Yahoo Finance Top tips for saving for a 2021 wedding
With many UK wedding cancelled or postponed in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, 2021 is set to be a busy year for UK marriages.
The average UK wedding costs couples £16,005 ($21,634), according to research by PurePhotoNI, and with COVID-19 hitting Britain’s finances hard, here are some top tips for saving on your big day.
Prioritise must-have flowers
The cost of flowers for your big day can add up to a considerable amount.
Do some research into which flowers are in season at the time of year you’re planning to get married. If you’re having a summer wedding, choosing flowers that blossom in the winter will likely mean you’ll have to buy them from overseas — substantially increasing the cost.
READ MORE: £4.8bn lost by the UK wedding industry in 2020
Decide what flowers are your favourites and prioritise them. Picking just one or two flower variants for your bouquets will help you save cash, compared with including numerous variants.
When buying flowers in bulk, remember that the more blooms you include, the more this will add to your spending.
Rent vs buy
In a lot of cases, it is much more cost effective to rent your decorations rather than buying them.
Rental companies will deliver all your decorations to you and could even help set them up at the venue, saving you time as well as money.
Go digital and cut the cartridge
Rather than spending an unnecessary amount of money on printing invitations, consider sending them digitally instead. You could send them via email or via e-invitations or download printable templates that you can print out yourself rather than paying for them to be professionally printed.
Favour off-peak days and seasons
In order to avoid the premium prices that venues charge for peak days and times of the year, choose when your wedding date wisely.
The most popular months to get married in the UK are between June and September, due to the warmer weather weather. As for the most expensive day of the week to get married, venues usually charge premium prices on Saturdays. So, opting for a different day and season for your big day could help you save a substantial amount on your budget.
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Fridays and Sundays tend to have slight cost reductions for venues, however choosing to get married on weekdays between Monday and Thursday could be even cheaper.
Select your guests wisely
Opting for a smaller wedding with only those that are closest to you present could mean you can spend more quality time with people you love most, as well as saving on your big day.
A wedding with fewer guests will likely require a smaller venue as well as having fewer mouths to feed. So choosing your guests wisely and keeping the guestlist small could also help you reduce the size of your wedding budget.
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