Avoid these wedding cons

Almost all of us end up over budget when planning a wedding, thanks to extra costs that slip under the radar. John Fitzsimons explains where he has been caught out - and what to avoid.

Have you ever read a wedding magazine? Awful things, £5 for 200-odd pages of adverts of strange 'high-chic' dresses, and insightful features like "Flowers are nice, I like roses best".

When I proposed to my other half last year, I was greeted by a pile of the blasted things which my future mother-in-law had picked out to give us a few ideas.

And while my fiancé flicked through this glossy book of hell, my eyes glazed over. Don't get me wrong, I'm genuinely looking forward to getting married. But for a bloke, there's only so many dresses you can look at before you start to doze off.

It costs how much?!

However, one feature did shake me out of my doze - the budget planner. According to this very helpful piece, the average British wedding cost somewhere in the region of £21,000. Yes, you read that right - £21,000!

Now, call me naive, but I had figured we could do a wedding for £6,000. Unsurprisingly, that quickly flew out of the window.

But it's not the obvious big expenses - the church, the dress - that get my goat. This is a big day for us, and I can cope with spending a little more than I wanted to in order to make the day perfect.

Rather, it's the smaller, sneaky costs that soon add up, which have threatened to catch us out.

Save the date cards

Now invitations I can live with - it's fairly obvious that in order for people to come, they need to be invited. Invitations also help you keep up with numbers, as you can track the responses.

But save the date cards? Really?

The theory is that once you know when and where you are getting married, you send out a whole batch of these cards so that your guests know not to book anything else in for that day, before you follow that up with a formal invitation later on.

They come in all shapes and sizes as well. Savethedatecards.co.uk, for example, offer cards both in credit card and fridge magnet form, and a set of 80 will set you back £77-£108.

While that is pretty good compared to some of the other firms out there, I can't help feeling I would rather be spending that £100 on something more important than a little credit card thing, with the details of the ceremony and reception.

After all, that sounds suspiciously like an invitation to me.

Do me a favour

What on earth are 'favours'?! I had never heard of them, but my other half got herself into a tizzy of excitement at the prospect of them.

For those of you who are as ignorant as I was, favours are the little gifts left on each placemat at the wedding breakfast, and were traditionally a box of sugared almonds. I know... sounds appetising, right?

Well, now you can get literally anything as a favour - small boxes of chocolates, coasters, lovespoons (don't ask), the lot. The trouble is, if you have a few guests coming along, the cost very soon racks up.

From the research, my partner and I have undertaken, a single favour can set you back anything between £1.50 and £6.

Doesn't sound a lot, but if you have 80-odd guests, as we do, that's between £120 and £480 on either some god-awful little sweet nobody will eat, or a knick-knack that will most likely get left on the table.

If you absolutely MUST have favours, my tip would be to get something small and simple, and perhaps limit who you give them to. In our case, only the female guests will be receiving them, as the menfolk in our respective families are unlikely to appreciate them.

Wedding insurance

Funnily enough, back when we sat down to work out how much we would be spending on the various elements of our wedding, we didn't include the need to insure the damn thing. Such an idea had never crossed my mind.

In fairness, the insurance itself is not a con as such, as it can be a pretty valuable thing to have.  Many policies cover a whole host of things from having to actually cancel or postpone the wedding, to a failure of the suppliers or the photographer going AWOL.

But be sure to do your homework on this one, as we have ended up with two lots - we bought our own policy as soon as we began planning, but the photographer we booked automatically includes insurance in his package.

There are a whole host of other little costs which will no doubt catch you by surprise, from paying for a wedding license to having your banns of marriage read out in your parish church, so be sure to include those in any budget you draw up.

A wedding is a fantastic occasion, but it is very easy to get carried away and chuck money away on the non-essentials. Do your sums, stick to your budget, and you should be ok.

More: Be a wedding guest for less! | How to tie the knot on a budget