Why I Wish We Had Spent More Money On Our Wedding
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Weddings are super expensive, there’s no doubt about that. Here’s why I actually wish we had spent more money on ours.
As someone that normally writes about saving money, it may seem a little strange that this post is all about something I genuinely wish we had spent more money on.
I know to some people this will massively sound like first world problems and I am honestly so grateful that we were able to have a wedding and have a reasonable amount to spend on it.
Why I Wish We Had Spent More Money On Our Wedding
But I also think I made some pretty big mistakes when it came to spending on our wedding. I really hope others can learn from these mistakes and make their big day the absolute best it can be.
In hindsight, it’s so easy to see where we should have spent more and where we could have spent less. It would also be easy to argue that even if we had spent more, some of the things that went wrong may well still have gone wrong.
Or been even worse, no matter how much money we had thrown at them. I would also like to mention that we didn’t have a super budget day either, our regrets don’t stem from not spending any money at all. We spent around £14k which is much less than the average wedding but not what I would consider a cheap wedding either.
The Venue – Our Wedding At Colehayes Park
We only viewed two venues after getting engaged. We fell in love with the second one and that was that. It was expensive, more than we had planned to spend, but we had exclusivity for the whole weekend.
The venue was completely DIY so we figured we’d save the difference sourcing and doing everything ourselves. We had just over a year until the big day and thought that was plenty of time to get everything sorted.
In some areas, we got super lucky. We always knew we wanted a non-religious ceremony, so rather than pay a fortune for a registrar to come out to the venue we got ‘officially’ married in a quiet two plus two ceremony at the registry office a few days before the main wedding.
Dave Parker, a friend of ours who is an independent celebrant agreed to do our ceremony at the venue for no charge.
Related Post – Why we chose to have an independent wedding celebrant
I asked a friend from work to do the catering, as she actually used to be a wedding caterer. We’d supply all the ingredients and she’d turn it into a simple afternoon tea.
We both work at a pub so asked our boss to run the bar for us and supply all the beer. We’d supply the spirits and wine. So far so good.
Too Much DIY Wedding!
I always thought I would love planning my wedding. I love organizing things, parties, events etc. It was actually one of the most stressful things I have ever done. It felt like everything that could go wrong did go wrong.
From a company that was supplying a photo booth and other entertainment going bust (thank god I paid with PayPal!) to having our first and then second band cancel on us it really felt like one thing after another.
And don’t even get me started on trying to get people to RSVP on time.
On top of that, we took on far too many DIY projects. There were so many little things I wanted and to save money I did them myself. Some of these I really enjoyed, such as creating a Harry Potter Themed sweet table.
Others were more stressful than I had anticipated – like hand stamping all of our place settings and making our table plan (although big thanks to my bridesmaid Zoe who helped out loads with this!)
When considering the DIY elements of your wedding I think it’s important to include the cost of your time as well as the cost of materials and whether you have the skills to pull it off.
It is not money-saving to buy everything, realize you don’t have the time or skills to complete it and then pay someone else to do it for you at the last minute.
Life Threw Us Some Curve-balls!
Then there was the big, unexpected life change a month before the wedding. Our boss was taken ill and we were asked to take over the business we both worked at until further notice.
This meant my husband living there, working 100 hours a week and all the remaining wedding tasks falling to me. It was a very stressful time, but necessary as there was no one else to take over and the business may have faced closure if we hadn’t done this.
This also meant we no longer had someone to run the bar at our wedding or supply and set up the beer.
Luckily Dave Parker’s wife offered to run it for us after contacting a few companies to find they were all booked up at such short notice.
However, we still had to sort all of the beer. The easiest solution was cans. Not classy, but practical. We added it to our Tesco order which at least made the delivery of it easy.
Realted Post – My favourite wedding freebies – Including FREE Disney Postcard
Disasters On The Wedding Day
To get the contents of our DIY wedding to the venue we hired a van. We hadn’t realized quite how much there was to take to the venue and couldn’t fit it all in. We ended up ringing around family members last minute to get them to take stuff down with them.
One of the barrels of ale we had bought was damaged in the back of the van and leaked half of its contents on the hour-long drive to our wedding venue.
We lost about £40 worth of beer and had to spend an hour cleaning the van and everything that had got covered in beer the night before our wedding.
Also, the alcohol we bought for our groomsmen was accidentally put behind the bar and sold, meaning half our gifts to them were missing.
The venue had a beautiful garden that we had planned to get married in. On arrival, we discovered the previous wedding hadn’t removed the hay bales they had used for seating. The venue was having them removed that day but the grass was all yellow and ruined where they had been sitting wet and rotting.
We could have covered the mess with our own hay bales. However, we had actually planned to get married in a different part of the garden. We had spent quite a lot of money on garden decorations to create an arbour, which we could now no longer use.
Unfortunately, heavy rain was forecast for our big day, so plans of getting married outside anywhere at the venue were scuppered anyway.
We decorated a room inside instead for our ceremony, but it was dark and under-decorated. Absolutely nothing like the bright outdoors ceremony I had been dreaming of.
Late Caterer
At 11 am on the day of the wedding, the friend that was supposed to be doing the food had not arrived.
So, I made start on it instead of getting ready and sent someone to ring her. No one could get hold of her. I went off to get my hair done, hoping she would arrive any minute.
Turns out she was stuck behind a huge accident on the motorway for almost 4 hours. She’d tried ringing some of the guests to let them know but the signal was poor at the venue. She didn’t arrive until two hours after we got married.
Several of my lovely friends and family stepped in to start making sandwiches. They did their best but didn’t have enough time before the ceremony to get as many as were needed made.
I felt we were really short on food for the wedding breakfast. The evening food was completely different to what I had asked for and they forgot to bring gluten-free food despite being reminded the day before that we had gluten-free guests.
The band were over an hour late arriving, again due to traffic. I was very aware that they were late and this caused us further stress on our big day. It also meant our evening celebrations started much later than planned.
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My Three Biggest Wedding Regrets
One of my biggest regrets is not hiring a wedding planner to run things on the day.
People were continually coming to me with problems even when I was getting my hair and make-up done.
This meant that I couldn’t relax and enjoy it. Having someone there to keep everyone away from me and deal with all the last-minute problems would have made a huge difference to how happy and relaxed I felt on the day.
My second biggest regret is how much we spent on our wedding band. A whopping £1200. Something we both agreed on was that we wanted our first dance to be to live music.
After our first two bands cancelling we had a bit of panic that no one decent would be available.
The band we chose were fab, but barely any of the guests were up dancing and enjoying them.
We may as well have had DJ for a quarter of the price. The band did do a DJ set after their live sets but the song choices were awful and no one was able to make requests as they literally put on a playlist and disappeared.
I also really wish we had got someone in to do the bar for us. It would have saved so much stress and anxiety. It would probably have cost a bit more, but I really think it would have been money well spent.
DIY Wedding? Have A Plan B
I realize the majority of this post is very negative and I know how privileged I was to be able to have a wedding and spend quite a large amount of money on it.
Don’t get me wrong, bits of our day were amazing.
I got to marry my man in front of our friends and family, all of whom were amazing at helping out with anything that needed doing.
They loved our day and venue choice (one of my husband’s cousins still mentions how awesome our wedding was every time we see him) and my bridesmaids all say it’s one of the best weddings they’ve been to because of the lack of staff – no-one felt watched so they could really enjoy themselves.
But my overriding memory of the day is of feeling stressed and worried about everything that went wrong.
I had given myself so much to do all the time I missed out on doing any fun stuff the venue had to offer.
Honestly, I wish we’d spent more just so that I could have relaxed and enjoyed the whole weekend properly. I was so focused on saving money I took on way too much and have ended up regretting it.
Yes, it’s just one day. But it is a day I will remember forever.
The best piece of advice I could give to anyone planning a DIY wedding is to have a Plan B. For everything. Even if you think you have planned every little detail, plan it all again with a backup.
And hire some help.
Even if it’s only on the day itself, let someone else take the strain and enjoy your big day.
If you’re looking for inspiration to get started on saving for your wedding see this post from Neesha: MISSION: SAVE/MAKE £10,000 FOR MY WEDDING IN 18 MONTHS
I went totally the other way and spent under £1,000 on our wedding.
I do wish i had help on the day though and would have spent more for that, but hindsight is a wonderful thing!
Yes, absolutely. Doing it for under £1k is amazing though!!
It was difficult as we also got married in a church, which was £350 of it!
I spent a lot of time making things! Lol
Oh wow. I’m sorry you had such a stressful time on your wedding day. May not be any comfort, but suspect the vast majority of your guests will have really enjoyed the day utterly unaware of the issues, because they didn’t know how it differed from what you’d hoped and planned.
I also found the run up to our wedding very stressful, juggling so many different tasks. On the day itself it was actually a surprise to think “oh, I actually like this drink/food/music” because it had become such a hassle organising it. Good advice about not taking on too many DIY tasks, as it may not be possible to complete them on top of everything else!
Thank you so much for your kind comments. Most of our guests did really enjoy it and they were all so wonderful at mucking in on the day. I think there is so much pressure for everything to be perfect it can be very stressful feeling you have to get everything just right.
Aw,I would have done it for you! I am super organised and have a backup plan for everything – mega prepared lol. I would have loved a band but it was so expensive, as you said. I got the cheapest DJ that I could find and he was great.
Where were your bridesmaids? They should have been helping you!
They did help a lot, but I think in all honesty we just took on far too much – all in the name of saving money! – which I now massively regret. I think doing it for someone else I would have been fine, I just didn’t realize how much could and would on the day and stressed it would make me feel.
I got married pretty young and we did the best we could at the time. Sometimes I wish we would have had a fancier wedding like some of our friends who got married later, but I’m still crazy in love with the man I married so that’s all that matters.
Of course, the marriage is so much more important than the day itself. You could always renew your vows at some-point in the future!
I agree putting your money where it counts is big. We put more of ours toward the photography. We did a diy wedding too and there is a tbing as too many projects. I didnt do a whole lot because i knew it was a small thing.
Yes absolutely, our photographer was on the cheaper side but we loved his work so went for it. I spent months worrying the photos would be rubbish but they are actually amazing – he was so good on the day, by far the best of all our suppliers.
Love the post. I read a lot from people saying that it’s only one day and not to waste your money. We spent quite a lot and I certainly don’t regret it. I also agree that sometimes it’s worth paying extra to take the stress out of things.
It’s great you were able to spend what you wnated and don’t feel like that was a mistake. It is only one day, but it’s one that you will remember for the rest of your life – as long as affordability isn’t an issue ie. not getting into debt then I think people should spend whatever they feel is right for them.
[…] When asked if the wedding was worth the money, Fiona from Savvy in Somerset has an unusual answer: “I actually wish we’d spent more money on our wedding! We took on lots of DIY and did almost everything ourselves to save money. It was so stressful and so many things went wrong. I honestly wish we’d got professionals in to do more of it so we could have relaxed and enjoyed ourselves a bit more.” Fiona has written more about her wedding experience on her blog here. […]