I know this is a personal question but:-
what kind of budgets are you working to? (including guest numbers)
how long have u been planning so far?

I'm trying to get as much information together in advance. I know were all different, but I'm stuck, I have started my guest list but so far I only hav my immediate family and his parents and brother and our joint friends totallig 25ppl for the wedding breakfast I know im missing some of his family but he won't be having may there so thats not going to boost it too much.
Apart from imediate family and very close friends who do u invite to the wedding breakfast?!

We've just invited family and close friends. aunties and uncles and cousins (we're really close) but unfortunately our wedding breakfast numbers are still 75! and then there's just an extra 28 for the evening. I tried so hard to cut it down I'm just hoping some people won't be able to make it! I know of two that are almost certainly going to say no due to ill health and one living in australia but have to invite them! our budget at absolute max is 8k. but that's going to have me working 4-5 12hr shifts a week instead of 3.
stuff it though you only do it once.....mostly....

Was 5k then I got a bit from hmrc so now budgeting 6k, for 30 (ish) people - parents, siblings, grandparents and some close friends.

We have approx 100 people at the day time and an extra 50 on the night... we haven't actually worked out a budget, we r just going along and seein what we can afford each month, just paying as much as we can when we can. We havent got a honeymoon yet but we r planning on asking for donations towards it as wedding pressies so fingers crossed that will get us going :)

we have about 70 (more 60 probably) guests in total. We were looking at a 4-5k budget but H2B's parents will probably be chipping in a lot so we've got lucky there.
I had budgeted up almost everything and it's under 3k at the moment, the only thing that's going to bump that price up way high is the catering!

We had 8 people in Vegas (all paid for their own flights and accomodation etc. but we paid for the wedding breakfast at the Top of the World restaurant and limo tour for the evening) and 85 people for the reception back in London.
Our budget was £10K, which included our flights and Vegas accomodation and hire of the harley for the honeymoon.

We were trying to work to a budget of £5k but finding it tricky after deciding to have a sit down meal, so it's more realistically looking at £6k. Got most things booked so hopefully will stay in that price range. We have 48 people for the day and up to 25 more for the evening.
Xxx

i have just sat down with h2b and worked out we are working to 5k at the min and we are doing ok we have 30@ 22.50 day time and 120 evening buffet at 10 pp we did bottels on tabels and a toast drink we where very harsh with our wd list and said family only as we want it that way and we set our budget and then looked in to venues with packages on as we found that it was the best way to do it , and making alot , a friend of mine did say she had big family she invited the oldest aunt and unc and
that made it easier for her and she also did a friend luck of draw and asked bm to by all bit like shoes and assories , i dint have any so not a prob just my lil girl at the mo and ben has no best man just our black lab with the rings :)
hope you get sorted

I wouldn't worry about bulking out the guest list for the sake of it, I went to a wedding last month where there were only 40-45 at the breakfast and it felt really homely! I just listed all my family - we're big and we all get on so 78 on my side alone - he has 12 family, then we have close friends who we want to invite - so it's 160 for the day and another 40ish in the night. Having large numbers means more spending so all in all including dress, suit hire, rings, transport etc we're looking at 18.5k inc a full meal and table wine for the guests, my mum is giving us 2k to cover the videographer, toastmaster and vintage bus for the guest transport though which is a great help :-)

I originally thought the whole thing would cost about £5k and that we would be paying for it ourselves, luckily my parents have offered to pay for the reception and other bits as the ceremony and reception come to £7.5k for 100 day and an extra 30 for the evening. In all I think we are looking at about £15k with everything and the honeymoon. Luckily h2b has just got a £6k pay out on some insurance so we may be able to do it without suffering too much for the next 19 months. I think it can be done for less than £5k we just wanted everyone we love there and I will only ever get to be a princess for the day once so I'll be making the most of it.

our budget is and sticking to it..£2500..40 breakfast guests...80 evening guests.

just checked our contract again 5500 for the venue meal etc and h2b parents giving us 4000 and weve put 2500 so far to it!!!

We are aiming spend no more than £7000. At first we had £5000 in mind but that turned out to be unrealistic. We are having 35 for the breakfast and 80 for the evening party. x

We haven't actually sat and worked out a budget yet... My parents have offered to pay for our reception, and we've been given a choice: 100 guests at a budget venue, or immediate family and closest friends (around 40 people) at our dream venue.

we're actually swaying towards a wedding BBQ so that we can still have everyone we want (75 people) AND our dream venue, but I still need to speak to the manager of the place to see what can be done. This would mean doing away with the evening buffet though...

I'm trying to work on as tight a budget as I possibly can. A friend is going to be taking our photos, which we will then upload onto photobox and make up our own album. A friend's girlfriend has offered to make our cake. I'm making my own invitations and favours. And best of all, I bought my dress for £200 and my bridesmaids for £15 (for TWO dresses thanks to a spelling error on the listing).

I'm hopeful that we can do it for less than 5k!

we never sat down and worked out a budget to be honest byt we looked at our venue and my mum said she would pay for 70 guests for the sit down meal so that really helped. with everything else we just paid something if we liked it but tried to get deals.

the whole wedding including honeymoon was about 10k. cant remember exactly how much it was xx

zmrtn87, I know how you feel! When we were planning our provisional wedding list we thought we could get our day down to 40, which would probably mean we could slice 1-2k off our budget! But family politics means I'm going to probably have to not invite friends so I can invite some cousins I haven't seen for years and their husbands I haven't even met! Gaaaaah!

We are only having 32 people in total as we are only having the ceremony and then canapes with sparkly wine during photo's and then a 3 course meal and drinks. That's costing around £4200 but thats not including our honeymoon which will be aound £1800 for 4 days in Venice. So a total budget of around £6000.

We are looking at 52 to the wedding breakfast 3 course meal, which are family and close friends, with aunts uncles and cousins. and we are looking at around 200 in total for the evening which is a buffet, our budget is 13k for the whole day and honeymoon.

We have 60-70 for the day with an extra 50 for the reception!
Started out with a 5k budget but its crept up to 9k.................would be more if i was paying for the cake and my dress but a friend and my sister are doing/paying for those, so thats saved us 1.5-2k.


Just did a budget plan and with every special little detail like gift bags, table crystals EVERYTHING i'm looking at £9,001 lol

We're having about 20 including ourselves.

Though we're getting to a stage where I've planned and replanned most styles/types of wedding several times over and gone back to the original of faiytale.

We started with a budget of around 5k ish and now it's almost double.

We thought that if we have fewer people we can afford to give them a bit more, like a canape reception between ceremony and meal, possibly have a four course meal instead of 3 things like that, only the costs seem to keep going up and it's not like we can cut the guest list.

I think when you buy anything no matter how cheap it seems you need to ask yourself are you really gonna use it and will it make a difference.

My bigest example of wasted money trying to save money is I've bought about 5 dresses now all under the £200 mark but it all adds up and I won't be wearing any of them as none are right for me. If I'd just saved the money and waited I could now afford the dress of my dreams instead of having to look at alternatives.

The over small problem we've had is we've been engaged a long time (around 5 years ish) and we didn't set a budget at first as we knew we'd have a long engagement. Te problem being we've never really got round to setting one not really and we've just been paying deposits as we go.

So far we have an expected budget of £3k, which was helped a lot when his parents offered to pay for our flights there and back (the only thing they asked in return is that we spend two weeks there haha I can live with that, I think :p) and they also want to pay for the food so saved us several hundred pounds there. Oh, and winning wedding rings was another mahoosive help, another big cost item off the list!

Our reception is free (yay again for his parents and their beautiful house!) so there are only drinks and decorations etc to pay for there. The uk ceremony is costing about £50 and there is no need for decorations or anything there, it is quite a nice room anyway! We havent confirmed permission to use the land we want for our blessing yet but according to MIL2b it should literally be as easy as getting approval from the mayor!

Edit to add - we are inviting around 40 people.

I really must put some pictures on

Ours is coming to about 13k now including honeymoon but mil2b is paying for the honeymoon and my mums buying my dress. I did manage to save some cash after a chat with our lovely new wedding co-ordinator at the venue as she said she'd supply our centrepieces for free (original co-ordinator was charging £22 each), I'd already agreed with them that they'd do our chair covers and sashes for free and we're going to get them to supply our cake now - less grief for me, relatively cheap cake but from one of the most popular wedding cake suppliers in the area! Also still get to do the tasting bit - yay lol the wedding co-ordinator has also said that, despite original min numbers being 90 adults during the day, she'll only charge us for the people confirmed providing it's no less than 80 which could bring the cost down by another £700. Needless to say I'm glad the old co-ordinator left haha also saved a buck or 3 by ordering my invites from America - paid £125 all in for 90 invites (including import tax) when someone on the bay was charging £3.75 per invite for the same ones!

We'd originally planned to get married abroad but thought that the price would be about the same here and we'd have all our friends an family around us here... we've got the latter but costs have doubled! x

We haven't really got a budget as such, but I think it will come in around the £4000 mark excluding the honeymoon, we're having between 30 and 40 guests.

If you have the money why not. Am sure most people would given the chance.