to ask for help with wedding planning?

[NearlyMrsCustardsHardHat]

Our wedding is booked for next year and this year is going to be manic with planning etc currently suppliers are quoting 2013 prices at a huge mark up from 2011 and 2012 and the registrar fees aren't even avaliable yet although this years are just under £400 so i'd assume we're looking at nearer £450 for next year :(

We're pulling in favours, at cost, for flowers, makeup, cake and music, family are paying for my dress and the bridesmaids dresses, our wedding venue is one of the cheapest in the area (although they stipulate you MUST use one of their set caterers whose prices are all much of a muchness), we're keeping the guest list to 50 for the ceremony and meal and 80 for the evening so it's not huge, only one car is being hired, and all this is is without the rings, photographer, invites etc.

I'm getting really downhearted that we won't get the wedding we want (which isn't much as it is) without winning the lottery :(

AIBU to a) ask if it's possible to do all of the above for under £10k (I can't get the sums to do it) and b) for your tips and advice please.

Bloody hell anyone want an invite to my pity party?

Sorry

Don't be sorry! Anyway for what it's worth my DP and I did our civil partnership celebration for about £1000. Very luckily for us our friend is a caterer and her food is second to none. Of course none of the venues we wanted to use would allow us to have an outside caterer so we eventually used a lovely village hall. I know it's not for everyone but it was fantastic.

My amazing parents made an incredible 3 tired chocolate wedding cake, we paid for flowers, outfits, a face painter for the kids and a disco for later on. It all came to about a grand.

I know it's different to your planned wedding but I truly believe that doing it yourself can be just as good if not better!

Thank you.

As I've said above we're doing a lot ourselves and calling in favours from very talented people we know. We've already booked the venue and having the whole day there, they've given us the choice of 6 local caterers which in all fairness is a lot more than most venues, very little variance in the prices though.

you will stress and stress until the day has come.

set a budget and stick to it, ask yourself what do you want a marriage or a wedding.

if the answer is a marriage, then the party after the legal bit is just that a party

See what you mean. It must be the venue that is eating up most of your budget. Why do you think it wont be as lovely as you hope?

I think thats par for the course isn't it? Stress? I'm trying not to but the cost made me balk. Of course I want the marriage, to be honest i'd be happy to turn up in my scruffs say the vows and head to the pub. But DP and my traditionalist family have really put the pressure on.

Do you think the guests would mind a facebook invite so we can cut costs seriously tempted to go down that route but would mean reactivating my account!

so it is not the wedding you want.

stick to your guns on your original plan

In all honesty it is the venue and catering that is taking the budget and giving it a battering.

Its by calling in the favours we're compromising on what we want because of the limitations of what our friends and family can provide which I guess beggars can't be choosers but, for instance, the cake will be nothing like I want it to be and I won't be eating any because I don't like the type of cake that is being made so thats purely going to be for show. Pointless extra but family member insists on providing it for our wedding present so we've smiled nodded and ticked it off as one expense saved

I sound like a right bitch don't I

well change the venue and have the wedding you want.

and also remember no is a complete sentace

I totally agree with you. Weddings are a right rip off and IMHO much of what people are offering is not that fantastic at all. I was looking at a great site the other day, something like rocknroll weddings, they weren't all rocky but were just people who had been a bit more creative with their weddings than most.

totally agree with cherrie I did it almost exactly the same ,most definitely you can do it under 10K , thats a lot of money.

I know it depends on area you live etc , but we did the lot for £1000. Including my dress, bargain , was 400 reduced to 85, had a marquee (cost 300 off internet)in the garden and 2 friends did the catering, buffet for late afternoon which cost us approximately 200 quid for approx 60 guests.... and there was plenty ..and it was not cheese and sausages on sticks,

My dd made the cake . However we did not have bridesmaids. We did hire dh and best man suits. and we did all our own music and connected it to speakers outside , was lovely and the best bit was our guests(just family , our kids and grandkids) cleaned everything up after we left for the hotel.so when we returned the following day before going on honeymoon the house was spotless

I know you said family are paying for the dress but its still worth
looking about for bargains ...
My DD got a hollywood dreams dress for £350 reduced from ^1600 in a sale...

Make a list, 'musts', 'wants' and 'mesh'. Put all your items of expenditure in one of the columns. So for me nice food was a must, nice photos were a want and a car was a meh. Anything that's a meh, drop unless you can get it for free or seriously cheap. Sounds like you are already doing a good job of calling in favours which is great. People love to help and be involved! Re the cake, could you get a friend to bake another that's the kind you like and have two? Or a special cake for the two of you to share after the wedding in your room!

They're good ideas, thank you :)

With the dress I wouldn't be taking the mick with the price so fully intend to do some hardcore shopping around and wouldn't rule out a second hand one either.

flamegirl love those ideas especially the cake one! :o

When I married I called in favours - had 2 buffets rather than sit down food,

I made the bridesmaid bags.

The flowers/decorations were a wedding present as were both buffets.

Cake was Tesco fruit cake dressed with flowers (£20)

Photos were done by a friend, the album was a gift

Friend was toast master

Toast wine was bought by a friend as a gift

Car was parents friend's Merc, he even drove me and borrow a chauffeur hat lol

We were very lucky to receive money for out honeymoon too

check out Preloved/Ebay/dress sites for dresses at a fraction of the cost. Another tip is not to mention the word wedding when booking anything if you don't have to. I did this for my car, rang up a bloke who did airport/long distance runs in a mercedes. He quote me £60 for a drive to my venue an fit was a lovely card - saved me over £200 for one car.

Invites - the card shops usually have invite sections and some of their designs are pretty/different depending on your style.

If you are catering in the evening don't cater for 100% of guests. We catered for 70&=% (as per hotel guidance) and still had food left over as the day guests were not that hungry by evening after a large menu earlier.

Will see if I can remember any other money savers whilst not compromising.

The one thing we did not compromise on was our rings and the ceremony. As long as they were perfect everything else was just window dressing.

card=car

Right.

What exactly do you need? What are the biggest expenses and what is it you're feeling like you won't be able to have?

It's all right now, Cheerful's here. :o

Yes, you can. Will come back to this thread tomorrow as I need to sleep now.

You could try meeting with the caterers and seeing if they'll go 'off-menu', eg what is their minimum spend per person and how can they help? Serve wedding cake as a dessert? Sausage and mash? Popular but should be cheaper....canapés instead of a starter? Prosecco rather than champagne to toast?

Is food the main problem cost-wise, apart from venue fee which I'm guessing is fixed?

I have some table numbers you can have for nowt, if I can just find them!

Price up a meal for 50 and a buffet for 80, THEN price up a much more substantial buffet for 80.

Its what we did. We got married at 4pm and after photos etc we were ready for food about 7pm. We had a hot buffet for everyone and it saved us hundreds and it also meant that we didnt have 2 levels of invite, everyone came to whole thing.

Photos. Contact your local paper and your local college. Many photography students would jump at the chance to do a wedding and for much less than a package from a professional. We eventually booked a guy from our local paper who's portfolio we liked and again, was a hell of alot cheaper. We booked on the understanding that he would take lots of pictures, put them on a disc and we would print off what we wanted. Again, saved us hundreds.

Dont bother with........fresh flowers. Cost a fortune and last about 5 minutes. Our wedding was 50's/Rat Pack themed, so I wored a 50's style dress (bought in the sale) and made a wrist corsage with silk flowers for both me and my maid of honour. I bought posies of silk roses, ready made, from Dunhelm and added some ribbon. Flowers for me, MOH and 1 teenage BM and 3 flower girls came to just under £50. For table decorations I borrowed the hotels candelabras (sp?!), put in colour co-ordinating candles (Dunhelm again) and strung them with ropes of pearls. The tables looked stunning.

Dont bother with......favours. Yes they look nice but they are expensive and a total waste of time and money!

Dont bother with .....suit hire. H and his best men and ushers all wore black lounge suits, black straight ties (again, think Rat Pack) and square folded hankies. No button holes, you either wear a hankie OR a flower, not both They looked AMAZING!!

Do bother with.... chair covers. They can transform a "meh" room into something special and dont have to be expensive. Depending on where you are, I can recommend and very good and very cheap company

Do bother with.....getting your hair done. It will save you so much stress!

Oh, I could go on for hours! If you want any more ideas then give me a shout!

And there is a website...meandmywedding? that has a for sale forum and I picked up lots of bargains. My underskirt would have been £70 from the shop but I got it for £20 on there. My shoes were £120 from dress boutique but I got them for £25!

Do you really care about a car? Admittedly we had a short journey but I just booked a cab and asked to have a black cab as I've always liked them and they are roomy.

Handwrite invitations, or do part on the computer, part handwritten.

Aim for a second-hand dress if you can, there are amazing ones out there. Don't forget Oxfam Brides.

Aww bless ya I can see why your stressing. Is putting the wedding off for abit so you can save abit more out of the question?
Apart from that I am no help as I had no interest in my wedding, I hate being center of attention so left it all upto the hubby to sort and just had a small registry office do. Still too big for my liking lol. But my dress was a steal from ebay.

i bought my (traditional wedding) dress off ebay for £10 and loved it.

i bought paper flowers/custom bouquets from this shop on ebay
www.etsy.com/shop/desicra
and they turned out to be fabulous. I liked the idea that I would be able to keep them forever, too.

i will admit that our budget photographer was a disaster. we hired a former student of mine, who was starting up as a photographer; we liked his work and thought we'd be helping him as much as we were getting a good deal. it was all agreed - and then he just didn't show up on the day, and sent a lousy email after the fact. luckily, we have a freind who is a brilliant photographer and she got some lovely shots. but i still get angry and upset over that.

We got our rings in the jewellery quarter in Birmingham. Friends did the same and reckoned they spent less than half what they would have spent on the high street.

oh, and we ordered invites from vistaprint.

You can design your own, you don't have to choose from the pre-existing designs. You can pay a tiny bit more for nicer paper. I really would not go the route of facebook or emailed invites, personally, but you don't need to spend a fortune on them, either! If you are arty and have time, handmade ones are nice of course, but I just can't trust myself with something like that.

I made my own cake, which I am enormously proud of. I would have loved a really fancy (and also delicious) professional cake, actually, and The Cake would have been high on my list of Important Things. But we just could not afford one like I dreamed of, and a bad store-bought cake felt worse than nothing at all. I'm a decent baker, though, so in the end I did it myself. It tasted pretty good, it looked nice (fondant icing, fresh flowers on top, very simple), and I now can think of myself as the sort of woman who can make her own wedding cake, which is gratifying.