Wedding Forum - Budget and Prices...

Hi Guys,

I'm new on here! My fiance proposed on Christmas day so now the planning begins!
Moneys quite tight as we have recently brought our first home..
We are setting a budget of around £10,000. Should this be enough? We want a church wedding, wedding breakfast for 60 and 150 roughly in the evening. I'm in the Birmingham area, do you know any nice venues that aren't overpriced?

Also, i was wondering what kind of price is normal for wedding flowers, i have 6 Bridesmaids and there will be roughly 11 buttonholes and one corsage.

Any suggestions/tips or advice would be so helpful.
Thank you!! :)

I totally agree with MrsMaher our estimate budget began at £3000 but we are now at £5000, our wedding is small and intimate but we wanted the finer things to make it personal to us. weddings can be acheivable on any budget really it depends what you want out of your day

Hiya and welcome to the site. Enjoy your planning.

I was exactly the same!! There's so much you never know where to start. I started by writing down everything so venue, photographer, decorations ect ect. And then approx costs by each. Once I got into it I realised I could save money on invites for example by doing them myself instead of paying someone to do it. You'll start seeing how you can save on certain areas and that way spend more money on a photographer or food ect. Once you've found how you look at it best it's really fun jumping into planning everything xx

I know there's so much choice! We picked ours because we were on a tight budget but have actually changed venue when we realise we could afford something we wanted. And I'm rubbish with diy stuff I started doing a button bouquet and bodged it but Thers a really good website with free invite templates to use and print if you want me to post it on your wall? That's what I'm using to print them onto card xx

Posted on your wall, I think someone on here gave it to me. But everyone's super friendly and it's brilliant because everyone is helpful and has loads of ideas. Good luck planning :) xx

Hello and welcome!

Originally I was hoping to stick to £5000 budget but it's more likely to be around £8000.

We are making our own invitations etc (pics of STD in my profile) and I'm hoping to do some of the decorations.

Good luck :)

Hello! and congratulations!!

What time of year are you planning on getting married?

Our budget is around the £26,000 marks. I started by googling average wedding costs. This gave us a good starting point for things. I think also you should spend on what is important to you.
Our flowers are costing £1290. I am getting married in the autumn so to bring the bridesmaids flower costs down they are just having a simple bunch of pussywillow. For the church you could do something simple of the ends of the pews like a bunch of babys breath, or have flowers for the church that can then be transferred for use at the reception.
Our groomsmen are having feathers as button holes. We got them from etsy but there are so many tutorials online showing you how to make them. Plus they are a bit different to your usual flower button hole.

Car boot sales - We are having a candle lines aisle with mismatched vases. We have got so many from car boot sales and charity shops for super cheap!!

Wedding fairs - Go to wedding fairs and enter the competitions, you might get lucky! I won a bridal bouquet by entering one, although unfortunately it is from a different florist so I wont need it..

Invitations - I made my own invitations, the pre-folded cards were £2 for 10 from hobbycraft and I found a design I liked online and copied it in Publisher. There are also heaps of invite templates that allow you to just enter in your details and voila done!

Sales!! - Shop around for a bargin! I got our battery operated fairy lights from a B&M store for about £4 each. Also join Quidco. You get money back or vouchers for things that you buy. Collect tesco clubcard points, I seen that you can swap £10 for £30 worth of goldsmiths vouchers, could be good for gifts or rings! Use boots advantage card points for beauty products. Sign up to newsletters for shops or websites, sometimes you get an email for free delivery or a % off.

Ebay is a great place to get favour boxes and bits and bobs too.

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Ok I'll stop now!! Hope at least one bit of my waffling helps!! xxx

Just remember,its not how much you spend. The important thing is that you and your guests have fun!

My budget is £8k And I'm paying for a place for some of my brazilian guests, my bridesmaids dresses will cost under £10 each (China!), my dress costs about £220 (she who cannot be named), I'm making all our stationery and it's supposed to cost 0.58 per invitation.

Hi and Congrats Cordelia,
I think 10k is enough for the amount of people our guest numbers are practically the same give or take. I think it also depends what you want eg. Designer dresses / suits. Also if the 10k excludes your honeymoon I think it's do-able x

Thank you all for the comments, they're really helpful!

I just want everything to be beautiful, what you dream of, but everything is so pricey!

It can be done on a budget but £10k is a healthy budget.

Have you set an actual date yet and booked the ceremony and reception?

If not you'll get more bang for your buck if you avoid peak season and Saturdays. Maybe consider April or October and a mid week wedding as everything tends to come in cheaper apart from attire.

I would say just look around to see bargains and deals . We wanted a Saturday and in July so knew it would be more expensive than say a weekday wedding. So far our budget has gone from £10k excluding dress and honeymoon to about £15k again not including dress and honeymoon.
Another thing is make sure everything you want is listed down, we use excel and this has given us the chance to compare prices and get some bargins :)

Also use people ... Not in a bad way but if you know people that provide services or know people for wedding stuff use them to get discounts or advise on cutting costs :)

we spent around £16K including honeymoon, had we not had the most bloody expensive venue EVER we could have easily done it for half of that, less even, it depends on you as a couple though, if you are crafty you can save a fortune, I made all my flowers out of paper so paid less than £20 to make 5 pomanders, loads of buttonholes and my bouquet, I made my invites which worked out around £26, made most of my centre pieces, sourced the rest off ebay which all but one were under a tenner and one worked out at summat daft like £1.88 lol, dress was off preloved (was a sample dress) shoes were off ebay. Hired the suits from slaters, hire 4 get the grooms free. The photographer was expensive at £1600 as was the venue as it was at our favourite museum (science and industry in manchester) Oh the cake was £450 as well.

We did the whole bridesmaid dress shopping thing but we ended up with Lindy Bop dresses off the net for £30 each, we broke one on the day though, I can laugh about it now lmao, bridesmaids shoes were no more than 20 as well, can't remember how much

I also wish I had just done my own hair and make up looking back now as well, could have saved some cash there as I didn't want an up do, didn't like it on my trial as it wasn't 'me' so she just ended up doing my hair and make up pretty much how I always have it anyway haha

Got my chair covers with sashes for £1 each as well, and they looked fab

£10k is a decent sized budget, you should have no trouble :) Take advantage of putting your details on here for local places to quote, including venues. Also where invitations are concerned, depending on what you want, take a look at V!5T@Pr!nt. They have LOADS on there and also presently have an offer of 50% off, though usually they do at least 25% off *all* the time and we can get 30 day invitations (we're having more guests than this but obviously families and couples cut those numbers) 20 evening invites, 50 Thank You Cards, 50 RSVP cards, 150 matching envelopes, 50 Save the Dates, Matching envelope stickers (which are unnecessary, but why not?) and 100 place cards for £150.
P!nt3rest searching budget tips for weddings and where you can save has helped me :) xx