Cheap Wedding Ideas

Jen and Martin are getting married and like many couples are on a tight budget. They are looking for cheap wedding ideas to help their money go further.

Can you help with any ideas to make their wedding fly, without costing the earth?

Do your own catering

It is much cheaper to do your own catering. Ideally try to rope in some members of the family.

Have the reception at a family house

If you can do the wedding reception at a family members house it will save on the cost of hiring a venue. You could always put up a marquee in the garden.

Rent the village hall

Village halls can be rented quite cheaply – which will make your budget stretch further.

Supply your own wine

If you are using outside caterers you will probably find that it is cheaper to pay corkage (a cost for serving the win) that it will be to buy the wine from the caterers. You can also have a lot of fun tasting wines to find the right one for your weeding day (Thanks to Pam)

Do your own invites

Rather than having expensive wedding invites printed you could design your own. You can either hand write invites on card (a nice personal touch) or you could design your own using a computer programme like PowerPoint. (Thanks to Amy).

Picnic in the park

Some friends fo mine who were on a very limited budget had their reception in the local park. This saved the complete cost of the venue. Some other friends brought along a croquet set and we had a very memorable day. It helped that the weather was nice and sunny. (Thanks to Pam).

Get your wedding dress on ebay

Ebay is a good place to go looking for a wedding dress. You can pick up a designer wedding dress for around £100 ($200). The dresses have only usually only been worn once and are excellent condition. Only the bride (and groom!!) would know. (Thanks to Pam).

Business suits

Rather than hiring morning suits you can save money by just wearing a business suits. If you want everyone to match you just need to buy the men a set of matching ties. (Thanks to Reece).

Do your own flowers

Flowers can cost an absolute fortune but you can do your own. My Auntie did flowers for me as a wedding present, which was really nice. They looked wonderful. You can get really nice flowers from a supermarket and they don’t cost a lot. You could even get pot plants from a garden centre to put on the table (Thanks to Tracey)

Make everyone the photographer

Wedding photos can be really expensive so a cheap alternative is to ask everyone who is bringing a digital camera to make a copy of the photos for you. You will get some really nice and unexpected shots. See if you can rope in a forceful relative to act as the ‘official photographer’ to ensure that you get the regular family shots. Uncle Stan did my photos, but the photos from friends were also really lovely. (Thanks to all of the ideas from Amy)

Put your wedding photos on Flickr

If you want to share your wedding photos with family and friends – put them on Flickr. Its free and pretty easy to use. A great way of saving mementos of the special day.

Buy a shop bought cake

Buy a shop bought cake. There are some really nice ones at Marks and Spencers. They do a three tiered wedding cake- 74 Portions for £49.50 www.marksandspencer.com (Thanks to Beth)

Make your own invites
I made my own invites by simply using the word processor application. I printed them on A4 quality paper rolled them up and tied with a ribbon giving a scroll effect. – Everyone commented on how nice they were.

I also bought some card folded it into thirds. I printed my menus on plain paper stuck them into the centre section, folded them and also tied with ribbon it just added something extra to the table at little cost. – (Thanks to Michelle)

Do you have any other cheap wedding ideas? Simply add them in the box below.