A wedding for under £5000

Why is it that weddings seem to cost the earth? Everything about weddings is expensive. Here are just a few ways that you could reduce the cost of your wedding from £20,000 to £5,000 in a few simple steps.

1. The dress – think about how important this is to you. To me it was pretty important, but the thought of spending £100’s or £1000’s on one outfit made me shudder. We simply could not afford for me to go mad and buy a boutique designer dress. I decided, and would highly recommend looking at high street dresses. I was totally surprised by the excellent quality of them. I ended buying a stunning Grecian style dress from Very.com for £200. I have just recently found and fell in love with the copy of The Duchess of Cambridge’s wedding dress from BHS. It is gorgeous and yes I know that £500 is still quite a lot of money. But compared to the average boutique dress it is a bargain. Decide where you think your money could be best spent but please do remember the high st when looking.

2. The venue – go to every wedding fayre you can. They are great fun and really are informative. Not only do you get to meet loads of different suppliers and collect information to look at later, but you get the best deals offered from the venues too. DO NOT BOOK YOUR WEDDING UNTIL YOU GO TO THE WEDDING FAYRE! You’ll find (like we did) that venues often reduce their prices especially for wedding fayres. We got a bargain. The brochure price on weddings at our venue was £7000, we couldn’t afford that.. We found a deal for a set amount of guests for £3000. Then we went to the wedding fayre and they were offering the same deal for £2750 – we snapped it up! Make sure that you check for the extras like linen hire and drinks. If these aren’t included they soon add up. Ask if there is a toast master provided. Be cheeky – they want your booking!!

3. Flowers – If like me these are very important to you then you want to spend a fair bit of your budget here. The best ways to reduce costs on flowers is to keep to a season. If you are getting married in January don’t ask for Peonies or sweet peas as they will be very expensive. Ask for more foliage to pad out the arrangements and ask the florist to use big blooms like Hydrangeas as they make the arrangements look fuller for less cost.
4. Venue decorations – Consider what the chairs at your venue look like. Do they really need chair covers? Maybe you could buy a reel of ribbon in your colour scheme and tie them around the chairs the night before. This would cost £25 and a bit of time rather than £250 for covers!! Check out our wooden letters for an alternative to flowers.

5. Cake – Consider buying a cake from Waitrose or Marks and Spencers. They are fabulous cakes and you can add your own decorations to them. Use ribbon or stick on some chocolate buttons to make a polka dot cake. This will save you £100’s.