Lindsay and Andy's Country Style Budget Wedding

Lindsay and Andy got engaged two years ago and tied the knot in April 2010. They decided to have a budget wedding as they knew they'd never be able to afford a big, grand wedding. Instead, they opted for a simple, down to earth country wedding. Here's their story:

My partner and I love the simple things in life and spend most of our time down on our allotment, so a simple and down to earth wedding was exactly what we were looking for! We strongly feel that your wedding day should be about two people committing to spending the rest of their lives together, not about impressing masses of distant relations with the variety of vol-au-vents on offer!

In order to keep our costs low, we decided to ask our friends and family to help out for our budget wedding. At first we felt a bit cheeky asking people for help and favours but it turns out people really want to get involved and I think people enjoyed the day more knowing that they'd played a part in bringing the whole thing together.

We decided to get married in the village church where I grew up in Nottinghamshire and have the reception in the newly refurbished village hall next door. The church itself was the standard Church of England fee and the church hall was a bargain as my dad still lives in the village.

Outfits

The first dress I saw that I really loved was on eBay. We'd been round all the bridal stores and tried on lots of different styles ndash; which I'd highly recommend as the style of dress I thought I wanted looked awful on, so it was good to find out what kind of style suited.

The dress was from a seller's store ndash; a seamstress in Cheshire and you simply picked your style then sent off your measurements. I was a little apprehensive so made sure I checked the feedback and contacted some of her customers through the handy eBay feedback tool. Feeling comfortable with the feedback, I took the plunge and paid £170 and 7 weeks later the dress arrived. It fitted beautifully and looked a million dollars!

My shoes were £40 from BHS. They can be dyed, so I'll wear them again. I wore jewellery I already had and I bought some tiny little pearl and diamante flowers for my hair (these were actually for cake decorating and only cost £2.50 for a pack of 5).

I had three bridesmaids: my best friend, my sister and sister-in-law. They knew money was tight for our budget wedding so they all offered to buy their own dresses. I let them choose the dress as they were paying for it. So instead of traditional bridesmaid dresses they all settled on the same gorgeous dusky purple dress from Coast which we got in the sale for £80 each, accessorised with the same purple shoes (£10 from Priceless Shoes).

My husband wanted traditional tailcoats for him and the best man, so we hired these from Pronuptia. They were on offer at £70 each for the full outfit.

Stationery and favours

We made the invites ourselves. We purchased a pack of blank cards and envelopes from a craft store (£5.99). I bought a red fleece from a charity shop which we used to cut into heart shapes, blanket stitched around the edge with white wool and stuck on the cards – voila! Looked very simple but gorgeous. We printed the inserts on our home computer and held them in place with a thin red gingham ribbon which cost about £12 for the length we used. We saved on stamps too by hand delivering as many as we could.

For the favours, we spent £10 on bags of mini Love Hearts and sherbet lollies which we wrapped up in organza bags. We picked up the organza bags for £7.99 off eBay. We then printed off little name tags that we attached to the ribbon on the bags so they doubled up as place settings too.

Flowers and rings

My cousin recently started working as a florist and offered to do our flowers as a wedding present. She did my bouquet, three smaller bridesmaids' bouquets and three button holes. They were made up of purple tulips with white freesias, tied with green leaves and small diamante pins in the stems and flower heads.

My engagement ring was given to us by Andy's grandmother and was a very unusual shape so we struggled to find a wedding ring to suit. I went to a small Goldsmiths in Leicester who designed a ring to shape around it. The initial cost was going to be £150 but I had some old jewellery that I traded in, so we got the wedding ring for £70. My husband chose his ring (a thin gold band) from H. Samuels at a cost of £100.

Decorations

I made about 200 metres of chintzy bunting to decorate the hall/outside and it all cost just £1! A friend was working for a lingerie manufacturer who kindly donated bags full of chintzy Cath Kidston-esque fabrics for me to use as well as the tape to attach it too. The £1 was spent on a ball of wool to stitch the little flags to the tape. It kept me busy over the dark winter nights cutting out the triangles and sewing a little bit more each night until we had enough (I've kept the bunting too so that'll now become a family tradition to hang it up at every special occasion!).

For table decorations we asked our guests to collect nice shaped jam jars in the run up to the wedding. Then one of my friends and her two children painted them all with glass paints. They were beautiful with little butterflies, stars and flowers. We used these as little tea light holders and put them all the way down the tables.

We trundled off the day before our budget wedding and bought a mix of different coloured seasonal flowers including tulips and 'poor man's orchid', and got 40 bunches for £30.

Photography and entertainment

I've grouped these two together as I'm lucky enough to have a multi-talented uncle who did both. He did all the photography which he sent to us on a disc and we've been able to pick and chose the nicest ones to go in an album/frames. He also did the music for a disco in the evening, via a laptop/play list and some borrowed speakers.

Catering

We were going to do all the catering ourselves but decided we didn't want to spend the morning of our wedding buttering sandwiches and baking, so we roped in a few of my mum's work colleagues (one of whom is a cook) and although we purchased all the food and ingredients (mainly from the large supermarkets but also from local suppliers) they set everything up and did all the cooking and preparation on the day itself. We kept the food simple; a cold buffet with cold meats, salads, cheese, freshly cooked breads, mini tartlets, etc and it went down a storm (especially the home-made pickled onions and chutneys kindly donated by mum!).

Although the church hall had all the crockery and cutlery we needed we had to buy extra serving dishes, most of these we got from a wholesale traders (similar to Makro), we just bought melamine picnic-ware which has now been distributed out amongst the family for BBQs and camping purposes!

Later on in the evening we did hot beef bread rolls. We bought two huge beef joints from Tesco on special offer a few weeks before – these just got popped in the oven by the catering ladies before they left and at about 8pm they were ready for serving. We'd ordered all the bread rolls from a local baker and everyone just helped themselves to supper.

The food was the biggest portion of our budget and it came to just under £800 for approximately 90 guests. That's still under £9 per head!

The landlord from the local village pub set up a bar in the village hall for everyone to buy drinks (we gave him some money to cover his staffing costs and the alcohol licence). My parents-in-law kindly gave us £200 which we spent on champagne for the toasts. We were originally just going to get some nice cava but ended up with lovely bottles of champagne that were on offer at Tesco – for one week only they were reduced from £27.99 per bottle to £10 per bottle! Bargain! And we hired all the champagne glasses from there too. The hire was free, we just had to pay a deposit for breakages.

As for the wedding cake, one of my friends offered to make this as a wedding present. We had a three tier white iced cake. The bottom tier was a large chocolate sponge cake with chocolate fudge filling, the second tier was a lemon drizzle sponge and the top was a traditional fruit cake. She decorated it with little iced flowers around the edge and made the bride and groom to sit on top.

Honeymoon

The night of the wedding my dad treated us to a one night stay in a gorgeous boutique hotel – the likes of which we'll probably never afford to stay in again. The following day we set off to Paris for three days. We'd booked the flights in advance with a cheap airline and including all taxes we got them for just under £100 for the two of us. We booked our hotel through lastminute.com's secret hotels and got a 4 star room for £250 for three nights.

On returning from Paris we went onto the second part of our honeymoon which was a three day camping trip to Norfolk where we stayed in a yurt, complete with wood burning stoves and fleecy rugs! It was all just amazing.

I realise a lot of this was down to our talented friends and not everyone has a DJ-ing photo-taking uncle but you'd be amazed at the skills and talent family and friends have if you just ask! Anyone can have a budget wedding, it's easy if you get people involved.

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