Weddings on a Budget | UKbride

We all know the old saying "look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves..." but how far can this really get you in the build-up to your big day?

UKbride has teamed up with money-saving expert and TV personality Jasmine Birtles to offer you a wealth of advice on how to  avoid dodgy discounts and bag the best deals in the run up to your wedding.

Jasmine — who offers financial advice on This Morning, The Wright Stuff, and Steve Wright in the Afternoon — specialises in making money easier to understand — thus the perfect candidate to tailor her tips for our brides-to-be!

What's more, Jasmine's new website Moneymagpie.com has recently launched their unique 'Wedding eBook' which can help you knock up to £2,100 off your wedding bill — and the lovely team behind this brilliant new venture have agreed to offer a handful of our members the chance to win this fabulous resource (which would normally set you back £19.99!) in a free competition!

All it takes is a dash of imagination, a splash of creativity and a helping hand from the experts to pinch the pre-nuptial purse strings...

Jasmine's top tips:

Set a budget: It sounds boring but it’s a great way to keep costs down. Rather than thinking about what you want and then paying for it (way over the amount you actually have in your savings), decide on an amount of money you can afford to spend on the wedding then make everything fit that. You and your partner should write down two or three things you won’t compromise on then see how you can save on things that don’t matter so much.

Try to keep the numbers down: Decide who you really want to have at the wedding and then work on the invites, rather than deciding on 100 guests and then inviting extra people to make up the numbers. Or invite a larger group to the ceremony and afternoon tea, and a smaller set to a finger-food party afterwards.

Get stuff for free: If you advertise your wedding on a freebie website you may be offered all sorts of helpful wedding items from benevolent married couples, completely free. All you have to do is pick them up! The best of the bunch are recycling websites Freecycle and Snaffleup. Gumtree also lists free items on offer in your area. All these sites work in the same way — you go and collect the item once you’ve emailed the person offering it.

Pick the right time: Go for less popular times for your ceremony and you can really save. For example, having a weekday wedding will automatically cut costs by as much as 50%, as will having your wedding outside of the peak summer months. Also, if your wedding is the last ceremony of the day, late in the afternoon, you won’t have to provide guests with lunch and dinner — you can just feed them once in the evening and save a packet.

Choose your flowers well: Ask your florist to use flowers that are both in season and from the UK — they will be fresher and cheaper. In fact you could always do the flowers yourself. Buy the flowers wholesale from florists or flower markets, go for a simple hand-tied or single flower bouquet and get some advice on how to do it from a florist — or several. They like talking about flowers so many of them will happily give you free advice. Also, get one of the guests to transfer the flowers from the church to the reception venue to save even more money.

Try unusual venues: Consider a pub for your reception. There are some really gorgeous pubs all over the UK that have lovely gardens, stunning riverside settings and great function rooms which can be perfect for a more relaxed or casual wedding. Take a look at the website Beer In The Evening, where you can search for pub function room hire by location. Or if you know anybody with a large garden then why not ask if you can use it for your reception? If there’s a local catering college near you the students might jump at the chance to practice their skills providing the food for your wedding for a really low fee.

Get a high street wedding cake: There are lots of high street stores selling traditional wedding cakes at great prices. For example, M&S has recently lauched a range of very pretty wedding cakes from just £8!

Check out the charity shops: You can get some amazing bargains on nearly-new wedding dresses, bridesmaids’ dresses, veils, shoes, bags and so on in the special wedding sections in Oxfam shops. They have 11 bridal departments across the country and an online section. There are pure silk dresses for £100’s instead of £1,000’s and even if you have to pay to get one altered, it will still be miles cheaper than a new one.

Go green: Being eco-friendly is usually also wallet-friendly. For example, you could create place-names using pebbles collected from a beach with the name written in a gold felt-tip, or give home-grown flowers as wedding favours. Tea-lights in painted, recycled jars are a great table decoration. For the end of the night paper lanterns look particularly special and they are a fraction of the cost of fireworks.