To not get how when you buy a wedding package from somewhere it's a years worth of work?

[feellikeahugefailure]

I'm probably being U, but i just dont see how a wedding is so much work.

You choose a package from a venue that does them every weekend. Pick who's coming and sitting where, the entertainment, photographer, go tasting to decide what to eat, flowers, dress. Sure its a few weekends of sorting stuff, but I don't see how people claim to have spent a year organising their wedding?

[budgiegirl]

Sure its a few weekends of sorting stuff, but I don't see how people claim to have spent a year organising their wedding?

I got married 18 months after getting engaged. So it's fair to say I took 18 months planning it.. It doesn't mean I spent every waking minute planning and organising though. Sorting the venue took a weekend, but after that it took a few hours for each thing .

If you want a 'big' wedding, then that takes quite a lot of work. If you want a quick, simple registry office with a pub meal, then that takes less work. Horses for courses.

[budgiegirl]

If you want to throw a huge party, fine. But don't pretend it's a compulsory huge party without which no wedding is complete

No one said it's compulsory. But some people want a wedding like that, and that takes time to organise. What's wrong with that?

[hazeimcgee]

gruffalocrumble i think that's the point when people say it takes a year - its fits and starts. You do a load, you do nothing, you do a bit more, you do nothing, you suddenly realise your bloody cake shop doesn't deliver and soend the day befpre running back and forth with cake and decs!!

I think in a way the tighter your budget the longer it takes. I'd have been done in shop 2 if i had £1500 for a dress and £200 for each bridesmaid dress or unlimoted budget for table decs etc. As it was we watched every penny and i knew where every one went

[AGruffaloCrumble]

I agree with everything you've said haze and I think people underestimate how long crafty and creative parts of weddings take to actually make. I am doing a lot of diy bits and expect to be making right up until we leave for the church.

[HopeClearwater]

considering civil partnerships aren't available to everyone, marriage is the only option some people have to get some security for their affairs and assets

Eh? What does this mean?

[blitheringbuzzards1234]

Well, at the end of the day you end up the same - married. Doesn't matter if you spend £100 or £10,000 and I think I recall reading that the more elaborate/expensive the wedding the shorter the marriage. I think many people get carried away. I blame the Beckhams.

[ProcrastinatorGeneral]

I didn't call anyone a princess hazei? Just very bemused by the wedding process in fairness. I dislike the way that the whole industry is geared toward making people feel inadequate.

[StatisticallyChallenged]

Ah another mumsnet "my wedding was the smallest in the world and costs 43p" competitive thread

We got married 10 years ago. Decent venues book up pretty early so the venue itself was booked about 15 or so months before the wedding. We didn't look at hundreds but I think we visited maybe 4 venues in person, which inevitably couldn't be viewed easily at weekends so all ended up in single evening visits. Photographers again are often booked ages in advance. Think we met two of them. Dress shopping, think I visited maybe 4 or 5 shops - I'm not a slim person and it's not very easy when none of the dresses fit. Then alterations. Bridesmaids...they took more work than I did. Grooms outfits, minister wanting to meet up, cars, music, cake, food, invitations, bla bla bla. No it doesn't take a year solid but if you want a summer weekend wedding then you often have to start early to book things. If you're both working full time, maybe with conflicting days off then it can easily take a decent amount of time without getting in to anything resembling bridezilla territory.

[RestlessTraveller]

I got engaged 3 weeks ago and set a date for a years time. Since then I've booked the venue, registrar, cale maker, florist, photographer, DJ and chosen a dress. I'm now wondering what I'm going to do for the next 12 months!

[AGruffaloCrumble]

Procrastinator upthread is this bile Mind you, I always imagine that the people who are most susceptible to the kind of nonsense peddled at 'Wedding Fayres' are the kind of ickle pwincesses who've been planning their Big Day since they were seven. which is what haze is referring to I believe.

[ProcrastinatorGeneral]

Hope in other European countries it's possible to enter into a civil partnership regardless of sexual orientation. It's a way of sorting out the whole next of kin/rights of inheritance stuff without tagging the 'wedding' thing onto it. The U.K. Doesn't allow it, so you have to get married, which is something that causes a huge number of people to start saying they need certain expectations met (my mother refuses to let me have my own choice of wedding dress/MIL hates our venue/dad is insisting on inviting the universe type threads abounding!).

I guess I have a more pragmatic view to marriage than most.

[MrsKoala]

As an ex events organiser I just don't get this. I used to organise huge events which took a lot less time. It's only that people allow the task to expand to fill up weeks which could be done in an afternoon.

I had a big-ish first wedding but I chose my dress in one day in one shop. I chose my flowers in an hour in one shop. I chose my bridesmaid dresses in one hour in one shop etc. Because I didn't want to allow more time than that for each task.

Perhaps it's because I was an events organiser that it was a bit of s bus driver holiday and I just didn't get the buzz from spending hours doing something which could take much less. I am also very decisive and clear on what I want.

If you don't know what you want you could easily spend every weekend browsing and trying things.

[hazeimcgee]

restless avoiding looking at dresses in case you see one you like more!

[hazeimcgee]

Thanks gruffalo yes that.

[JudyCoolibar]

YANBU.

I remember being told off because I hadn't started looking at wedding dresses till about 5 months beforehand. I only wanted a fairly simple off the shelf one, so I really couldn't see the problem. I caused great offence by asking disingenously "Why, is there a shortage?"

[neonrainbow]

Mrskoala if your job was organising large events then it's no wonder that first of all you had plenty of time to organise events and didn't have to do it in evenings and weekends but also that you have experience of organising a large event. I had never organised so much as a birthday party so organising a wedding was very stressful and time consuming and it wasn't even that big or elaborate a wedding.

[RestlessTraveller]

Haze I'm a very decisive woman. Once I saw it, I knew!

Everyone around me is going wedding batshit, I've said more than once "it's just a bloody party with a nice frock not the a fucking European Union Convention."

[hazeimcgee]

koala your bridesmaids were obviously much easier to please than mine! Re dress i'm curious (bit not expecting an actual answer) as to whether you're slimmer, have a larger budget or generally not fussed what you wear. It isn't about not knowing what you want, its about not everythimg you want not being in the first place you walk, as is life generally

[zen1]

I dunno. I guess some people like to plan ahead if they have lots of specific requirements that they want to be 'just so'. From engagement to marriage, it took me and DH 3 months and that was for a church wedding, organising our families and friends who all lived in different parts of the country, having bridesmaid dresses made etc etc.

[RestlessTraveller]

I made life easier for the bridesmaids by telling them I wanted a certain colour but they could chose a dress they wanted, they didn't have to match. I told the blokes they could wear whatever suit they wanted and didn't have to match. I did 4 bridal shops in a weekend. The first two had nothing in my size so that made life a little more difficult.

[treaclesoda]

I had quite a traditional wedding, church and reception at a hotel. I met with the hotel twice - once to book it, once to finalise the menu. I met with a florist once to organise flowers. We met with the minister once to ask if he would marry us, which he was reluctant to do. So we chatted for an hour and he agreed to it. We had a half hour rehearsal a couple of days before the event. I chose the music, which admittedly involved me asking the organist 'what's your favourite thing to play? OK, play that then, I like it too'. I took two Saturday afternoons to go dress shopping. I told dh and his friend to go and hire suits in my chosen colour, and I bought them a tie each. I chose the matron of honour dress, with input from her. (She had a strop 24 hours before the wedding saying she looked too fat and couldn't wear it.) DH booked the cars. I chose the cake design. So I reckon the whole thing took less than 30 hours of actual input.

I'm not snotty about people wanting things to be just the way they want them, but at the same time I can't actually get my head round what they're actually doing when they say that they are busy planning their wedding. I quite enjoyed the planning of it all, I love organising things, but I couldn't stretch it out any more than I did as I ran out of stuff to do.

[MrsKoala]

I didn't have plenty of time. That's my point I had various/many events to organise per week, so I didn't have endless weekends for an event to become a hobby or expand. I had a set amount of hours per event and that was it. So I suppose I saw the wedding in s bit of a professional way and allocated x hours for a dress, x hours for flowers, just like I would do at work.

I have no problem with it at all pearl man that was my point really, that if you don't have set ideas or you just want to, it's easy to see how organising your wedding can expand to however much time available.

The only thing is I have seen people let it stress them out far too much, and they aren't really enjoying it anymore. I also have seen people enjoy it so much they want to become a wedding planner - but again just want to spend endless time browsing table favours. It's very different if it's your job and you have to organise many things at once. It doesn't seem so fun then!

Also events people are there to guide and keep you on track. Not get carried away with a pretend wedding for themselves.

[bombayflambe]

But it can take a year: some of the venues get booked up years in advance and once you have spent that money/made that commitment it's natural to start thinking about it. Whether or not it's necessary to spend every waking moment on it for 18 months is debatable, but for someone who isn't an event planner, being asked all kinds of questions and not knowing where to look for answers, I can understand how it could expand to take up the time available if you had time available. . Certainly there were elements to mine which I wouldn't have contemplated if I hadn't got drawn in to a wedding forum. (1000 paper cranes for example). But even then, without a package, it didn't take every moment of a year to sort out, and we definitely did not have a £200 register office Tuesday morning in jeans type do.

[Gazelda]

I believe that every couple should feel they have the type of wedding they want, and not feel as though others are looking down their noses because it wasn't as fancy/fuss-free as their own.

But I walked past our local church the other day and noticed personalised confetti on the ground. And I confess that judged that bride & groom (even though I haven't a clue who they were).