Wedding priorities

If you really want to keep a tight rein on your wed­ding bud­get, or to have a lovely wed­ding with­out going over­board, start with a blank piece of paper and for­get every­thing you’ve read in wed­ding mag­a­zines and seen on blogs and at friends’ weddings.

It’s easy to do away with wed­ding favours and expen­sive wine, but when you think you’ve trimmed your bud­get as far as you can, per­haps there’s more you can lose and still have a gor­geous wed­ding that’s per­fect for you.

Instead of work­ing from a basic list of what every­one has at their wed­ding, be inven­tive and make your own. Here’s my per­sonal list of wed­ding ele­ments in order of importance.

The very basic wed­ding priorities

• Part­ner
• Recog­ni­tion (reli­gious or legal acknowledgement)
• Fam­ily
• Friends
• Per­son­al­ity
• Enjoy­ment / relaxation
• Place

Com­pare wed­dings to get­ting dressed for a moment: the above are like your vest & pants (they’re the bare min­i­mum you need to get going)!

Basic extras…

• Food & drink
• Out­fits
• Invi­ta­tions

These are things you kind of need, and they’re top of most people’s lists. A bit like jeans and a t-shirt, and per­haps socks.

The rest is padding and you can either stop here and have a beau­ti­fully sim­ple wed­ding, or you can go for broke and have a dream wed­ding like you read about in Hello!

Optional wed­ding extras?

• Pho­tog­ra­phy
• Acces­sories
• Flow­ers
• Recep­tion stationery
• Hen & stag do
• Enter­tain­ment
• Brides­maids
• Speeches
• Sit down meal

Back to the get­ting dressed com­par­i­son: Think of these as your neck­lace, blusher, hat and hand­bag. Nice to have, but not impor­tant on every sin­gle trip out.

Wed­ding frivolities

And now I might unin­ten­tion­ally insult some­one. But again, this is a per­sonal view­point. These are things you don’t need — and only worth hav­ing if you have money to spare.

• Cal­lig­ra­phy
• Videog­ra­phy
• Favours
• Fire­works (I am a bit anti-fireworks)
• Gift lists (in this day & age?)

These are like putting a flower in your hair or a light dust­ing of glit­ter. Fun, pretty, gen­er­ally expen­sive… but super­flu­ous to require­ments! Do bear in mind that I’m a cal­lig­ra­pher myself, so I’m not against these things per se, just if they’re more than you can afford.

Of course there are great ways to have a bud­get wed­ding and cel­e­brate a mar­riage with­out spend­ing money: DIY favours, sta­tionery and flow­ers mean you can have all the pretty stuff with­out going OTT… and you’ll find advice on those else­where on Eng­lish Wed­ding.