5k and under anyone?! HOW?????!!!!!

Hi all,

Bit of advice please. I am recently engaged (YAYYYYY!!!!!!) and am so excited about planning the wedding, although I have got a bit down lately as we are on a budget of about 5k and this seems impossible. I don't want a huge wedding, only about 70 people, with a bbq/hog roast, as outdoorsy as poss but when I entered approx details as I know onto a budget spreadsheet it was way over my 5k.... and thats with hair, make up and probably photo's for free!

What I'd like to know is anyone that is doing it for under 5k how they have, give me a breakdown please, what are you spending on what? Give me hope.
x

mine might be a bit over that. but thats only because I decided to pay for hotel rooms for the bridal party!!
things that save money
make your own invites
have a late ceremony (say 4pm) you only need to feed people once
if having a civil ceremony have the reception in the same place, also means car might be less as only one journey
have a nicer buffet rather than sit down meal
only have one bridesmaid
don't go overboard with decorations and centrepieces, people very rarely notice/remember them anyway
same goes with favours, I'm not having

this is what we are paying we said 5K budget having 50 people for the ceremony and an extra 10 for the evening

church ceremony (legal fee's, organ and choir) £634
flowers having silk as i have hayfever (bride bouquet, 2 bridesmaid posy, 10 rose buttonholes, 2 double rose corsages for mums) £60
photographer £650
invitations DIY £50
pew end bows £20
reception (buffet, drinks reception, DJ and overnight stay) £1620
Cake (M&S 3 tier tradional cake) £70
DIY drink stirrers £10
Honeymoon £1410
Rings £120 for both
my dress (ebay/china bargain) £84
my shoes £20
2 bridesmids dresses both for £60 (ebay again)
grooms suit + 2 bestmen suit hire £300 for all 3

my car free (uncle has old rover)
doing own hair and make-up
table decorations FREE gift from sil2b

Total £5108

hope this helps

We've managed to keep ours to about £3500-£4000 (£5000 inc. honeymoon). We’re having around 30 people for the ceremony and 110ish for the reception with a buffet.

This is how ours breaks down:
Venue: Ceremony and reception rooms – 407, Registrar – 355, (flowers yet to be arranged), Catering – 800, Chair Covers – 200, Balloons/Table Decorations/Card Box – 71.50, DJ - 100, Cake – 250
Dress – 350, H2B suit - 100, Rings – 200
Photographer – 280
Gifts – 100
Invitations – DIY job – 35
Honeymoon - 1566
There's a few bits to add such as accommodation, but you can save costs in plenty of ways...

As sarahjane said, a late ceremony is great, ours is 3.30pm so we're skipping the wedding breakfast and going straight for the buffet. We have to go with the venues catering, but you depending where yours is, you could always do the food (or some of it) yourselves, we've found catering costs are one of the biggest expenses.

We've saved costs on the venue having ceremony/reception in one place (though again, ruled out if not a civil ceremony). With regards to transport, unless you have your heart set on a particular car, why not decorate a car in the family? My uncle is taking us for free and we're getting a wedding car decorating set (about £10) to jazz his car up.

You could always do your own make up too - I wanted mine doing professionally but I figure that I know exactly how I'd like it anyway, so it's just one less cost!

Rather than having to keep bridesmaids numbers down, you could always ask them to contribute/pay to the cost of their dresses, same with the groomsmen for their suits- most of the time people are happy to do so because they want to be a part of your big day

I think making invites/thank you cards etc yourself is a great idea too - it's a chance to be creative and a great way to get people like the bridesmaids involved.

In my personal opinion, people spend too much on the rings too, but obviously this is just personal taste and matching to engagement ring.

Wedding dresses can be picked up much cheaper in sample sales too. Mine was £1000ish down to £150 and it's perfect (other than about £100 to have it shortened).

My biggest piece of advice has to be: shop about! (although it is hard not to fall in love with things and be impulsive!!!) Oh, and don't be afraid to rope people in you know - our DJ is a friend, photographer friend of a friend, and cake is by my aunt. It all keeps costs down and they'll love playing a part!

Good luck

hello hun, I know how you feel, I'm on a 6k budget, but if i can come in under budget i'll be very happy.

Some tips that I have gained on how to stick to a small budget include, thinking about what is important to you in a wedding, some areas are important to some people, but not important to others. It is the areas that are especially important to you that you will make sure you have, and then the areas you're not so bothered about you will be able to save money on by missing them out altogether or by crimping on them.

Also, go out of seasons, many venues give a discount between october and april, as they are less popular months. And if you can abide to, go for a week day, monday - thursday are often cheaper and stick to seasonal flowers.

If you can make use of the skills that your friends and family have, such as making the wedding cake, doing your photogrpahy, or making your invites.

Due to being a budget bride, I decided to start a blog with all the advice I have gained over my time so far planning, which you are free to look at for some ideas/inspiration on how to save money if you want to.



http://idoonabudget.wordpress.com/postings/

My friend spent under £5k on her wedding day and it was a lovely day. To give a rough idea of the cost.

Church - free. She's heavily involved in her church and organises things for them.

Church hall hire - I think this was a couple of hundred pounds.

Dress- About £600, she got it during a 20% off weekend at her local bridal store.

Flowers- About £300 for 4 bouquets, button holes and single stems for tables.

Food- Spend about £100 on buffet style food and a further £150 on meat from the butchers. She and her family made sweets the night before as well.

Car- Borrowed from the vicar whose friend drove the car.

Cake- Free, made by her cousin as a gift.

Photography - Family friend who charged £500 for the day.

Invites- Made using some things from Hobbycraft. They were gorgeous and actually far nicer than another I had received which I knew cost £4 per card as I'd seen them when browsing invites online.

Honeymoon- rented an apartment in Cyprus owned by a colleague, so got a bit of discount there!

I think she may have even spent less than £4k and it was a lovely day. It was lovely how so many family members and friends had contributed to make her big day special.

Thank you everyone, some brilliant tips already. Smartie babie, I love your blog, so many great ideas. Those pom poms are brilliant, never seen them before, they will definately be used.

This might sound like a really stupid question but I how does having a later time help, especially if you're having separate guests for day and evening, won't I still need to provide extra food?

Is there somewhere specific I can find out about sample sales or do I just google? Have looked at the idea of getting dress online or from china but tbh am a bit wary.

I was planning on getting married in July but think I might change it to April if will help the budget alot and also I love candles and would get more use in darker months.

Thanks again for all your help. xx

Hi,

I haven't got much to add, but I have just sent out all our invitations using pingg.com. It is an email invitation, but not just inviting everyone by email.

You get to choose from a bunch of cute invitation cards, and if you pay the $10 upgrade, you get an electronic envelope. They invitations look really cool flying out of an envelope on screen! and you can put more information on it than you can on a normal invitation, including maps etc. I was a bit worried that people would think we were being cheap but everyone has been really impressed.

Added bonuses include:

1. Electronic RSVP - saves your guests the hassle of buying and sending an RSVP card.
2. Quick responses
3. A report screen which shows you the status of your invites: viewed, RSVP'd yes or no etc
4. You can select postal invitations for people that don't have email, but these aren't cheap. 'm going to make those few.

I must admit to feeling a bit smug with this! I appreciate this is not for everyone. But it does save a lot of time and money.

Hope that's of help to you (or someone!) every little helps

PS. I started my invitations and left them a couple of days before sending, and pingg sent me a code for half off. Our invitations cost us $5 in the end! (and yes, we are in UK)

I'm not having separate food for evening guests, I explained this to them and that they would have to eat before hand as they would only coming from 8pm - the way I see it, if you were going on a night out round the pubs you would have tea first, not start eating half way thru the night. If they don't like it, don't come!

We got married last April and kept our costs down by having a registry office ceremony (luckily for us, our register office is our town hall, recently refurbished),cost £67 for notices of marriage, £150 for saturday afternoon ceremony at 2.45pm.

We had 18 guests (includes us 2) to ceremony and then onto a meal at a local 4 star hotel. Guests were us 2, my daughter as bridesmaid, my parents, husband's parents, husband's nan, my sister & husband, husband's sister, husband & 2 children, plus best man, his wife & their 2 children. At the hotel we had drinks on arrival (sparkling wine or orange juice), a 3 course meal, wine/soft drinks/non alcoholic cocktails with meal, sparkling wine or sparkling apple juice for the speech. We had photo's taken in courtyard outside of the private restaurant we used. This cost approx £550. Table decor provided by hotel was free - white tablecloths/napkins, silver candleabras with lit white candles, cake table set up, etc. We provided place names to fit in with colour scheme/theme, table jewels/crystals, favours, childrens bags with colouring books, crayons, bubbles, etc. Spent about £30. Small cake was FREE, made by my mum.

Evening reception was held at a YMCA sports centre function room. Room hire was £160. Disco/DJ was £130. Buffet was £8.25 per head, catering for 120, so cost £990. We had a cold buffet (sandwiches, salads, sausage rolls, oriental/indian items, crisps, coleslaw, potato salad, and such like, plus 2 desserts, strawberry cheesecake and a chocolate fudge cake). We invited approx 200 guests, after declines, we had approx 140/150 turn up on the night. Decor was table decorations & balloon arrangements cost approx £80. 3 tiered cake was FREE (again, made by my mum).

Photo's - done by family, for FREE. Album and disc/memory card of photo's FREE.

Tranport FREE, provided by family (in their cars).

Suits for husband and best man (trousers, jacket, shirt, cravat, hankie, cufflinks, waistcoat & shoes) £122 - £105 for the suit hire, £17 for shoes (bought in a sale), best man bought his own shoes (his own choice!).

My dress, a bridal ivory dress from Monsoon Outlet, £67.50, reduced from £225! Jewellry i already owned. Watch from Next for £20. Underwear £20. Shoes from next £25.

Bridesmaid dress from Monsoon outlet £33 reduced from £110! Shoes, jewellry, bag approx £20.

Hotel room booked for overnight, b&b £60.

Rings, husbands is titanium, mine is palladium, total cost £225.

Flowers (2 bouquets of white roses, button holes of white roses) £80.

Invites approx £60, handmade, all items bought cheap from ebay.

Hair/make up/nails - nails FREE with a voucher i had for a mobile lady, hair cut at usual salon for £20, then did my own hair on day, make up done by a friend who does all the beauty therapy stuff for £65 for trial and on day.

Think that's about it ! Comes in about £3000.

We went on Honeymoon, to London afterwards for 4 days/3 nights. Mainly paid for by cash/money contributions as wedding gifts. We got a couple of vouchers, plus around £2000 in cash/cheques. We'd booked/paid for transport and a show before we the wedding, and had also booked a hotel paying for it on arrival. We actually came home from Honeymoon with money spare. Don't feel bad about asking for contributions for your honeymoon, as assuming you're already in a home and settled, it's likely you have most things anyway.