I got married towards the end of my second year, and we did it quite cheaply. From proposal to the day was only 6 months. But it might have been better to do it in the first year, as it can be a bit of a distraction ( although an enjoyable one!)
The website I used quite a lot was:
http://www.cheap-wedding-success.co.uk/
It's amazing what you can do if you set up a budget first and stick to it. Friends and family can often have hidden talents!
We set up a free website using http://www.gettingmarried.co.uk/ which cut down on posting out loads of information with the invites!
I bought my wedding dress from a vintage clothes auction - just an idea if you want something different and don't want to/can't wait 6 months for Bridal shops! ( I avoided the places like the plague!)
Have fun!

have to say bridal shops are the most horrible places ever!

My Boyfriend is in his first year PhD (Started last August) and we are getting married this May. I say as long as you have the time to create the wedding you want, go for it!

The other thing which is cheap to do yourself (and I found relaxing) is the flowers - I wasn't brave enough to do my bouquets but I did (with a friend) flowers for the church and reception and buttonholes for every guest.  I got married in November and flowers at that time of year are even more expensive than usual. We went to a flower market (we lived in London at the time so it was easy) and bought about £120 - £150 of flowers (we had to borrow buckets for the neighbours we had so many).  I got oasis and the dishes for it to go in, and the other bits and pieces (wire, tape ribbon etc) from a florist supply shop (but nowadays you can get that on the web).

We did 12 table centre pieces (with big fat candles), big arrangements for the top table, pew ends, two big arrangements (one for the entrance one for the alter), button holes for 120 guests - all for about £250 in total.  I reckon from a florist it would have been over £2000 pounds. It was a nice thing to do as it occupied me in the two days before the wedding - you just need to have friends to rope in to help (or if you are getting married in a church ask the ladies who do the church flowers to do them - they will be much cheaper than a florist).

One of our ushers made the cake as a wedding present (but we had to get it iced) - another option i to look in supermarkets M&S (& I am sure others) do wedding cakes which just need assembling and decorating with some flowers if you want a traditional type.  One of my dad's friends has an old car (cream 1953 rolls) so we used that to take me to church. We didn't have an evening do as I'm not really into discos - our wedding finished about 9.30pm.

Enjoy the organising - I loved it - all my project management skills put to far more interesting use!

Ooh yes, we did flowers ourselves too and saved tons of cash being 'minimalist' - we had 3 red gerberas in a vase in the middle of the table - which looked really good. The vases were 25p each - we found them in tesco! and we just had to order about 60 gerberas so we could pick them up from the florist in the morning and get my auntie to cut them down to three different sizes. They looked really good and when we had everything on the table we were glad we hadn't gone for anything too big.

I also got my dad to do the invitations - although he is an art school graduate so they looked fab!

Cake - we got from M&S, it was lovely and also cheap and we put it on a cake stand from ebay and then put red ribbon and gerberas on it - it looked really sophisomocated!

I would say that ebay will be your friend!

I got married at the end of my first year. Mum made my dress, mother in law baked the cake, father in law lent us his vintage car, uncle played the organ, friend did the flowers. Table decorations, makeup and other little bits and pieces came off Ebay. We had the reception in the local pub and didn't have an evening do (neither of us "do" dancing!). The bridesmaids carried beaded handbags rather than bouquets so they could re-use them. I did the orders of service myself and got them printed in the university bindery who were fab. For the invitations I found a rubber stamp in art deco style (that was the theme we went for) and then printed the inserts on the printer in my postgrad office (slightly cheeky I know but I considered it payback for years of printing everything 2 to a page, double sided while other morons merrily printed out entire books without a second thought).

I actually found it a really nice diversion from my PhD because I love planning and organising things but you could always consider getting a wedding co-ordinator if you don't have the time or inclination to do it yourself.

The only thing I would add is that while some people love to be asked to help with weddingy stuff, for other people it is really stressful so make sure they really, really want to do it and aren't just being polite. When my brother got married they asked me to do the flowers and while I'm fairly competent I'm not a trained florist. The night before the wedding I was in tears and barely slept because I was so worried that they wouldn't be right/would have died overnight etc. Strangely I cared less about my own wedding than I did about theirs because of the responsibility of having to contribute something that I wanted to be perfect!

Wow thanks so much everyone! I think it's looking very likely that we'll get married next year in my first year of PhD. I just think that it's best time to do it and definitely want to be a Mrs button before I graduate!

I will definitely get family and friends to help with e.g invitations/flowers etc, they're into that kind of thing. And it won't be the most spectacular wedding you've ever seen, but it will be perfect for us.

The only thing I'm worrying about though is how much time it will take up, I am a worrier and can imagine worrying about both my PhD and the wedding. But I guess I'll just have to make sure that I get a healthy balance of both. I hear so often of PhDs taking over peoples lives and although I'm 100% committed to it, I don't want it to be the be all and end all of my life. Is that bad?

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I would say at the end of the 2nd year, this way you can really examine how the relationship works during stressful times.