Weddings Online Forums - Wedding Discussion, Wedding Chat

We are only having 55 guests, I have a friend who is a florist( Michael Costello CHECK HIM OUT) another friend is making cake. Alan Mooney Photographer, making the invites myself paper from Daintree in Camden St. Suits and dresses in Sale and best of all Great wedding package from Leixlip House Hotel.

Our wedding is coming in around €22k excluding honeymoon. Almost half is going on the venue and that includes me bargaining them down on price. We Are having music for the arrivals reception, more music during the meal and a band and DJ which all adds up. We have a photographer in the family as well as a videographer, my dress was paid for by my mother and my BM dresses were €165 for 3! We got our mass booklets for half price through a deal and my veil is my something borrowed. I really dread to think what it would be costing if I was paying full whack for everything :(

errigal08 wrote:we've said 5k-6k max
were having an evening wedding 4pm so having a buffet dinner that has cut the cost greatly,not getting a band now going for a wedding dj
doing my own flowers and bouquets
got my invites online
going to hire cars from rental car hire company you can get a really nice car for 50-70 a day,stick a few ribbons on and hay presto you have a wedding car
mum is getting my dress and flower girl dresses as a gift
and iv family who can do the cake and pictures
i wanted a candy buffet for the reception and that could be my favors,but the price was unreal,so i went looking and found some big glass jars and fish bowls,iv just ordered my giant martini class,i'll start buying my sweets later on in the year,but id say i'll get the candy buffet for half price doing it myself!

so were getting there,have no idea for honeymoon as yet,but with all the saving im sure we can go mad on the honeymoon,i'll need a break by the time the wedding is finished
im loving it tho,loving all the planning and shopping for bargins and all the diy

Where did you buy your giant martini glass?? thanks

We're currently looking at about €9k for a civil wedding on a Saturday with about 150/160 guests. Lucky to have a lot of talented friends that are providing the band, photography, wedding cake and bride's dress and while we haven't had to do much haggling yet, contacted pretty much every decent hotel in the country to get quotes.

We'd roughly budgeted €35,000 excluding honeymoon for a wedding with 300 guests.

We originally said 20k max for our budget including honeymoon but after booking hotel and getting quotes for everything else that went up to 25k not including honeymoon
Iv made quite a few savings. Managed to get all the dresses for half what i had budgeted but for every saving i make we remember something else we hadnt budgeted for
The list seems to get bigger every week
We are paying for all our parents, grandparents, bms and gms rooms tho as most cant afford them with recession.
We are only planning on doing this once so we want to make it a day to remember and we have booked all our first choices rather than going with who had the best price.
Cant wait for it now Wish it would hurry up and get here

AwkwardAnnie wrote:We'd roughly budgeted €35,000 excluding honeymoon for a wedding with 300 guests.

Can I ask for a rough breakdown of your costs. If its too nosy dont worry about it but Im just interested to compare costs with mine.

We are working out at 36k with about 250 guests that's including our honeymoon of 4k aswell! We really thought we would be able to do everything for 30k but we are lucky we have it all saved now at this stage, I am just hoping I have not forgot anything and it goes up again!!

I am having approx 220 guests and 3000 euro fully inclusive 5 star honeymoon... Works out at between 24000 and 25000 euro.

We are working out at 42k for 200 guests!!
Although that does include a 10k honeymoon. Thank god this only happens once!!

Ours is a serious budget wedding - plans at the moment are to have 20 immediate family to dinner and then a party in a pub at night .
After 15 years together and 3 kids plus a bride who's not that fussed on the whole wedding thing - it'd be daft to spend a fortune. In fact it was my daughter's 1st Holy Communion Celebration that gave me the idea of getting married in the first place. I looked at what that cost - around 1,500 to dress the family including the Communion girl, a fancy hotel lunch and then home for a party with all the friends and relatives and I thought - sure what's the difference between this and a wedding? The answer - 150 euro for a marriage licence. Although we've decided to get married at Christmas time so I don't want the hassle of bringing everyone home so essentially it's the function room do in the pub and the fact that we are inviting a good few more people to the party that has pushed the price up.
At the moment aiming to spend around 3,000 euro in total. I could of course be deluding myself - we'll see.

time will tell .. there's always something to eat away the budget and we have not even included honeymoon yet

Having been to many weddings as a photographer, a guest, and having got married myself last year, my opinion is that spending big money is not what makes a great wedding. What makes a great wedding is how each element of the wedding complements each other. Of course big budget weddings can be great, but a carefully planned low budget wedding can be just as good, if not better.

There are some things that some couples do not want to cut back on for their wedding (those can differ from couple to couple), but all parts of the wedding can be kept to a minimum as there are always good deals out there. My advice for good financial wedding planning is to have a maximum AFFORDABLE price for each item of the wedding, and always try and get a deal on most items.
LOW budget weddings ARE just as good as big budget weddings. Another tip is to spread a few gentle hints to guests that cash presents are the preferable option, this can cover a large percentage of the cost of the wedding.

You CAN have a fairytale wedding without breaking the bank.

Thats great to hear Fine Focus!! , and I would imagine in your line of work you've seen all types of weddings, so its great to get feedback like that! Our budget was 20k to start with for 100 guests, and slowly but surely its starting to creep up, especially since we havent budgeted on the honeymoon yet. Lots of hidden extras rearing their heads!!!

God almighty!! I just got a major weakness os I clicked on the 25 - 30k button. Think I need to call myself aside for a serious talking to!