Regarding the photos.At my daughters wedding they had a photographer but also they put a couple of cheap disposable cameras on every table for the guests to use.

They had quite a few good shots from those.

 

If we didn't have a large amount of family between us we might well have done. She will be having family flying from America, Australia and Canada, glad were not paying for them!

Cheers for the input all, definitely some differing opinions, certainly not going to be easy!

 

Get Married in the Winter months - most people get Married in the summer months so plenty of Venues will do you a good off peak deal! We saved around £3k alone on the reception venue by doing this! Our total wedding was £10k and I don't feel we scrimped anywhere.
Here's a rough idea what we spent:

Reception for 80 guests with 3 course meal = £4250
The dress, suit hire, bridesmaid dresses = £1700
V8 Mustang wedding car = £240
Rings £700
Photographer £650
Flowers = £1000
DJ = £300
Hair + Makeup = £300
Church Ceremony = £580

That's the highlights.
If you're interested, here's how it looked - Click

 

I am a wedding photographer and have been to shed loads of weddings. Winter wedding or summer mid-week wedding can save you a lot of money. It is the people there who make a wedding so I don't necessarily think you need to break the bank or have a production line wedding at a hotel. I have been to great fun weddings held in village halls and pubs. Flowers (and wimmins shoes) cost far too much, photographer worth every penny of course If you spend a load of cash on the day the photos are your memories.

 

Buffet is also very good idea, costs less and keeps day flowing rather than the big chunk of time taken by being served a three courser.

 

We got married abroad ( Cyprus ) @ the town hall in paphos ! The wedding package just cost over a grand ! That was 7 years ago ! Just book a two week holiday ! After the first week you go to the town hall and get married the enjoy your second week in the honey moon sweet as a married man !

So in total 2 week holiday at the hotel,of your choice £1800 plus £1000 for a Thomson platinum wedding package added on ! Jobs a good in have a small doo when you get back for guest that couldn't fly over

Total cost £2800

 

Bolax buster,

Big weddings are a waste of money, at a time in your life when your starting out and trying to get ahead to spend 10/15/20 grand on a wedding is utter madness.

Get the guests to bring a dish and a bottle of their favourite tipple to the buffet.

I did two weddings one themed medieval outdoor in the woods complete with white which ceremony as neither of us are religious and one civil for under a grand and everone said both were the best they ever went to.

 

Half the time people pity for being stupid on spending a fortune, it's people that make the day not how much you spend.

Like as above £1000 on flowers ? Are you on crack? Flowers that will die in a week.

I've never been to a wedding and overhead someone saying "oooooo look at them lovely flowers"

I've been to a few expensive weddings where it's a 5 course sit down and tbh they're boring as hell.

Rant over

 

Getting married in May. Flower and cake money has just been spent on new internals for my S206 turbo. Slightly worried but don't like cake anyway.

 

Top man!

 

Lizzie and I went to a rather posh wedding where they did that. After a few vinos her and her (Lady!) friend went off around the back of the marquee and took a few topless "flash" pictures. Nothing was subsequently said about it!

 

Family flying in from the four corners of the world, you can hardly have pie and mash down the old dog and duck, and a paying bar

They could well be paying more on flights than you do on the wedding

 

wow, madness!

If you can afford £10/20/30k from savings spend it (if your mad) bu if you have to get a loan forget it!

it is only ONE day in your life (and only a few hours if that), I married for about £1000 10 years ago which included everything except honeymoon, the only reason people spend £1000's on a wedding is to show off but it does not really make sense to me if you have to borrow the money to show off!?

 

The day you get married is, in theory, the day of your married life that you will love each other the least.

So why waste a fortune on it?

 

i work for a marquee company(we just won the national and regional wedding supplier) and believe you me , unless you do things yourself I dont think you can scrimp ( obviously theres ebay where you can find the bargains and design your own stuff)
Our clients are .lets say not short of a few quid, our largest marquee last year was for a 1600 seater indian wedding....

 

Why do you need to spend a small fortune (especially if you have to get in debt to do it) just to please other people?

As long as the couple do what they want to do and they are happy that’s the main thing. Generally you get an idea of what type of do it will be when the invite arrives so it's the guest’s choice if they turn up or not.

 

Ok, if you really must get married I got married at the Leez Priory in Chelmsford. It's probably a bit far from where you live, but you get the idea.

http://www.countryhouseweddings.co.u...pecial-offers/

This is a link to the special offers page. This place really is the t1ts to get married. I'm sure there's an equally impressive venue near you. Book on a weekday out of season and you'll get a place some premiership Wally will pay for a Saturday in July for far, far less.

 

For us to get married in the UK food, dress everything was £20k Did everything in America with 3 weeks in disney land & all excursions... £10k - with £2k spending!

You could just bash it out in a registry office and then a weekend in bognor regis for about £70

 

If you could guarantee that your wedding would be a lifelong union, it would be worth splashing out and paying top dollar for all the trimmings.

But you can't. Far from it. Save your cash.

 

Bognor is far too expensive for our budget haha!! She doesn't want to do a registry office either, no idea why. We are thinking of a more expensive location for the actual ceremony (for photos/memories etc) and then a cheaper reception venue.....I'd be quite at home in a country pub celebrating with a beer in hand, but as said above, we do want to put something on for those travelling.

 

This^^^ MY wedding was themed and people still talk about it 15yrs later.

We went travelling, egypt, india, new zealand, america, jamaica,turkey,morocco,spain, france,croatia,italy,slovienia and more i cant remember, not all at once but stayed with friends part of the time in all of the above, wife was a tour guide for 15yrs so lots of friends around the world.

All that dosh for one day. you can do so much more with £20k and less if your smart about it.

 

Looks very nicely put together and the photos certainly complement. Though a £1000 on flowers....ouch lol.

Certainly gives me a good overview on things, though our budget probably won't be as much as yours.

 

Thats the point... It's ONE day..... That's the most expensive **** you'll ever have ;0)

 

I agree, and am sympathetic to that point of view

I also think you have, as a host, a duty to your guests

I have been to fantastic and imaginative weddings costing very little, and dull soulless affairs, costing small fortunes

It does not need money to create a magical atmosphere, just don't be lazy that's all

 

When I got married we did the cheap version. Married in the local registry office, buffet at home for friends and neighbours followed by a sit down meal in a local pub/restaraunt for family and the witnesses. I set up my video camera to record it and everyone took photo's and let us have them to choose our own. The coupole that were our witnesses left the buffet early and unbeknown to us went and got a album done as their gift to us at Asda and gave it to us at the meal.

 

The best weddings I've been to have been a quick "I do" in the registry office, then cram teh happy couple into a borrowed Moggy Minor and send them off for buffet and cheesy disco in a pub that serves good beer. Leaving the wedding guests to retire in whatever nearby squalid hotel/B&B

I woke up next morning to find that I shared my bed with someone elses toe nail clippings. Gross LOL. < gags > )

The most boring ones? The posh expensive ones.

Yes it may have been briefly fun to upset the locals by doing a burn-out in the "borrowed" Bentley Conti T (proper Bentley, not a VW thing that footballers have) round a Surrey Country Club, chasing peacocks with a golf cart and generally bringing the place down several pegs by singing Olay Olay at 2:00am, but truth was at £4.50+ for a pint of flat lager, none of us were really that drunk, and the oysters all gave us the squits. And for the most of it, we were all just bored to tears of the whole weekends worth of ceremony and pomp..so much so that a few of us actually escaped the fancy evening meal to instead have a meal at a nearby pub!

However, as a former best man I will attest to cheaping out may not always be the best plan though. Apparently I was supposed to drive my mate and his new missus back to the hotel after their wedding event (his idea to save chauffeur costs). Now I was bladdered after drinking god knows how much home-brewed Serbian Rakia (long story). Suffice to say a 7 seater Peugeot E7 Taxi was ordered....and the fare cost me less than the usual trip back from the pub/club on the friday/saturday night (£7, but I was that chuffed I gave the driver a tenner)....Result! Well, maybe....mates missus hasn't said much to me since. (don't care anyway )

 

do not whatever you do get in debt for a wedding - esp if yuor talking 3k plus borrowing!!

its one single day - and you can easily do it on a small budget. if you get caught up in "keeping up with the jonses" scenario its going to end in quickly getting out of hand.

for me a traditional wedding here with everyone there, with all the trimmings, would have me sleepless for a fortnight before it - and a constant stress at some level - the day itself would be one of the most difficult of my life - i would not enjoy it atall - infact the experience would not be good for my health. im so lucky my wife was not entirely in agreement but could see the point of some of my arguements - id be paying 10k or more indebt for many years and in addition i would struggle on the day also.

luckily my wife could see the pointlessness of a massive set up and the expense - and her friends are down to earth characters who dont represent the type that sees expense as a factor of how good the wedding is.
so we decide to go to vegas, get hitched there, in one of those complete package thing, and had a week in a swanky hotel suite and an amzing time exploring vegas and enjoying each others company. we got the limo picking us up, she had the dress, me the full kilt and family at home could veiw it on line.

so we spent money on the weeks holiday, and not on a single day of stress. that potentially we could still be paying for now!

at home it so easily grows arms and legs beyond your control - and costs spiral up very quickly, and for what? a single day? up to 20k? in debt for possibly 4 years?

thankfully our parents accepted the decision - and i think we had a party when home - which was just same as any party - go dance, get drunk, go home, job done!

you do need to have a partner who has a similar mindset or expect conflict.

i do hope you can manage your day so that it doesnt incurr debt, and still be a good day for everyone

 

I completely disagree with the whole, very stupid idea of spending silly amounts on a single day. Why put yourself in debt for just a single day. Oh, it's your wedding day, right, sorry, I forgot. So bloody what! You do NOT need to spend silly amounts to have a good wedding.

Neither my wife or I wished to spend silly amounts on our wedding, we simply did not see the point in incurring debt for one day. Possibly unromantic, but there you have it.

My wife used her engagement ring as her wedding ring, which in turn wasn't overly expensive. She likes the design and is happy with it, and that is all that matters. My ring actually cost more than hers did, but it's nothing flashy.

I designed and typeset our wedding invitations, we purchased the paper / card for them locally, and also had them printed up locally, and this did save us quite a lot over having it done professionally.

We were originally going to forego the official photographer, but decided we probably did want some proper snaps of the day, so after speaking to a few people we were put in touch with a very nice photographer and the pictures were great and not overly expensive. One thing, if you can, see if it is possible to get a DVD / CD of the original pictures (assuming they are digital), there might be a cost, but you should end up with all of the high resolution pictures, and you can then do proper reprints and whatever you want with the images, which could sometimes be handy - for example, making your own collage of wedding pictures. I think this was probably one of the larger expenses for the wedding.

One thing that can cut costs is who you invite, or don't invite, and it will ALWAYS be a cause for trouble if you leave someone out, but it IS your day and NOT theirs, and if they want to be childish about it, so be it.

We decided we had wanted something fairly small, and I think we kept to that. There had bee some mumbling that we needed to invite so-and-so, but feet were put down.

One solution is to move country, somewhere quite far away seems to do the trick

We used our own car for wedding transport, yes, not exactly glamorous, it was a 2000 Honda Accord, but given that all of us would be in the church and would not see the car, it didn't matter. She was driven to the church by her Godfather who was also giving her away (alas her dad had passed away a year before) so that was also a nice touch.

Reception was at a rather nice hall (Navy Hall in Niagara-on-the-lake), had some good pictures taken there, including a couple down by the river, with boats in the background, and one of the great shots happened to feature a boat my wife had raced on in the background - we only noticed after the picture was taken - so that added another nice touch to things.
Drinks and a small marquee outside. Music was provided by a Jazz trio, which was something different and fitted in nicely. They had been recommended to us by a friend and so we got a bit of a discount.

Dinner was a buffet affair and everyone seemed very happy with the various items presented. Little keepsakes on the tables were small metal sailboats, another touch on my wife's love of sailing. They did not cost much, but really fit in.

Booze was supplied by us. We had purchased beer, red and white wine, vodka and soft drinks, so it was a sort of limited open bar. Again people seemed quite happy with this, and in the end I did end up taking quite a bit home, ah well

Wedding night was another expense, as we stayed at a nice hotel in Niagara-on-the-lake, a short drive / walk from the reception.

Our honeymoon was spent at a lakeside resort up north (in Ontario speak that means the rather nice wooded areas north of Toronto, and not some grim northern part of the UK ). Very relaxing, we had a log cabin type cottage, wood burning fire, rather romantic. We also had our lovely lab with us, and she too enjoyed herself. A bit odd perhaps, but she was part of our family.

Overall, it wasn't massively expensive. I believe we did receive money from our parents to help out, but even still, we did not need to take out loans.

Did we have a good day? I think we did, and those that were present enjoyed it, and I think that some had to make the trip from the UK to Canada, and that the weather was thankfully very good on the wedding day helped a lot. In the end, it was our day, pretty much done our way, with the people we really wanted there.

Another great wedding we went to was that of our friends. It was a very small affair; the bride and groom, best man (good friend of the groom) and his wife, and the bridesmaid (my wife) and myself. Registry office do, which we all took video and pictures of. Stopped off for a light snack and some drinks, back to the hotel, a few more drinks, and then on to a brazilian all you can eat place, which was fantastic. Very low key, and I felt honoured that I'd been invited. Again, a pretty inexpensive do, but one I'll always remember.

 

Comical moment on our day was walking in to the pub for lunch. The only thing my Mrs said she wanted was a dress, so that's what she got.

So we start walking in and you could see the look of horror on the faces of the staff, since the place also did cater for weddings, and their brains must have been going at 100mph as they tried to work out if they had dropped a major bollock or not. It even got as far as walking up to the bar and saying we've got lunch booked here, and they said, "we have no weddings booked in today...panic panic....panic"; we had only booked a table for lunch in the bar.

Echo what others have said, it's the people around you who'll make or break a great day, and you don't need 200-300 guests, 20-30 will do just nicely.

 

Since you've been together 8 years I doubt you'll need toasters and stuff. Gift vouchers for the honeymoon is a popular request these days.

Oh and the weeding day isn't the most expensive **** of your life - with the divorce you will be shafted for a lot more!