Cheap weddings

A wed­ding doesn’t have to cost the earth. You can have a won­der­ful wed­ding day with very lit­tle expense if you’re really keen to keep things sim­ple. And you can have a lot of fun plan­ning a cheap wed­ding with the help of all your friends and family.

The essen­tials for a cheap wedding

• Church / reg­istry office fees
• Food and drink

Expenses to skip for a cheap wedding

• Wed­ding venue (ask a friend with a big garden)
• Designer wed­ding dress (try Mon­soon or Coast)
• Pro­fes­sional cater­ing (buy your own food, have a bar­be­cue — you may need to bor­row neigh­bours’ ovens)
• Expen­sive wed­ding rings (find alter­na­tive, vin­tage or sim­ple rings)
• Pho­tog­ra­phy (only if you’re really cut­ting back — those mem­o­ries are important)
• Invi­ta­tions (what’s wrong with a cre­atively designed email? Even bet­ter, a hand­writ­ten invi­ta­tion on paper was the tra­di­tional cheap wed­ding invitation)
• Sit down meal (save on table dec­o­ra­tions, place cards and seat­ing plan stress!)

Cheap wed­ding inspiration

Thrifty wed­dings are a big trend at the moment. You can cut back to basics and then make your cheap wed­ding a beau­ti­ful occa­sion by mak­ing your own dec­o­ra­tions and accessories.

Check out Martha Stew­art wed­dings for cre­ative wed­ding craft ideas, or UK site Make Your Own Wed­ding.

Cheap wed­ding ideas

Make wed­ding bunting! As sim­ple as a length of string with coloured fab­ric tri­an­gles — hunt char­ity shops for bright coloured fab­rics and string colour­ful bunting all around the gar­den on your wed­ding day

Vin­tage wed­ding theme — find gor­geous sec­ond hand acces­sories in char­ity shops and vin­tage stores.

Get a wed­ding dress from Oxfam. You’ll find their range sur­pris­ingly won­der­ful! They also do cheap wed­ding invi­ta­tions which are eco-friendly and great value.