‘We served food from the bin to our wedding guests’: Thrifty bride spent just £3,000 on her wedding and bought a dress from GumTree
Durham couple had rings made from used metal and out-of-date food at the reception
A THRIFTY couple organised their entire wedding for £3,000 using food that was destined for the bin as their wedding breakfast and a second hand wedding dress from GumTree.
Kim and Dan Woolnough, from Durham, even had their wedding rings made from reused metal by seller on jewellery recycling site Etsy.
The 24-year-old bride said: “Some of our guests thought it was a bit weird that we were having out of date food for the wedding breakfast but everyone said it was really tasty.
“We didn’t want to waste anything so we had to be quite creative.”
Community nurse Kim met Dan, 22, in 2014 when they were both on an internship in Durham, and quickly hit it off.
In September 2015, sales executive Dan proposed to Kim at the top of a mountain in Keswick, the Lake District.
The couple decided to have a thrifty wedding and use as much recycled and second hand materials as possible.
Their wedding invitations were made out of 100% recycled paper, and the save-the-date invitations were emailed to save paper.
While most brides spend hours - and thousands of pounds - shopping for their dream wedding dress, Kim bought one from GumTree for £80.
She said: “It seemed like fate. I went to pick up the dress and instantly fell in love with it.
“I had a few alterations made so that it fit me, but the lady was so glad that the dress was going to be used again.”
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The wedding breakfast was made by a charity which sources food from local supermarkets, bakeries and small businesses which would otherwise have gone in the bin.
The starter was a tomato and red pepper soup, followed by veg curry or pasta and a range of different desserts.
Any food that was leftover at the end was given to the guests to take home.
Kim said: “The food was all past its shelf life but still perfectly fine to eat. In fact it was delicious!
“We didn’t want to waste a single thing, so everything had been recycled in some way.”
The couple even had furniture made for the wedding out of recycled bits of wood, which they gave back to the carpenters afterwards to use again.
She said: “That was what made it so special, everyone chipped in and the band were some friends of ours.
“It was a lot more personal than other weddings I’ve been to where the couple have splurged loads of money.”
