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By Emma Tyrrell

Tens of thousands of British couples will turn their backs on a pricey UK wedding and say "I do" abroad this year. With the average cost of weddings in the UK now approaching £17,000, the appeal of getting hitched on a foreign beach is obvious - a killer combination of virtually guaranteed sunshine and low costs.

Recent research by Mintel suggests that getting spliced abroad costs £4,000 on average, and some foreign wedding packages can cost as little as £540 per couple.

But spare a thought for the poor guests invited along to celebrate those sun-kissed nuptials. While the happy couple will be getting a bargain wedding, the guests will be forking out big-time.

New figures from Halifax Travel Insurance shows that guests attending weddings abroad will spend an average £1,300, on accommodation, flights, wedding outfit and gift. That's a cool £1,000 more than they would spend in the UK. The growing popularity of overseas weddings means that more of us can expect to face these costs. Halifax claims an astonishing 1.4 million Brits will attend at least one wedding abroad this year, and says more than four million have been to one in the past three years.

But while some of us would treat the trip as a holiday, others will accept under duress, no doubt muttering about the damage to their bank balance as they fill in their gilt-edged RSVP. A quarter of those questioned by Halifax said they would turn up either to avoid a family rift, or out of fear that the bride would never speak to them again if they didn't.

Only just over one in four would have the bottle to turn down the invitation.

Based on extremely unscientific assumptions, I'm sure that getting married aboard used to be about escaping from all the wedding hassles and family politics, and plighting your troth in romantic seclusion. These days it seems that many couples still want their family and friends there to witness their big day - they just want to cart them half-way around the world to do so

Now each to their own, but if, as often happens, you're treating your foreign wedding as a wedding/honeymoon combo, you'll need to bear in mind that all your guests will be sharing your honeymoon.

Another thing to consider is that having your wedding celebration abroad could actually complicate your family politics rather than simplifying them. Limiting the guest list to very close family and friends can put other noses severely out of joint.

One couple I know had to fork out for a second, much pricier and much larger, reception party on their return to the UK, after their failure to invite great aunt Doris to their Greek island wedding threatened a family rift.

Those who attended both the foreign wedding and UK reception presumably didn't feel they had to buy two wedding presents, and (weather permitting) may even have managed to recycle their original wedding outfits, but the extra travel and accommodation expenses would have pushed their costs up still further.

Of course, even UK weddings can prove expensive for the guests, especially when you've got several invites.

Recent research by Morgan Stanley Credit Cards found that guests spend an average of around £300 on each wedding they attend in the UK, including the present, outfit, travel, accommodation and eating and drinking outside the wedding reception.

With over 100,000 weddings planned over the summer months, guests will be spending billions on wedding gifts alone. With more couples devoting their wedding lists to luxury goods, the average spend on a present is £94. Department store chain John Lewis reported last year that the value of its wedding lists had risen by 20 per cent in a single year.

But the costs of the present pale beside the outlay for hen or stag celebrations. The lure of a boozy night of dancing around your handbag to eighties disco sounds may still be with us, but these days the setting is Madrid rather than Manchester, New York rather than Newark, and Barcelona rather than Brighton.

The concept of the last night of freedom has been replaced with the hen or stag weekend, and the growing number of specialist tour operators offer everything from a pamper weekend at a health spa, to a few days Kalashnikov shooting in Latvia.

With the pressure on the best man or chief bridesmaid to come up with a stag or hen weekend to end all others, it's hardly surprising that costs have soared. According to Egg, we Brits are set to spend £430 million this year - an average £551 each - on stag and hen parties abroad. One in ten stags and hens are spending over £1,000 each.

The most popular destinations are Spain, the Netherlands, and France, but according to specialist trip organizer www.lastnightoffreedom.co.uk, Eastern European countries such as Lithuania and Latvia are growing in popularity. They say hens tend to spend slightly less than stags, because stags will generally want to include more activities, such as paint-balling or karting. Pole dancing lessons are apparently popular afternoon activities for hen parties. In this country hens tend to spend around £180 each on a weekend, while stags will spend around £30 more. Foreign trips can piles on the £s though. One group of stags took a recent trip to Riga, the capital of Latvia, and spent over £500 each on five star accommodation, flights, and shooting and karting activities.

At the mega cost end of the scale, according to Mintel, hens and stags could be asked to fork out for a trip to Mexico or Las Vegas.

There are a few ways for hard-up wedding guests to save money, short of refusing the invite and offending the happy couple. Try and book your accommodation as soon as you get the invite, particularly if the wedding is in a rural location with a limited choice of places to stay. Leave it too late, and you could be left with only the priciest of hotels. Road-side travel lodges may not be the most gorgeous of places to stay, compared to that little chocolate box cottage B&B, but they're usually cheap, and you're only going to be sleeping in it, after all.

The same rule applies to the wedding gift list. Mark in your diary the day that the list opens, and get in there first. Leave it too late, and you'll be left with a choice of two napkin rings at £3.99, or luxury bed linen at £150.

Try to find out if any other guests are traveling from near where you live, and try to arrange a car share.

And when the invite to the £1,200 hen weekend to Marrakech drops on the mat, suddenly recall a prior and rather pressing engagement.