Black Meringue

Can't Buy Me Love

And to continue the Beatles theme, love is all you need, right? Rosie Fuller investigates how to cut the cost and keep the romance

Weddings cost. A lot. You hear about celebs racking up figures into the millions for their bashes in Scottish or Italian castles, with designer dresses, designer flowers and
designer food, but the cost of the average wedding in the UK is also humongous. Figures vary, but £17,000 is the usual estimate, and that’s already five grand up on the 2002 price-tag of £12,000.

There is one school of thought that says the less a couple spends on the actual day, the longer they stay together. Whether that’s true or not, there has to be a cheaper way to show your love for one another, celebrate the occasion with your friends and family, and still have a day to remember. It could even be more fun than the traditional route, and besides, why get married if you’re then so skint you can’t enjoy the start of a new life together?

So, Black Meringue has come up with a whole bargain bin of money-saving suggestions. Not just the dirt-cheap and uninspired get-married-in-your-jeans sort, but inexpensive alternatives that will have you looking good and eating and drinking well. And just think of what you could do with all that spare change.

DRESSES

Brides’ outfits, including tiaras, make-up and the whole shebang, are a hefty chunk out of the bill. But why fork out for a dress that will be left to fester in a wardrobe after its one day of fame? An Oxfam survey discovered that 82% of brides hang on to their wedding dresses after they marry, but 75% of them haven’t put the dress on since.

Let’s start with the cheapest option. We’re all guilty of buying that special something and then hoarding it for an occasion that never comes. What better event to put it to good use? Wearing something that you already own is perfect if you plan to accessorise. If you want it to feel a bit different, perhaps experiment with wearing it in a new way. If you do want to wear something new, buy something you can wear again. This will inevitably make the cost more bearable.

If white weddings are your thing, hiring a dress is a cost-effective plan. You get all the satin and lace of a typical wedding dress but at a slice of the price – which means you’re not coughing up all that extra cash just to own something you’ll never use again. But be warned, you may also have to pay a chunky deposit, and the dry-cleaning won’t be cheap either. Prices start from around £50-£100, and you’ll have to curb the drunken antics to ensure damage limitation.

Onto buying a dress. High street shops, including BHS, Monsoon and Marks & Spencer have all launched their own ranges of bridal wear, with dress prices starting at around the £100 mark. Pictured is Marks & Sparks’ ruched silk prom dress, at £125, with a floral choker for just £18 – an outfit for under £150 that saves you at least £500 on the average bridal outfit. Coming in even cheaper is BHS, which offers wedding garments from £25. The bride pictured on the opposite page is wearing the Georgia bodice (£25) and Georgia skirt (£40), and her tiara costs £15.

Prices for Oxfam’s bridal dresses average at £250 and start as low as £50. Some 90% of these are brand-new: either last season’s or ex-catwalk samples. However, brides-to-be can also find unusual and vintage dresses among Oxfam’s offerings.

“There has been such a rush for our dresses that we’ve had to appeal to people to donate them,” Rose Marsh from Oxfam explains. “I think it’s because of the current trend for ethical weddings.
“Selling a wedding dress is great for our projects,” she added. “We worked out that with £250 we can give 100 people water, build two toilets, train a midwife and feed a family for a month.”
Louise Manfredi married her husband Benito in a dress from Oxfam that cost just £129. “It was a gorgeous dress that still had the designer price tag on it,” says Louise. “That, together with the delicious guilt-free feeling that by buying this dress I was probably providing fresh water, chickens or a goat for a village in Africa, meant I couldn’t refuse it.

“I was a bit worried about going to Oxfam at first,” Louise confesses. “I always expect dresses from charity shops to have that second-hand, 1980s, puffy look. So I was absolutely overwhelmed when I found this dress – or rather it found me.”

Everyone seems to have an eBay horror or success story, so would you be brave enough to buy your beloved wedding dress there? Kerry Blackaby, a legal secretary from Warwickshire who is planning an autumn wedding, was. “I bought my dress off eBay for £99,” she explains. “The bid was won at £17 and the remainder of the cost amounted to packaging. It was made by hand to my measurements by a designer in Thailand, and it really is fantastic.

“I was very concerned that it wouldn’t fit,” Kerry added. “But I needn’t have worried, because a local dressmaker offered to alter it for me for just £25 anyway.
“I think the way that wedding dresses on eBay work is that people see all the new designer dresses and then make and sell copies of them. For example, my dress is the same as a designer dress I saw worth £5,000, just with a slightly different back.”

If the ethics of buying a dress for next-to-nothing from Thailand sound a bit dubious, Kerry had thought that one through too. “I didn’t feel guilty about the lady in Thailand making my dress, because she’s running her own business,” Kerry told us. “She’s working for herself, not anybody else, so she must be making a profit.”

TRANSPORT

The average cost of transport to a wedding is £300, so this is an area where you can do some serious saving – and have ridiculous fun.
Getting married within walking distance of your home, if possible, is a good starting point. The walk to the venue should be pretty jolly anyway, with everyone in their glad-rags, but you can spruce it up by getting guests to carry balloons or big flowers, play music or sing and generally have a bit of a carnival. But have plenty of brollies on hand just in case. If there are no major hills in the way you could even get the wedding procession on roller-skates or skateboards – elbow-pads might be wise though.

Push-bikes are another idea, which will also stand out in everyone’s memories as something a bit different. You can dress them up with ribbons, flowers, balloons, or, if you’re feeling particularly creative, spray-paint them. If you are worried that a bike won’t work wonders for your outfit, get a tandem and be a lady or gent of leisure on the back (your chauffeur won’t notice if you’re not pedalling, and everyone knows Daisy looked very sweet upon the seat of that bicycle made for two). If you don’t have bikes, hiring them only costs around a tenner a day, and you might be able to get a discount if you explain what it’s for.
Cheaper than the whole horse-and-carriage palaver (and much more exciting) is turning up on horseback. Ride side-saddle if you don’t want to ruin the frock. If the local farm isn’t too keen on lending out its horses, perhaps you could persuade it to lend or hire you a tractor for the day. Talk about turning up in style!

Motorbikes are also fairly cheap, or if you don’t have the CBT on your licence, hire a moped or a scooter. These cost about £30 per day, and still create that biker-chic (windswept) effect. Lastly, keep your ears open for friends who have posh, classic or retro cars, and if they don’t, try cleaning your own one. It makes all the difference, I’m told!

VENUE

The cost of a marriage service in a church is £240, and that’s without any ‘extras’ such as a choir, an organist and lighting. As this is all stuff that most consider indispensable for a church wedding, it’ll bump the cost up even higher. A register office is an obvious way of doing it for less, but even this will set you back about £45-£50 for the ceremony and marriage certificate, and you also have to pay £30 to give notice of intending to marry.
So, where else to get hitched? In little old England you can only get wed in a venue that has been officially sanctioned by law and is open to the public. Other than places of worship and register offices these tend to be hotels, halls, old houses or castles, with the odd farmhouse cropping up here and there. Prices are high, although if you just want to get married at a venue without holding the reception there it will be cheaper. Geography is a factor – you’re lucky if you live in Wales, which is the cheapest place to get married in the UK, and not so lucky if you live in London, the most expensive.

Scotland is more relaxed on its rules. There, you don’t have to be married in a pre-approved public venue. This gives much more scope for cheaper weddings in imaginative places. What’s more, it’s a beautiful country if you manage to avoid the rain and the midges – you could pick your favourite mountain, hillside, lochside, coastal path or beach for a wedding with a stunning backdrop. More and more people are taking advantage of the improving summers (global warming has its plus side) and are risking the weather to get married in idyllic Scottish settings.

If you’re the type who’s full of wanderlust, venture abroad. Getting married overseas means that not only can the whole affair be less costly, you can also have a two-in-one wedding and honeymoon in the land of your dreams. Many travel agents now do ‘instant’ wedding packages starting at about £1,500, where a ceremony coordinator will sort out all the paperwork and pretty much everything else. If the idea of a package wedding fills you with foreboding and makes you think of those frightful 18-30s holidays, then sorting it out yourself is not difficult. Matt Lindsay and his wife Jennifer organised their own wedding in Gibraltar, where they paid £160 for the registry and return flights were just £70 apiece.

“We did work it out at the time, and including outfit, fees, hotel, party, photographs and travel it was just under £3,000,” says Jennifer. “If we hadn’t done the party afterwards we would have saved a further £650.”
“Gibraltar is a really easy place to get married as it is has exactly the same rules and currency as England, so we thought we’d rather get married there than some greying register office in the UK,” Matt says. “I think it’s where Sean Connery and John Lennon got married – no, not to each other!

“It was a cheap wedding,” finishes Matt, “but not cheap in sentiment.”

Party on

The after-party is normally one of the biggest costs of a wedding. Feeding the Five Thousaand is expensive nowadays, and if the nation’s expanding waistline is anything to go by, they’ll all be wanting seconds. Money-saving tips include hiring out somewhere simple, like a local church hall or barn, and doing it up yourselves – marquee-style drapes hanging from the roof is an idea. Village halls can cost as little as £6 an hour to hire. Think about what day and at what time of year you’re going to marry, because hiring a venue on a weekday, or in winter, or both, makes it cheaper. If you hold the reception close to where the wedding took place you don’t have to worry about paying for transport between the two.

Having a buffet as opposed to a sit-down meal saves on waiting staff if you’re going catered, and tapwater with lemons instead of bottled water on the tables will make a difference. Non-traditional food could be cheaper than conventional wedding fare, and will save your guests from yet another round of prawn cocktails.

Flowers and decorations are other areas where you can be creative. Wild or home-grown flowers save huge expense and are satisfying and simple. Balloons are cheaper still. If you want favours, keep them simple or home-made. There are thousands of options – we came up with making little lavender bags by cutting out pieces of material or netting, putting in some dried lavender and then tying them up with a ribbon and the guest’s name.

If the idea of getting busy with the sticky-back plastic is terrifying, think about how much more enjoyable it will be than working out who to give your money to next. And, with a little help from your friends (groan), your day will not only be one to remember, but a rewarding one too.

BM