Bridal Wear at BHS
- Everything for the bride to be including dresses, lingerie, bridesmaid dresses, shoes, mother of the bride, page boys, the groom and more.

Planning a low cost wedding - a quick guide

Weddings can easily cost tens of thousands of pounds, so you will need to set a budget and stick to it - the average cost of a wedding in the UK is currently £17,000, although it is possible to get married for a few hundred pounds. I think that unless you or your families are wealthy, that this is a ridculous amount of money to spend when you have student loans to pay off and houses to buy. Some tips for not letting the costs spiral out of control include:

• The Venue
  Get a low cost venue. If you have your wedding in a luxury hotel, the cost per head for a guest can be in the region of £80. You could, as an alternative, hire out a local restaurant or club and either pay the restaurant bill, or pay to have a buffet provided. If you have a friend or family member with a large garden and are planning a summer wedding, you could even consider hiring a marquee for the garden and getting all the relatives to help with catering for the buffet
• The Website
  Consider a service such as that offered by Wedding Tracker, which provides you with your own personalised wedding web site, that will help you to plan your wedding, showcase your photos and more. A two week free trial is available.
• Wedding Stationery
  Wedding invitations, menus, place cards and orders of service can be expensive if you have them professionally made. Consider making them yourself on the computer. There are many software and greetings card packages on the market today that would make this a straight forward task.
• Wedding Decorations and Costume Jewellery
  Shop around for wedding decorations and costume jewellery. Candles, for example, can often be purchased very cheaply from discount stores.
• The Wedding Cake
  See if you can save money on a wedding cake by buying a standard one from a supermarket - they generally cost around £50 if bought this way - the cost of a professional customised cake could be in the region of £300.
• The Wedding Dress
  Hire a wedding dress or buy a second hand one off ebay and have it altered to fit (if in doubt, buy it too big - they can always be reduced in size but increases are more difficult).
• The Photographer / Wedding Video
  Getting a professional photographer may well be worth the cost as photos are something that you will look back on for years. However, going on my personal experience, our photographs were taken by a professional and they are not that good, plus we were restricted on the number of reprints because of the prohibitive cost. If you have a friend or family member who is the least bit talented in this direction, at least have them take pictures in addition to the professional photographer - the professional will set up all the shots for the official portfolio, so just snap what he does - you'll save a fortune on reprints.
  
  The same goes for the video - modern digital camcorders and video editing software mean that most people with computers are capable of producing a reasonable quality video - plus again, if you shoot it yourself, you will be able to make as many copies as you want at low cost.
• The Honeymoon
  Don't go overboard on the cost. Look out for last minute deals and don't arrange your honeymoon during school holiday periods. Consider just having a weekend away in England. When my husband and I married, we had a weekend in Blackpool because we had just left university, had a 100% mortgage, plus a bank loan, and it really was all that we could afford. We will be celebrating 20 years of marriage this year, and still look back fondly at our honeymoon.