From wedding dress to cake to honeymoon, there are plenty of ways to save money on your big day.
Once cake has been eaten and the flowers have wilted, many couples face huge wedding bills. The average spend for the big day is around £21,000, a figure set to soar in the next few years. As a result, insurer Weddingplan predicts a 50% rise in couples insuring their big day.
But spending thousands on a wedding is not only a waste of money; it may even lead to divorce, according to Philippa Gee, an independent financial adviser at Shropshire-based Philippa Gee Wealth Management: "Money is one of the biggest causes of relationship breakdown. So forget a dream wedding and go for a dream marriage, instead. One of the best ways to achieve that is not to start married life heavily in debt."
It's worth remembering that a marriage certificate costs only £3.50; a ceremony, at a church, is around £300 and about £100 at a register office. Anything after that is up to you – and it's perfectly possible to bring the whole thing in at less than a grand.
The dress
If you have your heart set on a designer frock, perhaps surprisingly, your first stop should be Oxfam. Many designers donate gowns to the charity, which has 11 bridal stores. Dresses with an original price tag of £1,000 go for around £250, but there are non-designer items from £30 online at Oxfam.org.uk.
Independent bridal shops can also be cheaper than the mainstream stores, says Stacey Harris, 22, from Flintshire. When she married Adam, 27, at Days Hotel, Chester North, in May, they kept to a £1,000 budget. "I spent £150 on my dress," says Stacey. "For that, I got a full-length, white dress, with crystals from my local shop."
Other ideas include: hiring a local seamstress to make your dress, wearing a bridesmaid's dress, finding a bargain at discounted designer sales, charity shops or on eBay. It may be pushing it but you could make your own. For the brave, there's help online at www.ehow.co.uk.
Decorations and stationery
Don't pay wedding stationers to design, print and send the invites. "Stationery can easily set you back £300," says Alison Wren, who runs DIY wedding stationery site, Weddingcrafter.co.uk. "Making things yourself is quite stylish and can save two-thirds of the cost."
Getting friends and family involved can save hundreds, even thousands, of pounds and it doesn't matter if they're not professionals. Niki Clark, 28, founder of Wedding Notebook.co.uk, says: "Get them round to stuff invites into envelopes or fold the orders of service. It's nice to involve people." For decorations, seek inspiration at sites such as Confetti.co.uk and Youandyourwedding.co.uk. Ideas include recycling pretty jars to fill with flowers or candles and buying decorations at car boot sales.
"For table lighting, we scooped out orange halves and put a tea light inside and cloves on the outside," says Niki. "They looked and smelled great."
Liz Taylor, of Taylor Lynn Corporation, who recently planned the wedding of Eamonn Holmes and Ruth Langsford, says: "Even the very best venues have quieter times, so check when they are and look to negotiate costs if you book an off-peak time." Costs can be cut further by partying in a church hall, clubhouse, or the private dining rooms of a restaurant or pub, or a friend's garden.
If you're opting for a church wedding, plan your dates carefully. "Consider having it near a major holiday," says Kaley Gardiner owner of special occasions organiser The Last Detail. "The church will already be decorated, saving you lots of money on flowers."
Food and drink
Even if you're going for the fully-catered option, you can save by getting married after lunch (you only have to serve dinner) and just having main and pudding.
If you can do your own catering, or even part of it, you'll save money. Nicola Wray of Cheap-wedding-success.co.uk, says: "We had a few close friends bring dishes for the buffet. Other relatives also chipped in, so we ended up not having that much to do." Other savings include serving cake as a pudding, so you don't also pay for dessert; having sponge instead of fruit cake, having "pudding cakes" such as a tower of profiteroles, or cake made of cheese.
"If you're set on a traditional cake, having two tiers instead of three can save £200," says Marie Sinclair from Genuinecakes.co.uk. "Collecting and assembling it yourself also saves pounds."
Serving Cava or Prosecco instead of champagne is fairly standard these days, as is having a cash bar, or hopping across the channel to pick up cheaper drinks. You could even make some yourself. "My mum is making sloe gin. It'll be a cost-saver and something different for the guests," says Lisa Thomas, 29, a marketing consultant from London, who is marrying in north Devon in December.
The honeymoon
Why not book a holiday at the last minute or have a honeymoon as a wedding present? "My in-laws paid for Adam and I to spend four nights in London and see two shows," says Stacey Harris. "It made for a lovely present."
If you're after a big trip, how about combining it with the wedding? Getting married on a sun-drenched beach in Key West, added barely $750 (marriage certificate, photography and flowers included) to the cost of a trip to America for Emma and Ian Banks, from East Sussex, who married in April.
"We were going there anyway," says Emma. "We didn't tell any of our friends and family, we just had a simple ceremony with the local registrar. It was very romantic and personal."
Canvas and confetti
Last year we went to eight weddings, this year it's seven. It's pretty much what we do at weekends between May and September. Weddings are fun but expensive and, as a rule, we make it our goal to do things on the cheap. So, wherever possible we camp when we're invited to help celebrate someone's big day.
Nicky and Eric recently married in the south of France. They found a beautiful boutique hotel in Provence converted from a huddle of farm buildings on top of a hill. Our friends had rented the whole place over a long weekend, so we had the run of the hotel – an infinity pool overlooking olive groves and lavender fields, champagne on ice, fois gras and a pond filled with trout.
The hotel website says it offers "a veritable olfactory and gourmet promenade into the heart of Provençal cuisine", which it does. The rooms were £500 a night (one had a stuffed tiger in it) so most guests felt pampered and generally luxurious.
We stayed in a campsite for €13 (£10.70) a night. By day we'd hang out around the pool then return to our tent each night. We got up to the hotel on hire bikes from the campsite. The owner was a bit nonplussed by us – I don't think anyone from the campsite (most guests were retired French couples who spend a lot of their time cleaning their already immaculate caravans) had ever been to the hotel.
Cycling back at the end of the night was fun – Tom rode into a drainage ditch at the side of the road, and, miraculously, climbed out unscathed. And we were not without our luxuries – camping is a lot nicer with an airbed and a duvet.
There are, of course, pitfalls. Getting dressed for the wedding is tricky in a small tent. Options include getting dressed lying down (not easy) or changing behind a tree (you need to be a little bit of an exhibitionist). High heels don't work well in fields or indeed with les toilettes traditionelle – if you've used a squat toilet you'll know what I mean.
English campsites are more basic. At Ben and Tess's wedding in Surrey we had a portable loo and a tap. Waking up in a hot tent with a hangover is horrible; take a compass so you can work out where the shade is going to be in the morning and pitch your tent accordingly.
Putting your make-up on in the wing mirror is not easy. The best bit – if you can manage to arrive without a twig in your hair, muddy toes or smudged eyeliner – is that no one would ever know you were camping.
You look just as glamorous as the other guests but you've got a special secret. You're not shelling out small fortune for a room with a bed that's probably not as comfy as the one you've got at home. And in the morning you get to have a slightly unhygienic bacon sandwich in the fresh air – the perfect hangover cure.
Once last point, when it comes to outdoor weddings, keep in mind that renting stretch tents can turn any area into a wedding venue!
Written by: Gemma Bruce
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