Planning A Budget Wedding: Top 10 Tips

Another Wedding post...

Hello everyone! I hope you are all doing well and thank you so much for reading my last post all about my wedding day!... I mean OUR wedding day.. sorry Reece haha! 

I had so many congratulatory messages and I felt so loved. I know many of my friends and also many of my readers who are engaged and planning their weddings and nowadays a lot of people try to do it on a budget, just as Reece and I have, so I thought now all the wedding stress is over and done with that I would reflect on the planning process and give you guys my top ten tips on planning a budget wedding. Some of these stem from what I think helped through the planning process and we are glad we did and others stem from things we probably could of done better or wish we had implemented in our planning. I hope you all like it and find these tips helpful, comment below if you have any advice for brides-to-be. Happy Reading Everyone! 

Top 10 Tips...

1. Give yourself time 

21st June 2015- The day we got engaged 

22nd June 2018- Our wedding day 

So, Reece proposed to me back in 2015 on the top of Blackpool tower (I used to go to Blackpool a lot with my family when I was younger so he knew this was a special place that held a lot of memories- he can be sweet sometimes). That day marked 3 years of us being in a relationship and as we got to the top of the tower, we spoke for a bit and he told me how important I was to him, how much he loved me and that he had been thinking about how long we had been together, then followed the question "Will you marry me?". OF COURSE I said yes! After the excitement of the engagement had settled down and we were finally looking at planning it we knew two things. 1. Have it in June seeing as this was a special month for us, and 2. 2 years planning.  Well 2 years quickly turned into 3 years when we found out we were expecting a little one and I am so glad we postponed it. Gave us an extra year of planning and time to focus on our little girl. 

So that is my first bit of advice. Give yourself time to plan the wedding it does not have to be straight away. I know the excitement of getting engaged takes over you- ask Reece I wanted to get married 6 months later but clearly that was not an option. If you are planning a budget wedding the longer you have to save money and plan the better, some places even give you major discounts if you book far in advance. And if unexpected things happen during the planning and you have to postpone don't be down about it, see it as a good thing that you not have extra time to make your day extra special. Love has no expiry date and whether you wait 10 months or 10 years to marry each other, it won't matter, just do what is best for the two of you and what is in your budget. 

2. Search far and wide 

Okay, so I didn't exactly search that far as in the other side of the world or anything, I did very much limit my search to Scotland/UK (not meaning my online searches) but what I mean is consider different options, different costs and don't jump at the first thing you see. My wedding dress I searched 3 shops and online, the reception venue we viewed countless places, bridesmaids dresses and flower girl dresses we looked through multiple websites, I rummaged through several discount stores for decor. I know in excitement it is easy to say lets just get it but if you are trying to save some pennies and stick to budget maybe look to see if you could get what you want for less, who doesn't love a bargain. 

Of course, if the you find something perfect and within budget first time then go for it, our ceremony venue was the first thing we decided on and looked no where else as it was in budget and beautiful. You just have to weigh out the pros and cons for yourself and ask 'Could I look somewhere else?' or 'Is this the one?'. 

3. Join Facebook Groups

I cannot express enough how useful I found this! I'm not usually one to participate or be a part of a lot of Facebook groups but 'Bargain Weddings UK' and especially, 'Your Private Wedding Hub', came in so handy in times of struggle as you can speak to so many brides (and some grooms) that are in the same boat as you and you often get really good advice. Whether your bridesmaid is stressing you out and you need to vent, you want to know the best place for centerpieces on a budget or you are looking for hair and make up inspiration, I can promise you that there will be a flood of comments that can be so helpful. Of course there are occasionally dramas like on most Facebook groups but I just avoid those posts haha. I never thought this would be a tip I would be giving someone but honestly, those groups probably planned a good chunk of my wedding for me or at least they helped. 

4. Ask Family and Friends to help 

My Mum's masterpiece, our wedding cake

Now I am not meaning ask all your family and friends to give you cash to pay for your wedding but a lot of the time (at least in my experience) your guests will want to contribute to your wedding as a gift especially if they know you are on a budget. This can allow you to also use peoples skills to benefit your wedding. For example, my Mum is amazing at baking, she made Ella-Grace's birthday cake, so as a wedding gift my Mum (with the help of my Dad) made our wedding cake, which was beautiful. My older sister wanted to pay for our photographer as a gift so that was great, I also knew that same sister was good at hair so I asked her if she would do the hair for the wedding. She said yes and all our hair looked beautiful. Reece's auntie made half of our buffet, we used an Argos gift card that we got as a gift for our wedding rings, my close friend made my flowers and bought my veil, the wedding party all paid there own outfits and others guests put money in cards and gave us them early with notes like 'please put this towards your special day'. This also adds a personal touch to your wedding as you know everyone pulled together and helped you out in your time of need and aspects of your wedding came from the people you love. 

5. D.I.Y Wedding

The start of one of the centre pieces

Similar to the before tip, use your own strengths and try your hand at some D.I.Y. We bought all of our decorations from discount stores such as Home Bargains, Poundland and Colourbox world and we (really I should say I) decorated our reception venue ourselves. I made our card box out of a cardboard box and some paint we have lying around, the place cards were from pound land and I wrote and decorated them myself. Each centerpiece was put together by me, Reece and some of our wedding party and I did my own nails. There are just little bits and bobs that you can do to save money by doing it yourself. Each centre piece was probably around £6 or £7, some people spend hundreds! Well that just was not in our budget so yeah, get crafty. 

6. What is important to you? 

Sit down with your partner,multiple times during the planning to make sure you are still focused, and discuss what is important to the both of you and what aspects of your wedding you want to spend the most and least money on. There were little extra's the we weren't so fussed on and either didn't have in our wedding at all or budgeted the cost quite low. For example all the bridesmaids flowers were 79p each from home bargains. Other things that were really important to us and we knew would have to be in the higher price range to be what we wanted, we spent more money on. These things included my wedding dress (which we did get at a discounted price but still expensive) and our venue. 

7. Save, save, save!

This relates to my first tip-giving yourself time to plan your wedding- because the more time you have to plan, the more time you have to save. Me and Reece had very little savings for the wedding (due to having a baby in the middle of the planning haha) and this is one thing that I think would of helped us budget better and be less stressed instead of paying the wedding off with each pay that came in. So yes, better to have savings so you can properly budget but if like us you don't have much, try and save what you can and budget what you have coming in. 

8. Don't compare your wedding to others

This was something I often did which now I look back on was silly. I thought about all those lavish weddings that you see on TV and the few I had attended that were on the more fancy side with five course meals and bands etc. I would question whether our guests would have a good time and if they would look down at our low budget wedding but actually it was quite the opposite. A lot of people said they loved the more chilled out vibe of our wedding and that they loved helping themselves to the buffet of food. Also if anyone where to judge us on our low budget wedding then they were not people that should be at the wedding as they would clearly not have the right mind set. A wedding is about celebrating two people spending the rest of their lives together, not how expensive the centerpieces were. 

9. Stick to budget (try and leave some wiggle room) 

Last wedding dress fitting

Very important tip! Stick to your budget and if at all possible leave some extra money left over for any emergency payments or extras. We were actually really good at budgeting everything, we were very tight but it was working out.. and then I got the price for my wedding dress alterations! As you all know I have lot quite a lot of weight since having Ella-Grace and because of this (as my dress had been picked for about 2 years prior to our wedding) my wedding dress had to be taken in 4 sizes! Great for me that I am healthier than I was and felt amazing in my dress but for our budget, this was a catastrophe which is why I advise you leave some wiggle room. That would of helped us a lot in that moment. Thankfully we managed to re-configure things and with a little help from family and friends we managed it! 

10. Remember what the day is actually about.

This, by far, is the most important bit of advice I could give anyone who is planning their wedding and got me through some major bridezilla moments. Remember what the day is actually about! It is about you and your partner and the two of you are going to spend the rest of your lives together. It is about celebrating love and commitment. It is a day all about the two of you and it only happens once. Don't worry about what other people think, don't worry about how much money you have, don't worry about any of the material things or the traditional things that you apparently 'must do'. Just think about you and your partner and what you want in your wedding day, if you two are happy your guests should be too as they are there just to celebrate your special day. 

"I want a happy marriage more than I want a beautiful wedding" is one of my favourite quotes, try and remember that through the planning. 

Thanks for reading...

So, that's it! My 10 top tips for planning a budget wedding, I hope that was useful or at least interesting to some of you. Thank you so much for reading as always it is very much appreciated! To any brides or grooms to be, good luck with the planning and enjoy your magical day! It truly is the best day of your life! 

Please remember to like my Facebook page (LauraJaneLife) and follow me on Instagram (@laurajanelifex) for more on my day to day life, cute toddler pics and notifications on when a new blog post is published. Links are on in side bar. 

Till next time my lovely readers...

Stay Happy Everyone! :)