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Couple Had Wetherspoon Wedding Costing £1,100 With Indian Takeaway

Couple Had Wetherspoon Wedding Costing £1,100 With Indian Takeaway

Michelle and John Walton just wanted their wedding guests to 'get pissed' and have a good laugh - sounds right up our street

Rebecca Shepherd

Rebecca Shepherd

Some people never want to get married, others want to splash out thousands on their big day. Michelle and John Walton, on the other hand, wanted to go to their local Wetherspoon pub, pay for an Indian takeaway and get pissed.

Oh, not forgetting that they spent only £1,100 ($1,400) in the process.


Michelle, now 48, wore a charity shop dress that she bought for £15 ($19), bought tiaras from Poundland and made a 'three-tiered pork pie' wedding cake for a quid - consisting of two empty, pastry covered cake tins with a Morrison's £1 pork pie plonked on top. Solid effort.

The pair, who had a combined age of 100 when they got married back in September 2018, decided to do an Age UK colour run in their wedding attire the following day before jumping in their camper van and travelling through France, finishing with a camping trip in Spain.

Speaking to LADbible, Michelle said: "This was the most perfect, normal thing to do. The way I see it is that so many of my friends and family have done weddings where they will spend a year or a year and a half planning it.

"They will do a save the date first of all and actually I see quite a lot of my friends getting stressed out about wedding planning. So I thought, 'I don't want to spend ages planning a wedding for a start.'

Michelle and John taking part in the Age UK colour run the day after their wedding.
Michelle Walton

"I also look at it as, when someone dies you plan a wake within a week. So I thought, 'Well, it can't be that hard to organise a wedding in a month.'

"I don't see the point in spending loads of money on basically what amounts to a celebration with mates. We do it on a Friday and Saturday night, go out and have a good laugh going to the likes of Wetherspoon's, so what's going to be any different? Why make it any different for a wedding?

"People get so stressed out about it and then their expectations become so high because they've put so much into it. In the end, if it rains or something goes wrong it becomes the biggest drama ever."

She's got a point, hasn't she?

The Wetherspoon pub where the pair had their reception.
Google Maps

Michelle has been married four times and John, 53, has been hitched twice - but for their special day together they decided to have their reception at Wetherspoon in Newport, Isle of Wight, on 14 September 2018 - just six weeks after they got engaged.

Michelle said: "I'm nearly 50 years old - I've been there, seen it, done it with life and also, this is my fourth wedding, I've been unlucky in love.

"You can have a good time without spending loads of money, that's the bottom line of it. The Wetherspoon's was a church and it got converted into a nightclub called Temptations.

"Since it was taken over by Wetherspoon's, I thought, 'What a wonderful place for a wedding.' To go to a converted church and pay Wetherspoon's prices, it was a bit of a no-brainer."

The Indian takeaway that the couple forked out £200 for.
Michelle Walton

Michelle and John paid £600 ($780) for a lunchtime spread of deli meals and hired out the Man in the Moon pub courtyard for the afternoon, which was free. They then splashed out £200 on an Indian takeaway which included lamb madras, chicken rogan josh, rice and garlic naans.

Michelle added: "How we wanted it to be was literally, no set time. It was on a Friday afternoon - between midday and 3pm so we said people could just come and go.

"We had some people coming by during their lunch hour at work, there was no expectation for anyone to get dressed up at all. I had a few Poundland tiaras so if anyone wanted to get dressed up, they could stick on a tiara. We wanted to keep it really light-hearted.

"I also didn't want anyone outdoing me - I'm the bride, I'm the one that has to look good but of course I did that with a £15 dress that I got from a charity shop. Me and my sister just went trawling around."

The 'pork pie' that Michelle made, with the help of Morrisons.
Michelle Walton

"We had a pork pie cake," she added: "Basically I did a pastry and put it over the top of a cake tin so it was hollow inside and then I stuck a £1 Morrisons pork pie on top. It looks like an expensive pork pie cake but it actually only cost a quid.

"At the registry office there were five of us. Let's get real about it - the actual ceremony itself is the boring bit, isn't it? Nobody wants to be involved in that bit. We just wanted everyone to go and get pissed and have a good laugh.

"When you have weddings with tables and meals, what you've actually created is separation - everyone gets into their little cliques and they're not mixing with each other. That's a wasted opportunity. I'd recommend doing it our way - and it's cheap, isn't it?"

It sure is.

The moment Michelle and John married.
Michelle Walton

Despite being married three times, Michelle had never been proposed to. She explained: "I told him [John] for all my weddings, no one's ever actually proposed to me before - it was just one of those things where we were together and said, 'Oh, we ought to get married at some point.' I'd never had it where someone's got down on one knee and said, 'Will you marry me?'

"I knew that John would be asking me to marry him and we'd gone and picked the rings from Warren James - they're silver and all in cost £49.

"We ended up going out one evening to get takeaway fish and chips and a bottle of beer from the corner shop - went to a beauty spot in Yarmouth and watched the sun go down.

"As the sun was going down I said, 'Come on, get a move on with what you've got to say.' He got down on one knee and proposed but then I had to help him get back up again.

"This has been the cheapest out of my weddings, none of them have been that expensive though. It was the cheapest but it was the best one and for the best reasons. I think things get better as you get older; you have a different attitude on things."

You can't knock these two - what a couple.

Featured Image Credit: Michelle Walton

Topics: Community, UK