We get it, weddings are expensive. So expensive that on average a wedding can cost up to $50,000 in Australia alone. But is asking your wedding guests to fork out $250 each to pay for your ‘dream wedding’ a great idea or a total faux pas?

For this British groom-to-be Ben Farina, asking his guests to pay for his wedding was the perfect solution to his wedding woes. Unable to afford his dream wedding he requested that each guest contribute $250 towards the wedding, held next June. The cost would cover the wedding itself and a three-night stay at the venue in Derbyshire, along with all the food and drink. But rather than posing it as a wedding gift groom-to-be is calling it “an all-inclusive holiday”.

“We’ve told guests it costs this much if you want to come”, he told the Derby Telegraph. “I sold it to them a bit like an all-inclusive holiday, so all the food and drinks will be incorporated into that cost. The venue also has a spa, an indoor swimming pool, a games room, it’s very close to local amenities, there’s a lake, so it is like a little holiday resort”.

Luckily for Farina, his guests have taken the idea with grace and 60 of the guests have already paid their deposits to attend the event. Asking his wedding guest’s to pay for their wedding meant that the total cost he and his fiancée will pay is $3360, a significant reduction in the overall cost.

“I never thought we would be able to have a wedding like this”, said fiancée Clare.

“We had spoken about marriage because we’ve got a little girl together and I always said we wouldn’t be able to afford to do it, or it would have to be a registry office wedding, not a big wedding…This is a brilliant way to do it and I can’t wait. He has put a lot of thought into it”.

Image Credits: Field Photographic, Oehlers Photography, and Chatsworth House Derbyshire

Article written by Alison Donnellan