A third of engaged British couples are being forced to get married on a shoestring. Financial crisis fears are forcing 43% of engaged couples to cap their wedding budget at £5,000, just a quarter of the average cost of a UK wedding in 2007. Most alarmingly, one in ten are scrapping their wedding plans altogether as the credit crunch takes its toll. This new research by Gumtree.com doesn’t paint a rosy picture for romance and weddings in 2008, but surely there are ways to have a stylish wedding, even when on a budget?

Probably the biggest slice of the wedding budget will be for your venue. There are many luxury wedding venues available, with luxury prices to match. However your local village hall, golf and rugby club could be hired for a fraction of the price. Gumtree say, “The trick is to see past the existing décor and imagine it sprinkled with hundreds of fairy lights or candles.”

A local wedding venue, you might think, would make the wedding transport costs a little easier to swallow too. However this is not always the case, most professional wedding car suppliers allow a reasonable amount of mileage in their quotations, the real cost of the hire is in the preparation. However if the distances are not too far, you could get your wedding car to make several trips, chauffeuring not only the happy couple, but bridesmaids and other important wedding guests too. Be sure to mention the number of trips you wish to take to your wedding car supplier when you ask for a quote though. Multiple trips would generally be fine for most modern wedding cars, but some vintage wedding cars would not be suitable for this purpose.

Great value wedding cars

A Rolls-Royce or Bentley wedding car would be the icing on the superstar wedding cake for many newly weds. These beautiful wedding cars come at a price though, a Rolls-Royce Phantom costs £300 000 to buy. A Mercedes-Benz S Class is significantly more economical and consequently a lot more reasonably priced to hire. Offering much of the room and comfort of the Rolls, but at a healthier price point.

Gumtree suggest asking a friend if they can chauffeur you to the venue to help reduce the wedding budget. Hiring a wedding dress or buying a pre-owned one will certainly help reduce your wedding budget. Getting wedding photos on DVD instead of expensive prints will again help cut the budget too. There are many good reasons why wedding cars are so expensive, it’s not just the cost of the carriage that needs to be quantified. Saving a bundle on the wedding car is fantastic, just as long as the vehicle actually arrives! As iChauffeur’s Andy Senior confirms, “It is very sad to hear from somebody who has been left high and dry on their wedding day. We get a surprising number of calls like this, sometimes from people we have even quoted for previously.”

Most companies are fine and reputable in the wedding car industry, but when someone is considerably cheaper than the rest of the competition. You need to ask yourself, how are they able to undercut the competition by so much?

Using some careful planning, it is entirely possible to have a stylish carriage, without breaking the bank. It’s nice to know it’s not how much you spend that matters, but rather how much love you put into your wedding celebration that really counts.