AIBU to ask how on Earth you plan a wedding?!

[Buggritbuggrit]

It’s clearly straightforward and everyone seems to have managed it brilliantly (I’ve been to so many lovely weddings)! But we have no idea where to start and the prospect of what appears to be akin to planning a military operation - it’s very daunting!

How did everyone do it?!

Are you having a honeymoon? Start there and pick a season - eg if a UK honeymoon you might not want a winter wedding, if skiing then you will.

Agreed that budget is a really good idea. The big money goes on food, drink and venue, plus lots and lots of fripperies that don't matter but are a lot of fun (hen weekends, favours, invitations....) So consider something like a bring and share wedding - allocate main dishes, salads/veg, puddings and provide the drinks yourself. That means there's tons of delicious food at minimal cost, you can be lavish with drinks. It also means you will have to choose a venue that will allow you to do this, so either a village hall or a marquee in a garden. Glass hire is usually free but crockery can cost, consider paper plates...

Second hand or hire outfits are available and save a lot

We had a big country house affair which looked quite daunting to start but was actually surprisingly easy to plan. We did a ‘2 things at a time’ approach to avoid getting overwhelmed as both also had full time jobs I would highly recommend as we stayed pretty chilled throughout.

We did:

• Venue & registrar
• Caterer & photographer
• Entertainment & Rings
• Cake & Outfits
• Favours & Decoration
• Honeymoon!!!

I organised ours in 10wks over the Internet as we wanted to get married in my home country rather than where we were living.

#1 check when essential people are available
#2 list out who you want to invite so you have an idea of numbers
#3 find a venue you like that is available that day for that size of group
#4 check registrar is available and book
#5 send invitations
#6 do the announcement thingy (I can't remember what it's called but I think you need to make sure you've done that at least 3 weeks in advance (just Google, the gov website tells you what you need to do)

Then everything else is easy. We didn't budget in advance as I had no idea what anything costed! So had to pick what we wanted to get a quote first, and then see if we could afford it/wanted to pay that much.

After that everything's quite simple.

I booked the registry office. Went in normal clothes with two witnesses and then went to the pub.

I’m with you OP, I found it really hard to know where to start! People say ‘budget’ but it’s hard to know what a sensible budget is without knowing roughly how much things cost to begin with. I hated calling caterers to ask for quotes because they always started with ‘what’s your budget’ and I just had NO idea what a reasonable answer would be. I always wanted to reply ‘I don’t know, tell me how much stuff costs and then I’ll figure out if I can afford it’ but I guess that’s not the done thing

We started out saying we would aim for £12k and it very rapidly became closer to £30k (for what didn’t even feel like a particularly extravagant wedding!) but then Covid put paid to all of that anyway. I think budget is always tricky to quantify too because I counted absolutely every little expenditure for ours, but I know people who say they had a wedding for £10k or whatever, but then it turns out they didn’t count their rings, or their dress was bought by a parent, or they forgot about a bunch of smaller expenses (favours etc) which all add up.

I also recommend Bridebook. It’s not perfect but it does walk you through the important milestones which is really helpful when you’re trying to get started. Also, if you’re anything like me, you think you don’t have strong feelings on anything right now but once you start looking you’ll start to realise you actually do prefer some things over others. Maybe have a look at some wedding blogs or Pinterest boards and you’ll probably start noticing that you quite like the look of certain weddings and can’t stand the idea of others. That really helped me to focus in the beginning!

We knew we wanted to do it the following year, worked out how much we could comfortably afford to save each month on top of what we could afford from existing savings which gave us a budget of about £9k - seems insane now looking back but I wouldn’t change it.

Wrote a guest list of who we definitely wanted there to get an initial idea of numbers. Knew we wanted a civil ceremony and reception in one place ideally to keep things simple and not have to budget for transporting guests from one place to another.

Googled ‘wedding venues near me’ or something and picked the ones we liked the look of to visit. I think we booked about 12 to see but in the end only saw 4 and cancelled the rest as it became fairly obvious what we did and didn’t like as we started looking and then we saw the one we chose and it was perfect - so much so that we shifted from planning the wedding in October to having it nearer Christmas as the venue didn’t have any other availability (after checking that the key guests could make it then).

I just made a list then of the key things we’d need (which obviously varies depending on what you consider important) - worked through the list and googled or asked for recommendations for each thing, again once you start contacting and talking to suppliers it does become more obvious what you want to go for - and having the budget helps as you can just discount stuff that doesn’t fit.

Everyone always tells you ‘don’t bother with x y z nobody cares’ which is to some extent true but also if you enjoy the planning and details then don’t feel like you can’t indulge in them a bit. We did favours (edible) that I made and I did spend a bit of time thinking about little decor details etc, because I really enjoyed it and it made me happy - it looked so beautiful on the day and seeing it all come together was completely worth it even if other people can’t remember them! (For what it’s worth I do remember that stuff about other peoples weddings, maybe I’m weird) I do care more about food, drink, and not being left for hours with nothing to do whilst the wedding party have a million photos though so we made sure that was covered for ours too.

Work out your budget first and also draw up a draft guest list (plus check potential dates especially if you have overseas guests or teachers in the family) Does your budget fit the guest list? Then draw up a list of important things to you e.g. food, music etc and again go back to the budget and see if you need to save more or adjust your expectations. You see many couples with grand expectations and very limited budgets which often results in cut corners and asking bridesmaids to foot the bill for dresses etc - or worse asking guests to pay for their own food (I have been to one such wedding). Good luck.

Regarding your budget, it's easy to get carried away with the bells and whistles. Or extra guests, such as cousin Agatha who you have not seen for 20 years. The trick is to remember it's a legal ceremony with a party and go in with that mindset. You don't need to spend 000's on flowers or a fancy dress if you don't want to. The same applies to guests.

After you have your budget (and no one here can help you with what that should be - some people spend £500, some £50,000) then for hire out how many people you want to invite and find a venue. The venue you choose will largely dictate how the rest of the planning will go. A dedicated wedding venue will be easier to plan. They will have in house caterers, recommendations for or an in house DJ, will provide you with a coordinator, will set up for you and box up everything for you to collect the next morning. The trade off is that you will have fewer choices. Most require you use their catering. Few permit you to bring your own alcohol.

A marquee or similar will allow you far more choice and personalisation in every aspect, but will require more planning and coordination of vendors.

My daughter married in church in April. It was fairly easy. Booked church and had the compulsory marriage preparation classes which were on line due to covid. Ordered dress on line. Booked a photographer, organist and singer. Did invitations via Moonpig cards. She picked up her own flowers that morning from a florist on her way back from having her hair done.
Picked a sibling of each of bride and groom to do a reading.

We didn't have a meal after but had lovely photos, a speech and champagne in the park at he back of the church in Mayfair. 13 guests and a few other hangers on. One of the nicest weddings ever in my view.

[Covid limited the number of guests to 13 and banned a meal which obviously helped a huge deal!! every cloud..

I don't mean to sound sarcastic, but have you googled it? There is a whole industry devoted to weddings, I'm pretty sure you can download a template telling you when decisions need to be made and what to do when

Thanks, everyone. This has been a spectacularly helpful thread. We've done more in the past 12 hours than the last three months!

Downloaded Bridebook and it is really very helpful. Arbitrarily decided on a £10K budget and it was fascinating to see how the BB budgeting tool just makes it vanish!

Have written guestlist and now I'm thinking I'd like a smallish (40 odd) destination wedding. I want everything in the same place, ideally a big pretty house with pretty grounds. The South of France looks promising. Going to sort venue first and then look at everything else.

Thank you, Mumsnet. Even the people who think this is a silly post have been pretty helpful.

and it was fascinating to see how the BB budgeting tool just makes it vanish!

It really is! It’s terrifying. It does force you to think of every little thing you might need to spend money on, which is both a good and a bad thing. I think some people only really factor in the big things like venue and catering into their main ‘budget’ and then just pay the extra bits in dribs and drabs as they go along, which probably makes the overall cost feel cheaper than it actually ends up being.

My friend had a destination wedding in the South of France and it was gorgeous, and she said it ended up so much cheaper than much less nicer options over here. But then all her guests had to travel so it worked out a bit more expensive for us. Not much more expensive than travelling elsewhere in the UK though, to be honest, so nobody really minded. Beware of mentioning the words ‘destination wedding’ on Mumsnet though…

@FirewomanSam It was like sorcery! I think we might be in the ‘pay for big things and pretend the small things don’t count’ camp. It’ll probably make us feel better.

We have people coming from all over. If they’re going to be travelling anyway, I figured it might as well be somewhere fun. And it does seem to work out as much cheaper, which I’m a bit confused by but happy to go with.

Oooh, are destination weddings verboten on MN? I’ve definitely missed that. Going to do a search now and see what’s been said!

@Buggritbuggrit to be honest, round here if you say you want to do anything other than nip to the register office on a Thursday lunchtime in your pyjamas and then go for a kebab afterwards, you’ll be derided as spoilt, materialistic and ‘only doing it for Instagram’ But those who opt for destination weddings definitely get the worst of it. Enjoy your planning and have a wonderful wedding and a blissful marriage!

Paid other people and trusted them to do a good job. Eg the florist I told her the venue, date and a rough idea (spring/pastel feel) and then she had free reign to do the flowers. Same with the venue, chose somewhere that looked nice in the pictures and just asked them to make it look pretty. We provided some sweets and a few personal decorations but ultimately it was up to them and they did great!

I think destination weddings are fine but it does kill me a little bit when my friend who is having her wedding abroad (followed by a holiday which guests are asked to join) tells me how they’ve got such a bargain compared to what they would have paid in the U.K. Not for all your guests though!

You've had some brilliant advice here - I'd just add, beware of discussing your plans with too many people in real life (especially family members) until things are booked. I've known quite a few people (including myself) who have done this and it's been taken as an invitation to impose their priorities on the plans. Eg. parents who expect you to change the venue when they 'helpfully' point our there won't be space for every living relative.

@DentalWorries About half of our guests are coming from other continents and the majority of the rest are scattered around Europe. Having the wedding in France as opposed to the U.K. is unlikely to affect them very much, either way!

@FirewomanSam Thank you!

@number87inthequeue “parents who expect you to change the venue when they 'helpfully' point our there won't be space for every living relative” made me snort my tea. You have very clearly met our families - this is almost definitely going to happen.

@Pikamoo That sounds delightful and stress free. I’ve only properly been looking at things for a couple of days, but it’s already becoming clear that I have a rather specific aesthetic in my head. I honestly didn’t think I was that bothered, one way or another, but it’s rapidly taking form.

I just got married after a 10 year engagement and it went on that long because of numerous reasons (moving, having DD) but also because I was so overwhelmed. In the end I made a booking with the registry office then we started looking at where to have the party. Then we dealt with catering, dresses, suits etc. My sil was incredible and sorted the finer details, decorations etc but I found once we made a list and started crossing it off it was not that difficult. We did it in a year but some of that was in lockdown so couldn't do much at first.