How to have a cheap (but lovely) wedding

by Donna Werbner on 03 June 2010  |  0 comments
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I don't want to sit down at my wedding breakfast and know that, with every mouthful, I'm getting ripped off!

In my last post, I proved it was possible to hire a venue that is big enough and cheap enough for a big fat frugal wedding in central London.

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• Donna Werbner writes:

  My frugal wedding venue

  Donna Werbner is having a big fat frugal wedding. Here, she reveals how she managed to avoid getting ripped-off when it came to the wedding venue.

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I found community halls in great locations that allowed you to provide your own catering and could accommodate 150 people for as little as £35 an hour, with no corkage fees if you brought your own alcohol.

But the big downside I found with these venues was that you may have to spend a lot of time organising the wedding. For example, you obviously have to choose and organise the caterers yourself. And, as many of community halls do not have professional kitchens, if you want hot food, wedding caterers will often charge £25 a head or more – negating many of the savings you make on the venue.

Then I discovered the hog roast.

Cheap wedding catering

Hog roasts (and lamb roasts) are the delicious answer to a frugal party host’s dreams. There’s no need for a kitchen as the company provides its own equipment, and you can easily feed 100 people with a single pig, at a cost of just £5.50 to £8.80 a head (depending on where the wedding is taking place, and the quality of the meat). Many places will also provide vegetarian options free of charge.

Here are some of the quotes I found:

Just be aware you will usually have to pay extra for chefs to be present to carve and serve the meat, plus you will need to provide salads (which relatives and friends may be up for bringing). Unfortunately, if you want hot vegetables included with the hog roast, the cost shoots up by about £450.

Recent question on this topic

• Donna Werbner asks:

  Calling all married couples - are good wedding photographs worth paying hundreds of pounds for? Is this something you shouldn't skimp and save on?

  • 
    manzanilla answered "I got a great set of pics by asking family to take loads and send me the best... we still have them..."
  • 
    MikeGG1 answered "Donna If you really want the stereo-type posed photographs then spend your money. If you want..."
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The other big problem with this option is that you still need to hire in waiters to serve the food to your guests, unless you have a buffet. And even then, you’ll have to pay someone to clear up the mess afterwards. Unless, again, you asked your guests to just chuck their plates and leftovers in the bin.

Personally, I really liked the idea of a hog roast wedding buffet with home-made salads, served on paper plates with disposable cutlery, but I’m guessing many couples would not. My fiancé certainly didn’t!

If, however, you did choose to go down this route, I reckon you could potentially host a wedding at this community hall in Central London for 100 people for around £1,000 – food and wine included!

If not, and you want to host a wedding for 100 people at, say, this more upmarket venue in Central London, then you’re looking at around £1,200 for the venue for five hours, plus £1,300 for a hog roast and hot vegetables, £300 to hire posh table settings, £250 for four waiters, and about £300 for 50 bottles of wine.

Suddenly, you see, the costs jump for £10 a head to £33.50 a head! Still cheap for a sit-down wedding reception in a posh country house in central London, but don’t under-estimate the sacrifices (eg no dessert, no music after 11.30pm, lots of organising).

So what to do? Was my dream of having a big fat frugal wedding going to remain just that – a dream?

Pubs that offer hog roasts

Come on, I’m the editor of lovemoney.com! I don’t give up that easily.

The next logical step, for me, was to try to find a pub where we could have a hog roast or even a barbecue for 100 people. That way, we’d save ourselves all the hassle and cost of hiring catering and waiting staff and tables and cutlery etc, plus the venue would be free.

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Weddings can be ridiculously expensive - make sure you're financially ready for marital bliss!

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These savings, I hoped, might just about offset the cost of any rip-off wine we’d have to buy from the pub. Plus, in a pub, we could potentially celebrate until the wee hours of the morning, with a later licence than the community hall could offer. And potentially, we could find one nearby Islington town hall, where I ideally wanted to get married (not just because it’s beautiful – because it’s the biggest and cheapest town hall I could find in London). So we’d save on the cost of transporting 100 guests, too.

And luckily for me, The North Star in Islington ticked all those boxes. It does hog roasts, but offered me a fantastic barbeque wedding package that came in at just £27 a head for a main meal, dessert, a decent half bottle of wine per guest, table settings, staff hire and all other costs. Plus we could invite up to 200 people!

Talk about a big fat frugal wedding...

Of course, this is only the first task on a very long list. Next up were the invitations. My aim here was to send the cheapest wedding invitations in the world. Did I manage it? Find out by reading my next post!