Hi I was just wondering if anyone has managed to get any bargains for their weddings? We are in the middle of buying our first house together which is happening this year and until we are moved in we cant really do much planning with the wedding :( .
I was just wondering if anyone has managed to cut down costs on certain things.... I've sourced a dress out which i love from china which is a bargain and other bits and bobs...
It's just the venues, photography, and a couple other bits that look like its going to cost a small fortune :( At this rate we wont be able to get married due to costs, especially in st.austell in cornwall... everywhere is near the sea which bumps the costs up.
Any ideas would be fab :) xxx
CommentAuthorx ashlil x
im doin my own invites, save the dates, favours etc. m and s do a wedding cake that u can decorate or get some1 else to cheaper. x
CommentAuthorSoon2BBlackwell
Hi, We have a budget of £5000 and hopefully we can save that much but i'm trying to spend as little as possible. You can cut costs by having your wedding midweek or even a friday or sunday. I think my dress will be coming from china too, bargin! Ive just seen some really cheap favours, less than 50p per person from a company that posted to my wall...
Having bacon & sausage butties for the evening instead of a buffet is knocking that cost from over £8 to £3.95 a head.
Making your ovn invites etc
we have a friend making the cake, doing the photo's (i've seen his photos and they are great so i'm confident in him) and ive yet to sort out florist prices but i'm aiming for a discount as my grandad plays golf with the florists dad (who actually owns the shop)... Ask around. and dont be shy to ask for a discount.
Holly
Time to lose some weight so i look my best on our day!
I will stay motivated I will stay motivated
CommentAuthorKimberlee1
Were on a budget too as i dont work and my partner is on a low income. Our budget is 10k but looking at it i really dont know how our money is going to stretch. Especially as ive just been quoted £500 just for photos! :O Anyways ive customised my own shoes, by putting blue rhinestones on white shoes. Having my mum make the cup cakes, making my own centerpieces, gift bags for the kids as well as buying giant outdoor games to entertain the kids. My dad is making the invitations, and im having the Save the date magnets made of bay of e. I was also going to get my dress from bay of e from China but my H2b has told me that he'd much rather get one from the shop to save it coming back wrong.
14th August 2010 Engaged to Mister Matthews
17th August 2012 I'll be Missus Matthews
CommentAuthorx ashlil x
i am also having artificial flowers instead of real ones and check the highstreet stores for things too. b h s do a good wedding collection x
wow - some fab ideas, thank you!! I'm hoping that once we've bought the house we'll be able to know for definite how much money we can use for the wedding. Just trying to cut the costs with ideas as much as possible atm in case our budget is small.
Loving the idea of a friend as a photographer - know a few people who do it as a hobby so i'll get in contact with them :)
CommentAuthorKimberlee1
oh yeah that too lol Silk flowers. Ive also checked out bay of e for bridesmaid dresses ive found some for £35...bargain.
14th August 2010 Engaged to Mister Matthews
17th August 2012 I'll be Missus Matthews
CommentAuthorXLittleMissMe!X
You could have a church service and then book out a restaurant and have the guests pay for their own meals instead of giving a gift. It gives you the sit down meal and fun etc without the main costs and then find a pretty room to hire for the evening do. You could put on a home made buffet etc which wouldn't then cost that much.
Another way to do it is to have a late wedding so people have been fed before hand and then do an evening buffet.
Having a fake cake and serving up sheet cakes is another way to save money.
You can always get guests to do the photography and get them to send you in their pictures. If you want a pro then ask them to do half a day etc rather then the full day. You can get some real good discounts that way. Also ask them to put the images on disc rather than buying expensive albums as you can print photobooks on the net for £30. Also Asda etc will put prints onto canvas and blow them up etc a lot cheaper.
You can have silk/foam flowers which are half the price of real and you get to keep them. If you want real for the venue get them to do more greenery and fill out with cheaper varieties and then just have the odd expensive flower in the arrangement.
Do you need cars? If the venue is in one place then this is something you can go without. If not hire a luxury taxi firm that drive nice cars. We have them around here and have mercs etc and are just a few pounds more than a normal taxi. I'm sure if you asked them nicely they would put wedding ribbons on for you.
CommentAuthorTigerlily
Do any friends or family have a nice house with a big garden? We are having a bbq at my parents house for our reception and because I have such a large family we have cut costs by deciding to have a small registry office ceremony with our closest friends and family followed by a blessing at our reception so the extended family and our other friends can still see us get married. My friend was ordained online and is doing our blessing...would any of your friends/family do the same? We brought our invites from a factory of cards shop for £1.49 for a pack of 10 which really helped to cut our costs.
Can't wait to be Mrs Simmons
I love my boys! xxxxxxxxxx
CommentAuthorXLittleMissMe!X
Kimberlee we have 10k budget and we got our dream wedding with 1k left for honeymoon! Ours is a country house venue and we are having the cars, 1k on photographer and 1k on my dress so it can be done. You just have to work out where to splash the cash and where to save it.
CommentAuthorTigerlily
My wedding is costing about £1000. It seems tiny compared to what others are spending. lol x
Can't wait to be Mrs Simmons
I love my boys! xxxxxxxxxx
CommentAuthorXLittleMissMe!X
You know something Tigerlily it doesn't matter how much money you throw at a wedding it is no more special than any other. Its the emotions of the couple on the day and what it means to them that makes it a good wedding.
CommentAuthorKimberlee1
Just like to add that we are having choc footballs for the kids as favours and swizzel love heart sweets for everyone else. We went to wholesalers at the weekend and 5kg bag of love hearts was only a tenner, 3.5kg bag holds 350 hearts. And ive just gone on to bay of E....they do personalised labels to stick over the love heart labels 100 for £4 free p&p. Bargain!!
14th August 2010 Engaged to Mister Matthews
17th August 2012 I'll be Missus Matthews
CommentAuthorClarabella
My budget was going to be about £15000 but now my daughter has appear we had to pospone our wedding and cut our budget down to £10000 and i still dont know if we're going to be able to afford that. The only thing we have actually done is order our rings which has cost us £1000 for the both of them which is getting made for us but we are getting our bridesmaid and bestman gifts free pluss i get a lovley gift as well but i thought id make my our invites, buy an m&s cake and decorate it, Im getting my nieces dresses from ebay as ive seen some really nice dresses there and going to get silk flowers for them to hold instead of real flowers as they will prob ruin them before we get the photos done. I really wanted to have a friday wedding but the venue that we picked is booked up their fri and sat from april to oct and as we want to get married in june we have to have either a thurs or a sun but its still costing us the same price regardless of the day and ive also asked a few companies if they do discount for the days but ive only managed to get a 10% discount for our photographer grrrrr
Started losing weight last year 22/1/11 - 13 Stone 12 pounds
Lost this week 2lbs ;0)
Weighs as of 29/9/12 10 stone 12 lbs
CommentAuthor'ca'ca'ca
theres lots of ways to save money but one that hasnt been mentioned yet is what we're doing - we're putting up some huge marquees in a field. this measn that we can have whatever we want to eat, no snobby venues, and get to do it our way. Whaey! Good luck honey, but dont stress; its going to be an amazing day whether you spend £1000 or £100,000. Have fun thats the most important bit <3 x
CommentAuthorLittle Kettle
katemb87 - if you send me a friend request I'll pop a link on your wall to a company that I'm using for my BM and MoH dresses - they also do wedding dresses and have some great prices on them. x
Vegas baby!
Moderator
CommentAuthorMrsE
edited
My dress was in the sale, reduced to £600 from £2000 My BM's were on the bay of e. My FG dresses were £3 from Pri-mark. My FG shoes were £4.20 from Mon-soon in the sale. My BM jewelery was on the bay of e for £3.50 inc. boxes. BM shoes were on the bay of e for £20 each My shoes were in the sale on the woods of little website for £13. My tiara was £7 from the bay of e. My veil was £15 from the bay of e My flowers are being done by a private florist and costing me £350 for EVERYTHING inc. table centres. My chair covers were £200 on offer as its "out of season" for them. The boys cravats cost me £7 each and thats handmade as nothing matched our colour scheme. Favour boxes were 30p each from Tesco (packs of 10 inc. ribbon) Favours cost me about 50p in total .. tube of sweets and some seeds :) Our cakes is being made by a VERY (thankfully) talented friend of mine :)
We made all our own invites, and are going to make our own table plan and place names :)
If you hunt around you can find some REAL bargains!! Hope this helps :)
xxxx
Can't wait to be Mrs Eastmond
Love my boys so much
CommentAuthorBeskiboo
edited
Budget planning is a must write down everything you need to get on a spreadsheet and stick to it !! At re end of the day it's only one day.
CommentAuthorMrsE
Couldn't agree more beskiboo :) Thats how ive done ours :) x
Can't wait to be Mrs Eastmond
Love my boys so much
CommentAuthorBeskiboo
My H2b refers to the spreadsheet as "the bible" which is odd as our friend think that we have gone all religious
CommentAuthorClarabella
I think i look at our 'bible' (as you put it hehe) everyday thinking it'll shrink but it never does sadly
Started losing weight last year 22/1/11 - 13 Stone 12 pounds
Lost this week 2lbs ;0)
Weighs as of 29/9/12 10 stone 12 lbs
CommentAuthormrs handforth
were on a very tight budget,probably looking about 1500,i think vicars costing most about £490 my dress £120,venue £175,flowers artificial £25 my dads doing a buffet,friends djing,n also my mum got my invites on carboot 60 invites for a quid absolute bargain! x
CommentAuthorMumble83
I am surprised no-one has mentioned our "Wedding Bargains Thread" on here. just do a forum search for "Wedding Bargains Thread" and you should find it. We all put on any bargains we have found on there.
One way we have saved money is by having the shortest service the registry office will do (a 15min service for £40 without exchanging the rings) to just take care of the legal side of things on the 24th then getting "married" on the 25th with a personal service in a local beauty spot (we got permission from the trust) and exchanging the rings there and saying our own vows before going off to our reception. So legally we will be married on the 24th but in our hearts we are getting married on the 25th and we have saved a minimum of £75 on something we thought there was no way of getting around. It's personal to us too as the place we are doing it is where we scattered my Dad's ashes and is somewhere we have been taking the kids for a while for picnics. xxxx
CommentAuthorKate_B
Thanks for all your fab ideas - a bit more reassuring now I've had a read through all these :)
Guess it's just the extra time and effort you got t o put in to find the hidden gems :)
One idea i've got for a bargain is to use my own car for transport... It's featured in magazines, shows etc so not a normal car or anything, but a lil classic. Might put some bows on it and get some one to drive it for us. Would be great to have my little mini part of our big day
Cheers for all the great ideas xxx
CommentAuthorbecky
it cost some one i know to get married £1900.00 for the whole thing. She got married late ( church wedding ) so it meant that all the guests were invited day and night then hired a hall did the food herself and paid for everyones first drink, and it was a fab and lovely day x
CommentAuthorUnknown
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CommentAuthormcquire81
Most of these ideas have probably been covered but just incase: Artificial flowers instead of real ones, they're much cheaper. Make your own invites. EBAY EBAY EBAY for everything!!! If you have a local college nearby you might find an amateur photographer to do your wedding pics much cheaper, same can be said if your looking for a musician. Get your cake from M&S rather than specially made- its much cheaper and you can decorate with fresh flowers and matching ribbon. Have your wedding on a weekday or in an off-peak month and you will save a fortune. High street stores do some great BM dresses which are far cheaper than getting them from a bridal store. Good Luck xx
CommentAuthorricky
posted this before lol but there are lots of threads about bargains..our wedding has cost about 2K..took lots of shopping around but was well worth it..got pics on my profile of many of the bargains. xxx
CommentAuthorVictoriaAcreman
E bay/internet for me too - bridesmaid tiara 99p my tiara 8.99 necklace/earlings 14.00 bridesmaid dresses 15.00 reduced from 70 gifts - cufflinks, engraved glasses, photo albums we're having artificial bouquets that we can sell on afterwards adult bridesmaid dress bnwt 25.00 tablecovers 1.50 each made my own invitations and order of service have made bunting to decorate the venue from the baby clothes of my three children having scones and tea for after the ceremony have made my own flower table decorations from tissue paper - they look amazing and sell on etsy for £3.00 EACH!!!! Finger buffet for 4.50 ph I've still exceeded my budget of £2500.00 but we have spent more on the evening - having a band and a caricature artist. Managed to keep the artist a surprise from everyone we're having a free bar which will consist of plastic cups and cans of beer/bottles of coke/boxes of wine etc, budgeted £300 for this. My dad is horrified - but tbh if i went to a wedding and had music, entertainment, free beer, buffet then i would be well chuffed. Country wedding.
It is so easy not to spend too much. I researched everything just to ensure i got the best price, envariably i came back to the first thing i saw!!!!
enjoy - you only do it once!
CommentAuthorKatya
ok having read all the other posts i have one to add, if you have a town hall or marquee or garden reception then you could have a bring a dish. the guests bring a dish each and you budget for a drink run to france. that way you dont have to worry about food and your drink is cheaper. providing you tell the borders and have proof such as an invite they will allow you to bring large quantities of booze back.
