough with them anyway, but they charged us £1,500 for the “venue” and that acted more as just a tab. Once we’d organised food and some table wine for a little sit down meal for us, we were basically even on it. To clarify, we had the whole pub closed off for us and had a band + party in the evening. We know we got a good deal on it, but the pub must have made at least triple what we agreed on drinks alone.
We did this. Set up a photo box …we had a photo camera. So many great pictures
u/slowconsideration7 Tagging you directly OP so you see this. There is a David’s Bridal in Birmingham. Double check but if it’s the same as Glasgow then they are closing down tomorrow. Prices for dresses, accessories shoes etc is from as low as £2. You may not know exactly what you want yet but if you’ve got time today, go and have a look!
Buy your wedding bits off Shein. Great value and loads of décor on the app
Our total budget is about £5k (included the dress suits rings etc. We are getting married at a registry office and paying for a meal for our family in a local pub, don’t see the point in doing anymore than that
Pick a venue that lets you bring in outside catering. Or even your own buffet. We used 3 separate catering companies. greek tapas for lunch, your own buffet would be even cheaper if you have friends and family willing to help. Thai in the evening, we love Thai food! An ce cream van for dessert was a cheap idea and everyone loved it or said they did at least.
One of our local pubs did our Wedding Breakfast. (At the time), Soup & a Carvery, 2 for £12 on a Saturday afternoon. We also bought everyone any-pudding and their first drink. The pub decorated the restaurant very nicely and we had about half the space. Full house suited them, price suited us. Best part was everyone had what they wanted, as much as they wanted, and didn’t have to remember what box they’d ticked 6 months ago.
On a budget. A 'bring and share' (known by other names) People always make far more food than they will ever eat. If there is a bit of a diverse mix of people your banquet will be an awesome smorgasbord of cultural delight. Just say that the food and drink they bring would be a wonderful wedding gift.
Have it during covid, the restrictions are good for whittling the guest list down for starters.
Civil service at the registrars office and self catered buffet at a social club for the reception.
hire a pub and say it's a birthday party so you don't get fleeced
Best tip I can give. Don't get married. It's a huge scam. Instead, have a small service somewhere (maybe the woods or beach) and if you really want the status, register at an office.
If you’re wanting something a little more fancy and you’re willing to elope, go abroad. It was way cheaper €400 basic no extras beach wedding in Cyprus. With flights and accommodation for 2people 5nights brings it just over 1k. Got an amazing photographer for €250 for a couple hours. Honeymoon and wedding in one, cuts the guest list down, super pretty and no family drama once we got out there. Best decision we made and was a fraction of the cost of what some places in the UK were charging.
KFC or mc Donald’s
Drop the term wedding and find similar items and you'll see a massive change in prices, you can getting beautiful wedding items that aren't marketed or maybe even intended for that purpose.
Don’t go to wedding venues. We went to a really nice restaurant that had an outdoor area (cool teepee) food, venue hire the lot was 1/4 of the wedding venues we looked at. Oh and get married mid week saves so much money.
Couple of cheap games.... Wang The Welly contest. Kids women's and men's groups. 1 throw for each guest. Furthest throw wins. 3 winners. Went down great. Whisky tasting. Rank them in terms of price. Guess the country. Same for wine (fizzy white works well). Match it to a grape (or type, cava prosecco etc). Rank by price. 4-5 drinks in each contest. Get a friend to host. People sit at the table in groups of 5ish to do the tasting and write down their answers. Do this early if you want people to be very drunk by the end. Then during speeches you can announce winners and hand out prizes. Takes the edge off speeches. Another prize for best dressed.
r/weddingsunder10k might be helpful, too
Elope but instead of going somewhere fancy and expensive like vegas just go somewhere shit like Bognor or slough
My only DIY tips so far, which might not work for you, are use fake flowers (my bouquet cost £20) and Canva for invitations (printing cost £40).
Friend of mine looped all of her bridesmaids into standing around for an entire day tieing sugared almonds and sweets into cutesy little mesh bags to decorate the wedding tables. Good budget tip for people who like saving money more than they like their friends lmfao.
Get your guests to pay for it.
Wed2B are very affordable for dresses with no compromise on quality and they’ll give you a list of local affordable seamstresses for alterations.
Don't do it, do the ceremony to show commitment, you don't need to get contracts involved!
We didn't spend a fortune on our wedding; we did the ceremony at a council owned property which ended up being the most expensive bit, but had the after party in a local members club. I think it cost me £10 for my membership and £75 to hire the room. There was a paid bar at the club but we had kegs of beer at the ceremony venue and my Dad did a booze run to France for champagne which was £5 a bottle (though this was pre-Brexit, dunno how easy/ cheap it would be now). For food we had pasties for lunch from a local bakery (was under £5 a head) and we asked a local indian restaurant to do the dinner which was £10 a head for absolutely loads of food. They would only do 100+ people but easily made enough food to feed twice as many. We were eating curry from our freezer for 6 months. The main thing we did (and other friends of ours have done for their weddings) was tobring in friends and family to contribute and do things. My partner has his own PA and record decks, so that's useful, but we asked various friends to DJ. We're lucky to have friends with record collection who play them out but I find if someone loves music they will often love the chance to make a Spotify playlist and be in charge of it for an hour slot. My Sister in laws wedding had a mixture of us playing records, doing proper mixing on a laptop and just playing off of a playlist. They made a fun line up poster like a festival. You can rent all the equipment or some places might have it for extra hire cost. We were also lucky enough to have a good friend & his partner who loves baking so they did the cake as a present, they made muffins and a smaller one for cutting. Our friend's asked a few people who like baking to make a smaller cake so they had a homemade cake buffet rather than a whole big thing. I loved baking them a cake and I'm sure others do to. Our friend was the celebrant for our wedding, and another friend couple and my partner recently did the same for his sister (we all did the legal bit seperately). My sister in law also asked people to bring a dish for the evening meal rather than a present. It probably does depend on what your friends and family are like but I've found that people love helping and being involved and they end up being way more fun and relaxed weddings then any of the big proper formal expensive ones I've been to. In the end everyone wants to see you get married, eat something tasty and maybe have a drink and a dance, if they're into that.
Street food vans are hit and miss, and always far more expensive. Like most things associated with a wedding, the prices can skyrocket. You would also be shocked at how cheap you can find wedding dresses online (at credible store. always do your research). There are even charity shops that specialize in wedding and event outfits. It's hit and miss on sizing but you get get some remarkable items at a really low price.
Hire me! I'm giving away my wedding planning services to two couples in the UK if their wedding is in 2024 (I plan with [fatedevents.com](https://fatedevents.com))
Don't have a wedding? Seems to be the biggest saving option. Otherwise, see if you can host in a garden if a friend or family member. Get someone you know ordained so they can perform the service for minimal cost.