With a budget of £2000 Hannah and her husband-to-be had to fine tune all their wedding planning arrangements to ensure they had the perfect day. The honeymoon was £1000 leaving just £1000 for the wedding ceremony and reception. How did they manage it?They agreed together this was THEIR wedding and they'd do it THEIR way, and while they took some good advice they made sure to ignore the advice and opinions (sometimes negative) of others who would have had a more elaborate, costly wedding ceremony and reception. Not wanting to start married life in debt they remained true to themselves and their goals.
They made savings as follows:
- Wedding dress sourced via Facebook for £70.
Hannah says "I couldn’t believe it. I tried it on and it fit like a glove. It was my dream dress too!"
- Bride Shoes - Purple Converse (non-branded) from Amazon for £8.
- Flower girl dresses £0 (They paid for their own at a cost of £8 each from eBay).
- Walking Bride Down the Isle Sisters Outfit £0 (sister paid for her own)
- Bridal and Bridesmaid Bouquets x 5 eBay £30
- Grooms Party Buttonholes x 7 Hobbycraft £20
- Cufflinks Debenhams Sale £5 each
- Grooms, Best man and Page boys suits - Debenhams (bought items as 3 separates rather than as one-piece suits) totalled £90 each.
- Shoes - Shoezone £11 each.
- Wedding Invitations - FreePrints app which offers 45 FREE prints a month and you only pay delivery. This was £2.99 and they arrived in under a week. Invitations were designed using Picturecollage app.
- Wedding Cake - Cupcakes were made to order, 100 for £60 and a Mr and Mrs Caterpillar cake £15 (self decorated).
- Wedding Car - Free - Family members car
- Photographer - FREE - Family member who gave services as a wedding gift
- Ceremony - held on a week day - £300
- Reception - local Bar £0 - Guests paid for own meals and drinks .
In the wedding invitation envelope Hannah put a details card which read:
“We love that we can share with you our very special day but there is something cheeky that we feel we need to say, would you be so kind if after we seal the deal you would be able to pay for your own reception meal” . Hannah's own words
Note: They invited 80guests and 50 declined ...possibly due to wedding being a weekday, meals paid for by guest. Being able to keep everyone happy by inviting them and not having them attend for their own reasons can be an added bonus when needing to cut costs! There is always a silver lining.
Final words from Hannah:
"We stayed true to ourselves and it paid off. Everyone who came said it was the best wedding they had ever been too and they loved it. And most importantly we loved it. We had a 4 night honeymoon in Amsterdam which came to £1000 and that was the biggest spend in our budget. So all in all it came under £2000"
Amazing value, low budget wedding and a happy day had by all!
Thank you Hannah for sharing these great low budget wedding tips with us.
Thank you Hannah for sharing these great low budget wedding tips with us.
