Wedding Forum - Your budget and being realistic....

We have a budget of around £15,000. We set up an Isa to pay for the venue as thats the most expensive cost we have and have a standing order go in from each of us the day we get paid, can't miss it too much if it goes out before i see what goes in lol. Then we wrote down on envelopes all the things we would need to save for wedding dress, suits, transport, hair and make up etc and how much we would need to save. We tackle one envelope at a time putting in any spare cash we have, we don't start a new envelope untill we have saved all the money needed for which ever one we are on. Its going well, we have been saving for about 8 months now and have saved around £9000. I think the trick is to set little saving goals as it's easier to meet them and you dont get disheartened feeling you are no where near your target. Hope this helps xx

Me and my H2b are getting married in 2 1/2 yrs, we basically just worked out what we could realistically save per week,for me and per month for him. Then totalled what that would be by the end of the saving period. Now we just have to stick within budget!!
A friend of mine gave me her spreadsheet of everything she spent which was great - and we have hopefully set a budget :-S

I must admit it is a bigger budget then I would have wanted but like you have found everything just costs sooooo much!
Oh and we are paying for everything, just seemed that anyone who wanted to contribute financially thought that meant they had the right to a say in things, which I didn't want.

I'm so worried about it all aha!

Siany we save 500 pound between us min and then as much as we can each month. H2B gets paid bonuses through work when he meets his targets so we save that too, this is why we have managed to save so well.

Hi Siany, We are currently on target to save about £15,000 for our wedding with family contributing £3,500. We manage to save around £800 a month by going out less, having less meals out etc. Part of this is also the fact I opted out of my pension to save £100 of that a month and got a bar job which is another £100 a month.

For our wedding, we have made savings by not having transport for me and OH, cheap bridesmaid dresses and a few other things (these haven't all gone to plan, like i mentioned in my earlier discussion I'm having a few problems with photographers!) We're likely going to spend around £9,000 on the wedding and £5,500 on the honeymoon.

Hope that helps! x

You are all so good!!! Thankyou so much for your ideas and help!! x

my Budget is around £2000 as i am doing all of it myself apart from the venue, church and rings.

I think you should see what your financial situation is like and then see if you can put money aside each month. It soon adds up.

I'm loving the envelope ideas! I've just had to increase my budget from £7k to about £10k because costs just keep going up! I'm not sure yet what family will be contributing so its all very up in the air...which isn't good for someone who likes control such as myself!

i had originally set my budget at 8k that jumped to 10k recently when i had a reality check on the cost of things! i think we will probably go over that too!!!! :(

we are doing it completely on our own though x

We set ourselves a budget of 15k max for everything, we have been engaged 2 years, we have payed for the majority of it ourselves....we are a lil over our budget...
But you can have a relatively small budget and have a fantastic day (my aunty managed to do her day for 1k...it was fabulous and it was all DIY and help from other people)

Clare, my H2B's parents spent £500 on theres! Mostly DIY and favours!

We are hoping to not spend a extravagant amount xx

Siany, £500 they must have been very creative!

Im being realistic, tom isnt. he seems to think he can do Vegas for his honeymoon. im not bothering nagging as i know it wont happen even if we did save up - he cant expect his mates to fork out afew grand. thedork, hes getting over excited

minus vegas, i think we are looking at approx #£16,000 the venue is expensive, but im hoping il be able to do alot of stuff on the cheap doing things myself

Im going abroad- if thats something you can do then it will literally half your costs. My wedding includes the following:
Full ceremony and reception
Bridal bouquet in any choice of style or colour multi coloured roses
Matching buttonhole for groom
Photographer and videographer for two hours, to include …
60 colour photos
Four black and white photos
Two A4 Post Production photos
Photo album and negatives (on CD in digital form)
DVD with Kefalonia Highlights (HiDef Video available at extra charge)
Ribbon-decorated bridal car for transfer from accommodation to ceremony location (for arrival of bride & father)
Fresh flower centerpiece for celebrant’s top table
Arch with 3 bouquets of matching flowers –
Covered chairs for your guests at the ceremony and reception
Decorative stands with flowers to form an aisle (x4)
Two tier, decorated sponge wedding cake
Instrumental musicians x 2 (mandolin, guitar, accordion) – 20 minutes before the ceremony and 20 minutes after
Exclusive use of venue for the entire evening
Wedding Menu for 30 persons
Sample Menu
10 bottles of local wine, red and white (Linos and San Gerasimos)
Unlimited bottled water during the meal
Champagne and canapés for adults, juice for kids, after the ceremony
Champagne toast for speeches
Transfer for your guests (35 persons) to venue and return back to resort (south coast) by private luxury coach
Live Greek band for four hours OR professional DJ for 5 hours OR Jerry Hollis for 3 hours
Performance by local dance troupe for one hour
Fully decorated reception area , consisting of ….
Fresh floral centerpieces with candles, on each table (x4)
Large fresh floral centerpiece for the couple’s top table
Tall lanterns, placed on our stairway for the couple’s entrance, and later placed in front of the top table
Organza, for a splash of colour on the table
Personalized bombonieres, to match your wedding theme
Transportation to the local Municipal building for scheduled appointment to sign for the Greek marriage certificate (same day or day before)
Pre-wedding meeting
Administration fees
Registrar, Celebrant and Town Hall fees
Wedding coordinator's fees
FIREWORKS
All for a grand total of...... £5,000

we are incorporating our honeymoon and putting on a free bar. And will have a bit of a do when we get back for everyone who couldnt make it. Reckon that could set us back up to £2K then the dresses etc. Reckon it might get up to 9 or 10k- With about 7K help from Family.

do consider abroad as an option if your looking to money save- you get so much more for your money, in a setting you couldnt buy in the UK!!

PS. To savea bit of money I started at slimming world to get into the diet, then instead of giving them £5 a week to weigh me, we bought some scales and I put the £5 in the 'wedding fund' pot each week- will only be £320 by the wedding, but every little helps!

Good luck!!

Wow, I had no idea it cost so much :(

I love the ideas about saving- I've got so far as starting a spreadsheet trying to list all the things that we have to pay for from what I've gathered so far. I'm just trying to start filling in some blanks of approx. costs...its scary!

we had a budget of £7,000 for the major things like venue, photographer, church, suits etc

we then had to up it as my dad got made redundant so i had to pay for my dress we didn't pay for the car or the cake as hubby's parents paid for them for us

just have a look round at prices and put them in a spreadsheet such as

Budgetted cost
Actual cost
and it will give you a rough idea of what you need to save then we worked it out on the budgetted cost of what we needed to save per month

Out budget is £12,000 for ourselves, h2bs parents are giving us £2.5k and buying the cake,my dads giving us some cash and buying my dress,bridesmaids and groomsmen are paying for themselves and my nanna s giving us a bit towards flowers, think in total about £16k x

My dad's paying the venue but we got a really good package deal on it, my grandma paid for the cake and my mum has bought my dress. Everything else we are doing ourselves.
We started off wanting a budget wedding and to spend between £2-5k, but we figured out the other day that we'll end up spending about £7k and we have no idea how and where we will find the money to pay it all off :(

well i had a budget of 7k for the ceremony in america and the one here together ..... and i came in under budget !!!!

Dani I'm going abroad too and if it were just that it'd be fine, it's arranging the party back home that's costing! But like Linzi I'm hoping to bring it in for about £7k, I'm just aiming for £10k "just in case" ;-)

We didn't really have a budget as such, but looked around for the best deals once we'd decided where we wanted to get married. We had around a 20 month engagement, so just paid for things as we needed to, when we could - as we paid for the whole wedding and honeymoon ourselves.

I always love a bargain and refuse to pay stupid money for things so we trawled the internet etc and even travelled for the things we wanted.

In the end we spent just over £6.5k or so which included the wedding (plus hotel for us and my son as we got married at Gretna), honeymoon (including spending money) and evening reception when we got back home.

We were aiming for 7k but definitely looking more like ten. We decided to spend a bit more than originally planned on entertainment and things.. x

Wow youve done that well! X