How To Plan Your Wedding On a Budget

Wedding planning is currently in full swing right now! I have been feeling super stressed recently and have loads of advice and tons of different suppliers circling in my brain. On average people spend between a whopping £15,000 and £20,000 on weddings in the UK, and Liam and I seriously did not want to spend that much money. Spending all of that money on just one day is beyond me! You can still have a beautiful wedding celebrating your love with your family and friends on a budget. Here are some tips I've learnt so far...

Having a wedding planning book has really helped with knowing what we need to do as and when. Along with a checklist, you can tick bits off as you go and then see what's next. It also gives you a 12 month timeline up until your wedding day so you know what to do each month. I also have an app called Bridebook which is great too! It's pretty much the same as my planning book but you can look at venues, cake makers etc in your area which is handy. It also has a countdown until the big day which is really exciting and I literally check it everyday haha. 

Write down everyone you'd like to invite and don't even think about the numbers. Once you've written everyone down, go through the list and decide who you'd like to invite for the whole day and who you'd like to invite for the evening. This will give you an idea on how many people will be attending and then you can look for venues with roughly the same number of guests. We have amended the numbers on our guest list so many times to try and keep it as cheap as possible. Like, does my cousin that I haven't seen or spoken to since I was 10 years old really need to be there? Most venues prices are per head or you can get packages. Our package included 40 guests for the day but we paid per head for an extra 16 people, and it still worked out cheaper than other venues we liked. 

Once you've got a rough idea of numbers of your guest list, you can start looking for venues. We wanted to spend between £3000 and £4000 on a venue. So, we had narrowed down our choices and only went to look around venues which we liked which were in our venue budget. Because, what's the point in going to look around a gorgeous venue and then it's well out of your budget? It's just a waste of time and a HUGE disappointment if you fall in love with it and can't afford it.

Facebook is your best friend. No, really. We have been googling photographers, videographers, cake makers etc etc etc for weeks and haven't found what we've been looking for at all. So, I posted a little status on a selling group in my city on Facebook for people to recommend me photographers and I got SO MANY responses, I actually had to disable the comments. We went through each recommendation and we found our wedding photographer that way and we had never even heard of her, neither did she come up on our google searches. Oh and she was so much cheaper than the recommended photographers that came up in our google results. You can get so much advice and recommended suppliers through Facebook, it has been so helpful!

Try and save money on décor. Liam and I have really been struggling on this part. We are currently trying to find centrepieces for our tables, but centrepieces which are at a reasonable price. We love the white lanterns with those firefly lights and flowers coming out of them. But £11 just for one lantern, works out expensive itself for six tables, nevermind the other little bits. So, we're just window shopping around at the moment. I mean, when are you ever going to need your centrepieces again? You could sell them after I suppose.

Instead of hiring separate suppliers, go through a company that does everything and get a package with them, it works out cheaper! So, instead of hiring a photobooth, a sweet cart, a doughnut wall etc all separate, find a company that does all of it for a package. We have found somewhere that does things like that as well as venue décor which is super helpful and it saves time looking around for other suppliers too.

This is all we've learnt so far. Have any of you got any tips on saving money for a wedding?