Lauren, 31, is a teaching assistant based in Yorkshire who earns £16k a year. In December 2018 she got engaged to her partner backstage at a Paul McCartney concert, after over a decade together.
They knew they wanted a small, inexpensive wedding and in August 2021 they were married at their local registry office, Barnsley Town Hall, followed by a reception in a function room at a local sports centre.
By doing everything exactly as they wanted – and not listening to others’ expectations – the whole day came in at under £4k for almost 40 guests. Quite an achievement given the average wedding in 2022 was £18,400 – up 6% from £17,300 the previous year, according to a survey by Hitched.co.uk.
While planning her big day, Lauren couldn’t find the budget-friendly wedding content she hoped for. So she created a blog on the subject, The Thrifty Bride, for other couples who didn’t want to spend loads on their wedding day.
Here, she explains how she kept costs down, how to plan a lower-budget wedding and what people misunderstand about weddings like hers.
“We just wanted to spend as little as possible”
We’d been together 11 years when we got engaged and a big expensive wedding just wasn’t us. We wanted a relaxed, fun-filled day.
When we got engaged and I started looking around at wedding stuff, I was blown away by how much everything cost for one day. That's when we started looking at doing it as cheaply as possible.
We didn’t have a set budget – we just wanted to spend as little as possible while still having the day we wanted. We didn’t want to go above £5k if we could help it. The fact we spent less than £4k, that was even better.
“We used Pots to save and keep track of our spending”
We set targets for each of our wedding Pots, so we could keep track of how much we’d saved for each part of the wedding. This helped us to keep track of both how much we needed to save and how much we were spending.
We had a Pot for the ceremony with an image of the town hall. We got married in a registry office and you have to pay for the notice of marriage and things like that, so everything that went into the actual wedding ceremony went in this Pot.
We had one for the reception with an image of the venue. This covered food, room hire and the venue’s decor package.
We had a separate Pot for our own decor that we bought or made.
We also had one for entertainment with an image of one of our photoshoot backdrops.
And we had a Pot for other bits and bobs like the cake, my partner's outfit, the bridesmaid outfit and flowers, with an image of a wedding cake.
“Entertainment was a priority so I don’t regret spending more on it”
Compared to an average wedding we didn’t really have any huge splurges but the most expensive thing was the entertainment, which cost £600-700. We had a DJ, a photo booth and a fun casino, but I don’t regret those splurges because our guests had so much fun!
My dress was also a big chunk of the money at around £420. But for a wedding dress it wasn’t that expensive.
“Venues are extremely expensive, so we chose a registry office wedding”
I appreciate that venues often offer packages with the food and drinks and entertainment. But it still comes to thousands of pounds before you've even started looking at photographers, outfits and things like that.
When I first started looking at venues, I thought, I don't know where we're going to get married, because everything is so expensive.
“My husband made most of the decor himself”
Another big saving we made was on decor as my husband made a lot of it, including our photobooth backdrop, cake stand and card box.
For the photobooth backdrop he used things like foil curtains and tissue paper, and our cake stand he built with his dad using scrap wood.
“It was difficult to find information about small budget weddings, so I started a blog about them”
I jumped straight into wedding planning as soon as we got engaged. I started noticing how expensive everything was, and we'd already decided to do it on a small budget. But I struggled to find information about small budget weddings.
I thought, I might as well just write about it myself if there's nothing out there while I'm on this journey so I founded The Thrifty Bride.
“People often don’t realise the legal cost of getting married”
I don't think many people realise all the legal stuff you've got to pay for, aside from having a pretty day.
You have to give notice of marriage, which you pay for at your local registry office, even if that's not where you're getting married. It's not massively expensive, but I don't think a lot of people realise you can’t get married without it.
“Know what you will and won’t compromise on”
If you’re planning a smaller-budget wedding, think about what's really important to you. There'll be things you're not willing to compromise on, which is completely fine. There also might be things where there’s wiggle room, where you can try and cut the cost.
For me, having a wedding dress and having a wedding dress shop experience was non-negotiable. But then within that, I found a way to keep the cost down by buying one off the peg, rather than having it made.
“A formal sit down dinner wasn’t important to us”
There were things we compromised on. We weren't bothered about having a formal sit down meal for our wedding breakfast, so that got cut straight out of the wedding altogether.
We didn’t feel the need to stick to tradition. A lot of people think they have to have certain things at their wedding because they think that’s what a wedding should look like. But if it's not your thing, cut it out of your wedding and it will save you loads of money.
“I highly recommend having a smaller guest list”
We had less than 40 people at our wedding and we didn't invite any extras to the reception. I highly recommend it.
If we’d not seen someone in the last 10 years, we wouldn't invite them. It might seem harsh, but if you want to cut costs and you want an intimate wedding, you need to be upfront with people and say, ‘I'm really sorry. We're having a small wedding and keeping it to immediate family and friends’.
It might cause a bit of controversy when you’re inviting people, but having those conversations early on will save a lot of stress.
“Try to cast off any preconceptions you've got about weddings”
I went into it thinking, I'm not getting married at a registry office, I'm not doing this, I'm not doing that. But there are some beautiful registry offices in the UK that many people overlook, for example, because it's not a big country house or a fancy hotel.
A lot of people think budget weddings don't or won't look as nice as more expensive weddings. But people don't realise how much you can cut out of your budget and still have your perfect day.
If we did it all again, I don’t think there’s anything I'd do differently. Our attitude was it's our day, it's our way, so we're just going to do what we want.
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