Saving up for your wedding

There are four ways to pay for your wed­ding:

1. If you’re really rich, just spend, spend, spend!
2. If your par­ents are rich, ask them to pay for it all!
3. Be thrifty, pay for some of it your­selves with par­ents’ help and get a loan for the rest.
4. Save up as much as you can.

So for most of us, there are actu­ally just two ways to pay for your wed­ding. And most cou­ples will com­bine 3 and 4 to cover all the costs.

As well as the major pur­chases — your wed­ding clothes can chalk up around £1,500 and your food & drink as much as £7,000 — the lit­tle things will add up. The more you save, the less chance of those lit­tle extra costs com­ing up and bit­ing you on the nose.

But how do you save for a wedding?

It’s never as easy as it sounds, is it? But in the same way all the lit­tle pur­chases (rib­bons, can­dles, garters, cuf­flinks, socks, wed­ding per­fume, any­one?) will add up, sav­ing a lit­tle money each day will add up too.

Here are some tips to help you on the right track with sav­ing for your wedding.

Make your own lunch

Stop using the can­teen at work or nip­ping out to M&S for your din­ner. Take a home made lunch to work, and use the water cooler instead of buy­ing a drink at lunchtime. You’ll save a few pounds every day, around £30 a week if you both do it. It really does add up, because the money you save on sand­wiches in a year will pay for both of your wed­ding outfits!

Spend cosy evenings together at home

Ditch the pub for a cosy evening in front of Film4. Buy a packet of pop­corn from your local super­mar­ket, a bot­tle of wine, and snug­gle up on the sofa. Depend­ing how much you spend on a night out at the pub or club­bing, you will save between £20 and £50 each time. Do this once a fort­night and you’ll save £750 a year. That should cover your wed­ding invi­ta­tions, table plan, menus and place cards!

Economise on your hol­i­day this year

Next year you’ll be on hon­ey­moon, so this year you can afford to cut back on your jol­lies. You’ll still have a fan­tas­tic hol­i­day at the end of it all to look for­ward to! Instead of going abroad for your sum­mer hol­i­day, head back to the Eng­lish sea­side or go for a UK city break. Did you hol­i­day in the UK as a kid? Why not take your fiancé to your old hol­i­day hang­outs and share some really spe­cial mem­o­ries together.

Be finan­cially savvy

Sit down together and look at your credit cards, over­drafts, and any­thing you’re pay­ing inter­est on (any cat­a­logue pur­chases or monthly pay­ments on larger elec­tri­cals, cars, sofas…) How much would you save in total if you switched to 0% inter­est rates with a bal­ance trans­fer deal on a credit card, or if you paid off the out­stand­ing amounts on your pur­chases today? It could be enough to feed 30 wed­ding guests… bor­ing it may be, but it’s def­i­nitely worth looking.