Liz and Anthony's Real Budget Wedding - Second Time Around

Making their budget wedding unique and memorable

After previous marriages, Liz and Anthony from Halstead in Essex decided that this wedding was to be unique and memorable. Having married before, they were a little disenchanted with the 'wedding industry' and loathed the idea of spending a fortune just on one day. Here's their story of how they made their budget wedding unique and memorable for under £4,000 for 125 guests.

Our outfits

After a bit of shopping, I actually fell in love with a pale blue dress on sight and knew I wanted to be married in it. It was from the Raylia bridesmaids range and cost less than £200. I could have got it made up in white, ivory or any combination of colours, but I loved the pale blue and stuck with that.

Anthony was originally going to wear his dinner jacket with bow tie, dress shirt etc, which I always think looks incredibly sexy on a man, but we had told everyone it wasn't going to be a formal wedding. We didn't want speeches or anything like that, and we didn't want to put any of the other male guests to the expense of hiring dinner jackets if they didn't already have them. So I persuaded Antony to buy a smart new suit for the wedding on the grounds that he could use it for business meetings too!

The best man also wore a dark suit and they both looked really nice. Apparently there was a last minute panic: 20 minutes before I was due to arrive, Antony took his place next to the best man to wait for me, and suddenly realised he'd left the wedding rings in a bag at the reception hall, where he'd been setting things up. His tail lights were then seen disappearing into the distance and there was consternation among the guests until he re-appeared just in time, with the rings!

A delightful ceremony and venue

We were married locally in the Baptist Church in Halstead and had the local bell ringers sound out a tune while we had our photographs taken. Since Anthony is part of the bell ringers, they kindly gave it to us for free, instead of the usual £60 cost.

The wedding reception was a short drive away in a nearby village. We chose the village hall and were delighted with it. It only cost £190 for the whole night and included tables, chairs, a spacious dance floor, bar, extra hall for the kids and a very smart bar for the adults.

We had a late wedding, so the reception could kick off about 6pm with no hanging around not knowing what to do before the disco starts.

Buffet style food

We decided on a buffet for ease and cost and provided a really good selection of different items. We provided:
- Chicken drumsticks
- Salmon
- Turkey, ham and beef slices
- Pasta & pepperoni salad
- Curried rice salad
- Savoury rice salad
- Potato salad
- Cucumber cheesecake
- Dips with tortilla chips and crudites
- Sandwiches and mini bagettes
- Vegetable and duck spring rolls
- Chicken tikka bites
- Chicken platter
- Chicken goujons
- Mini tartlets
- Indian platter
- Oriental platter
- Ring of prawns
- Vol au vents with three different fillings
- Quiches in various flavours
- Pitta bread

We also had several desserts including chocolate gateaux, chocolate fudge cake, almond tart, cheesecake, strawberry gateau and strawberries and cream.

We thought we'd gone completely over the top and bought way too much food, but it all went (except for the strawberries and cream)! Funnily enough, we had gone to a family celebration a few months before the wedding and made a note of what was left over. So we knew none of it would go to waste!

We were going to have poached salmon but made the mistake of buying a salmon from Tesco's and attempting to poach it myself when my brother (who was going to do it) was called away to collect someone from the station. In retrospect it would have made less work if we'd simply ordered a poached salmon from Tesco's. In the end I had mangled Stanley the Salmon so badly that he didn't get to go to the ball at all!

On the day, we actually didn't manage to eat much of the buffet at all. The guests were digging in while we were mingling and dancing our first dance (a rumba) - and by the time we got there it was nearly all gone!

Finally, our wedding cake was made by our friend Isobel. It was absolutely delicious and everyone commented on it, even Anthony, who hates fruit cake!!

We didn't specifically set a budget of £4,000. In fact Antony originally expected it to cost much less than that and kept saying " for a budget wedding this is very expensive"! But then this is the man who didn't know what a diamond solitaire is and asked "Why are you having bridesmaids"? I am proud that our budget wedding came in under £4,000 - Antony knows in theory that the average wedding today costs about £16,000 but still thinks ours was expensive!

Liz's best budget wedding tips:

1. Ask for help from friends and family. This saved us a fortune and made the day so much more special and personal than it would have been if we'd just bought in services and supplies.

2. Shop around - you do not have to pay £80-£200 for a veil or a tiara. If you are clever with your fingers you can make your own tiara for about a tenth of that. Recently married brides may also want to sell on accessories and even dresses to recoup some of their costs and this can help you to get the items you want and still save money.

3. Talk to other brides on the Cheap Wedding Success Forum - if you can't find what you're looking for, chances are someone else may be able to help.

4. Don't assume that a honeymoon in the UK will necessarily be cheaper. We enjoyed our honeymoon but it was very wet and for the same money we could have got an all-inclusive package deal somewhere sunny.