Anyone had a medium to big budget wedding?

[Jon MW]

£5k is expensive, £30k is a ridiculous amount.

My own wedding came in at c£250 ( admittedly it was 1977) but more recently my daughter's wedding at a good Country House Hotel, 80+ guests, the best roast beef I've eaten in the UK, a barbecue supper, disco, the works came in at less than £3k. The venue staff were brilliant and the day passed off wonderfully well.

So many things you can do with the money you don't blow on a big wedding. Take the holiday of a lifetime for your honeymoon; put it into the house or furniture; tuck it away towards the costs of children; the list is pretty long.

The average for a wedding is way in excess of £5k, more like £15k these days. 'Expensive' is all relative.

average wedding cost last year of a wedding in the UK was nearer 20k

Just a point, the £20k figure seems to come from a wedding planners association. As well as being inflated by the cost of hiring a wedding planner I'm guessing it also has a strong London bias.

I would guess most weddings are regional in small venues,  I'd expect the average overall to probably be closer to £3 - 5k

[BorntoBubble]

Cheers for the comments so far. Very similar to what I have had elsewhere.

I know there are a lot of people that have "cheap" weddings and spend less than £1k. I have no issues with that its just not the market I am aiming at with this business plan.

I was amazed when a few friends were spending £10k+ and i know what kind of money they earn and it did not make sense to me but hey ho they dont understand why I want to go to Vegas! Each to there own i suppose.

Im looking at a venue to do accommodation and the actually wedding/do itself. Nothing new I know but i remember hearing in the early days of business there are two ways to make money. Come up with a new idea, or take someone else's idea and do it better than them!

I have seen that wedding planners alone charge 10-15% of the total cost of the wedding with a minimum of say £1.5k never mind food/accommodation.

We are looking to accommodate between 20-30, and be able to host a party for 50-150.

[Woodsey]

Ask anyone who has tried to book a wedding in nicer hotel/venue about how easy it is to get a date, hat tells you the demand for people willing to spend a lot mate. There are tons of people willing to spend a lump, bank of mum and dad and all that.

[BorntoBubble]

Ask anyone who has tried to book a wedding in nicer hotel/venue about how easy it is to get a date, hat tells you the demand for people willing to spend a lot mate. There are tons of people willing to spend a lump, bank of mum and dad and all that.

Im ringing all the venues near where we are looking today to see there availability. That should give me a good indication, on the whole i think one of the nearby venues is better but not "done as well" as I would want to. The other venue is not as nice and the advertising is not as good, therefore if they are busy it will be a good indication.

[bobAlike]

Blondes very own Franck

[redarmi]

We spent about 8k if I recall correctly and had a fairly small wedding (about 50 guests) from what I have seen and unless you really scrimp and save I think it would be fairly hard to come in under 5k these days for a wedding of that size.

[pleno1]

I always thought weddings would cost 59k+, naive I guess!

[BorntoBubble]

I always thought weddings would cost 59k+, naive I guess!

Is this what your been telling the gf? Carnot do it yet, I'll have to win 3 Sundays in a row to recoup that :p

Cheers for all the comments so far hopefully be able to post a positive update in the not to distant future!

[kinboshi]

We spent about 8k if I recall correctly and had a fairly small wedding (about 50 guests) from what I have seen and unless you really scrimp and save I think it would be fairly hard to come in under 5k these days for a wedding of that size.

That sounds pretty much spot on.

I'm getting married (again) next June. We're getting married in Dovedale on the Staffordshire/Derbyshire border, and the whole do is going to be outside. Obviously, you can't bank on the British weather giving you a rain-free day, so we looked at hiring a marquee. Hiring a marquee to fit 80+ guests isn't cheap. You're talking a few grand. Ridiculous money. So instead we've bought a special "stretch-tent" (for a similar cost to hiring one) that we plan to sell after the wedding and recoup the cost of that.

We're not paying for a church or anything, as we're having a humanist ceremony in the grounds, but we still have to get legally married at a registry office, and that itself costs a few hundred quid.

We're doing something quite different with the food and drink for the wedding, but that can easily cost a fair whack, especially if you're at a posh venue.

A decent photographer can cost well over a grand, same for a videographer. A disco will cost you a few hundred, and if you want a live band, that can cost a chunk as well.

It can easily add up, and that's even if you keep things relatively simple. For a small and modest wedding, I think you're looking at £3k, but if you have forty plus guests and you start adding on "extras", I reckon that a "typical" wedding would be in the region of £10k.