The average wedding costs just over 20,000, but you don’t have to spend a fortune to have the wedding day of your dreams. Here’s how to keep your costs down:
Avoid expensive traditions
The typical wedding venue costs 4,600 to hire but you can cut your costs by 20% or more by opting to get married out of season or on a weekday. “You can also negotiate 10% off with suppliers if you get married when they are less busy,” says Kate Thompson of wedding planning website Confetti.co.uk.
Francesca Cribb from hitched.co.uk recommends looking for a last-minute cancellation. Other ways to save include ditching a live band in favour of an MP3 playlist (typically saving 500) and having single stem bouquets (saving around 60 per bouquet). Hiring a photographer by the hour could also reduce the typical 1,000 bill to a few hundred pounds get competitive quotes by using wedding photographer comparison sites.
Cut the cost per guest
The secret to a bargain wedding is to try to reduce the food and drink cost per guest, not simply the number of guests. To cut your food costs, “consider a buffet wedding breakfast, and serve the wedding cake for dessert,” suggests Cribb. Buffets can cost as little as 11.50 per person, and you can buy traditional three-tier wedding cakes from posh supermarkets for about 1 a slice. Alternatively, ditch tradition and bake cupcakes (it’s cheaper than spending 45 on large cake tins).
As for drinks, don’t be afraid to ask guests to pay for some, if not all, of their drinks themselves. “Your friends and family will understand,” says Thompson.
Ditch expensive invitations
Instead of posting wedding invitations, create a free wedding website and send out e-invites. This will save you money, and it’s quicker and easier to keep track of RSVPs online. It also handy for your guests to refer to as the wedding nears.
Alternatively, design and print your own invitations you can buy blank ivory cards and envelopes online from craft shops for 10p per card, and save up to 3 per invitation.
Ask your guests to contribute
It’s increasingly common to suggest guests contribute money towards the honeymoon, instead of a gift. This frees up your budget for the wedding, and if you decide not to spend all the money on the honeymoon, well, who will ever know? But Sarah Pennells, author of Financial Bliss: How to grow wealthy together, advises against asking guests outright to cover the costs of the wedding itself: “If your friends and family want to get involved by making the cake or helping decorate, that’s great. But asking guests to pay for the wedding can be fraught with the problems of family politics.” So tread carefully: you don’t want your wedding hijacked by relatives who think that if they are paying, they can decide how their money is spent.
Pay for everything, including the honeymoon, with a cashback credit card. Just make sure you only spend what you can afford and pay off the bill in full each month.
Buy a bargain wedding dress
You can pick up a beautiful wedding dress for a few hundred pounds from high street shops such as Coast and Phase Eight, and online at Nordstrom and net-a-porter.com. If, however, you have your heart set on a designer wedding dress, you may be able to pick up a bargain from specialist wedding dress charity shops like Oxfam, Barnardo’s and St Ann’s hospice or secondhand website sellmyweddingdress.co.uk. Alternatively, be on the look-out for a bargain bridesmaid dress you could wear as a wedding dress.
Top tip Buy a vintage wedding dress for as little as 100 from one of London’s best vintage clothes shops or US site poshgirlvintage.com.
Guardian News and Media 2013
