Our Budget Wedding and how you can have one too

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We got married back in 2005 and it cost us £7000 in total. This year are celebrating 15 years married. We were due to go away for a few days without the children but Coronavirus put a stop to that! We’ll go next year hopefully. What I wanted to talk about today was how to have an amazing wedding on a budget.

The trick is to cut down on those big costs, but still have all the things you want for your dream wedding. So the big four are:

• The dress
• Photographer
• The Venue
• Catering

So let’s break each of those down and see where we can save.

The Wedding dress

I know you want that dream designer dress to look like a princess. But does it have to be designer? My advice is to spend a day trying on dresses at all the bridal boutiques in your town with someone you trust like your Mum and your best friend and take note of all your favourite styles. Photograph them if you are allowed. If your ideal dress is within budget then you’ve got yourself a deal, but if not then look online and see if you can buy directly from the supplier or find a similar style for less. You can also negotiate a discount from the shop. If you don’t ask, you don’t get. You could also consider hiring a wedding dress. Realistically you aren’t going to wear it again and by hiring it you can get something perfect for a fraction of the price.

When it comes to the bridesmaid’s dresses, again shop around – there may be something in the bridal shop you love and you can find on the high street for much less. Remember when you went to choose your prom dress? Prom dresses make excellent bridesmaids dresses and are much cheaper. For some reason put wedding in the mix and pounds are added on.

The photographer

Nowadays everyone has a camera at their fingertips on their phones. Nothing quite beats a professional photographer though. Shop around and ask for recommendations first and see examples of their work. If you really like their style, ask them if they can do a special deal for you. Perhaps you can promote them on social media for a reduction in rates? It helps if you have a large following. Think about how long you want the photographer there for. Perhaps just at the ceremony and for the group photos and then they can go. This will save on their fee and plenty of people will take photos you can share.

The best way to share everyone’s photos is with a Wedding Photo Swap service. It’s an app where you invite your guests to sign up to it and during the day and beyond, you can share all their photos in high resolution to print or save to remember your special day.

The Venue

We’d all like to get married in a castle with a horse-drawn carriage pulling up a long sweeping drive but realistically that’s not always in the budget. So you’ll have to get creative. One way of being creative is to display a wedding hashtag at the wedding. This will make your wedding viral and trending on social media as guests will definitely use your wedding hashtag to upload your wedding pictures to their social media accounts. Indeed, your wedding will be memorable! We ended up getting married at the registry office, but luckily it’s a beautiful old palace building so it felt like a castle but was actually only £350 to have our wedding there. We then went on to a village hall which we had decorated. Hotels are another option and they offer different packages. If you are religious, a church service is a good option, churches are beautiful and give that sense of occasion but are very cheap. You may need to prove you live nearby or have family close by and in some cases you need to attend church for a time beforehand. Again, negotiate on price to get the best deal for you.

Catering

We spent the lion’s share of our budget on the caterers, but it was well worth it. They helped shape the day – when you think about it the food and drinks help with the timings. Drinks on arrival, speeches before pudding, and with a toast, they cut the cake for you and bring out the evening buffet, plus keep the drink flowing! We saved money by buying our own alcohol from France which cut the drinks bill right down. We also had an external event bar come for the evening where people could buy their own drinks and this was free for us, they make their money from the guests.

I hope this helps you plan your dream wedding on a budget!

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