Colourful Fun & DIY 70s Disco Wedding On A Budget

Buckle up, you’re in for an epic time as you experience Betty and Perry’s fun-filled 70s disco wedding extravaganza!

Their day really is a masterclass in stamping personality on a wedding day. They opted for a quirky and colourful village hall wedding set at Waltham on the Wolds Village Hall in Leicestershire.

Being on a budget they crafted up a storm, with lots of amazing DIY decorations and personal touches. I really love the cute banner signs, picnic boxes, balloon displays, streamer decor, retro iced cake and the signs. It looked incredible!

There were cool outfits, smoke flares, scooter transport and a dancefloor confetti moment too. Oh yes.

I can’t thank Bubear Photography enough for sharing with us these tremendous images of such a unique celebration.

70s Disco Wedding

The Proposal

We were on our annual visit to the Lake District for our 10-year anniversary.

I grew up watching the Niamh Cusack Peter Rabbit series on VHS so I had planned to visit Beatrix Potter’s house for one of the days we were there.

The weather had been quite miserable for the few days we had been there, so we popped our raincoats and boots on and set off for our day out. We had tickets to tour the house so while we waited for more people to arrive, we walked around ‘Mr McGregors Garden’.

I turned around to get a view of the house from halfway down the path and when I looked back, Perry was on one knee with the ring we had picked out a few years ago. It was beautiful and he couldn’t have asked in a better place. It will always hold a very special place in my heart.

The Vision

The vision for our wedding was always colourful and more of a ‘party’ vibe. But as I did more research and more Pinterest scrolling, I discovered ‘disco’ weddings and fell in love! It was right up our street and it just felt like ‘us’.

However, the price tags weren’t and I soon realised that I was going to have to pull a lot of it together myself.

Budget

We didn’t really have a set budget but knew we didn’t want to spend ridiculous amounts. We borrowed a bit of money back off our mortgage to pay the bigger bits off and the rest was savings and (dreaded) credit cards.

Your Outfits

Perry always wanted a mod-looking suit and we really loved a blue suit from Twisted Tailor but it was limited edition and sold out. We looked in the January sales and came across one on Paul Smith that was half price and we both fell in love with it.

I knew I wanted to get him something sentimental as his wedding gift, so I splurged a little and got him a Gucci tie with a gold bee embroidered on it. The bee has a very sentimental meaning to our family in honour of my late Grandad Pat.

I knew from the get-go that I wanted a mini dress but was worried that I was going to miss out on that ‘bridal’ feel, so went to try some longer dresses on first. I left my wedding dress until last because, deep down, I knew it was the one.

I went to The Fall Bride in London with my sisters and mum to try it on. It was a gorgeous little number by Harriette Gordon and I knew from the second I put it on that it was what I wanted to marry Perry in.

The veil was made by the lovely The Boho Bride and she did me a massive favour sorting this out at quite short notice for me.

The shoes were also a last-minute change, I came across them on a retailer’s website and knew I needed them to match Perry’s suit (he had no idea I was going to be wearing a short dress and blue shoes).

The Ceremony & Music

The ceremony was hilarious to say the least. We do not take ourselves seriously at all and watching the videos back, we were really quite clumsy and fidgety. It was nice to have a traditional church wedding at St Mary Magdalene.

Our nieces chose the two hymns that we had and after a few mishaps with the speakers, we were all in fits of laughter. It really made the ceremony one to remember.

Your Photographer & Filmmaker

Our wonderful Photographer, Kirsty (Bubear Photography) was just incredible! We had been for a pre-shoot with her around 3 weeks before the wedding and she made us feel so at ease. Same goes for the wedding day, at times, we didn’t even realise she was there. The photos speak for themselves, she captured everything exactly how it was!

Our videographers Laura and Mia (Define Your Perfect Day Media) were fantastic at capturing everything, they felt like part of the wedding party! It was great to have a team of vendors that just fit straight in with the wedding. We can’t thank them enough!

The Venue

All of the venues we looked at were completely out of our budget and we even toyed with the idea of eloping after being in a bit of a tale spin with how much it was all going to cost.

Then we started looking into village halls and churches. That’s when we came across Waltham on the Wolds Village Hall. They did really reasonably priced packages, and the empty hall was like a blank canvas to make it look how we wanted it to.

The Styling & Decor

A lot of the décor was made or sourced by myself (with the help of Perry and a few family members). We hand-made all of the streamers and collected all of the disco balls. The ‘Snack wall’ and ‘Family Tree’ walls were made by myself and Perry.

Our flowers were done by the lovely Fleurs en Fleur and the cake was made Chris at Barnetts Café – Both in Loughborough.

Our balloons were put together as a wedding gift by my lovely Aunty (Ballooning Lovely North West).

The signage, place cards etc were designed by myself on Canva and printed through our fantastic printer that we use at my workplace.

We decided against a full three-course sit-down dinner as we know our friends and family very well, they would rather be at the bar! So we decided to go for picnic boxes with ‘Ploughmans feast’ kind of food. That way, they could be digging in while the speeches were going on. We didn’t want anyone to sit there hungry while we all waffled on at the top table.

We decided against wedding favours, as they always get left behind or put in a junk drawer. So instead, we spent the money on a photo booth (Oh Snap) and it was one of the best things we did! I think I will be friends for life with Hannah!

Our DJs were two close friends who did this as a wedding gift and they absolutely smashed it. They kept the light-up dancefloor (strictly LED) full all night!

The Honeymoon

For the honeymoon we went to one of the best hotels we have ever stayed in. It was the Syntopia in Crete! We want to go back again in the future, it was beautiful!

Memorable Moments

Quick list:

While the guests walked down to the hall from the church, me and Perry stopped off at the pub across the road to have a moment to ourselves and to toast to my Grandad Pat. He would have been the one to walk me down the aisle so this was really important to me.
My nieces got up on the stage and sang ‘Whitney Houston – I Wanna Dance With Somebody’ over the top of about 5 songs. It was so funny, they had everyone up cheering them on.
We were gifted our Lambretta scooter as a wedding gift from Perry’s parents. We used this at the wedding for our wedding photos as we used to have one when we first started seeing each other but it was written off in a crash. It was so special to have this as part of our special day.

Advice For Other Couples

If you want a big colourful wedding, just go for it. You don’t need a fancy venue with all the fancy add-ons if you can’t afford it. We had the best time ever and it was just a village hall wedding. No one remembers the venue, they remember the fun they had.

Also, if you can do basic craft, DIY the things you can’t afford, I promise it is worth it and you look back at the photos feeling so proud that ‘you did that’.