Congratulations QV!!
We got married last year when DD was 10 weeks old. We did it on a budget because we had little baby and couldn?t justify spending a ton of cash!
Our saving tips were:
I got my Dress from Monsoon on Boxing Day I the sales ? it was 70% off. I got the dress and a matching stole for £50.00. So look out in the sales and also on ebay or in charity shops ? A wedding dress company near us closed up shop just before my wedding and they donated all their stock to our local charity shop ? gorgeous dresses worth 100?s for £50.00 a piece.
We did our own wedding favours. Netting with sugared almonds wrapped up in ribbon. Cost a fraction.
We had our reception in our local village hall. Cost us £32 to hire. Which also gave us chair, tables and the like. Ours was in the summer so we got to use the outdoors too as it has a playground and playing field attached which meant we didn?t have to worry about entertainment for the kids, or smokers.
My brother in law is in a band ? just for a laugh really ? and their first gig was our wedding reception we paid them £60 (they wouldn?t accept more) and they bought themselves a new amp with the proceeds. We made ourselves CD?s of the music we wanted to play for the rest of the meal and the band?s breaks which we played over their sound system ? so we didn?t need to hire anything.
I made my bouquet. And we made our table settings out of pillar candles stuck into terracotts plant pots with flowers around them. They looked lovely. We did get the ladies from the WI to do our flowers for the church but they gave us the flowers as a gift ? bless them. We used some to decorate the village hall after the ceremony. We bought the candles and stuff form a £1.00 shop. I also made all the button holes.
We invited the local pub to provide a bar for the reception. All it cost us was the price of thie licence which was £25.00.
We bought our toasting wine and wine for the meal from Majestic wine warehouse and got it for next to nothing.
My mum bought the bridesmaids dresses, but she got them in the sales and paid about £40 total.
We borrowed a car from a friends to drive to the church. It was an old Morris Minor ? very cool.
We got a local lady to do our catering and got her to do us a buffet. It was lovely. Some friends of ours got married and made some buffet food themselves and then asked all the guests to bring their favourite dish. We did that for our reception party in the USA (my DH is American so we had one there too) It worked really well and people thought it was cool.
Our familes pitched in and helped with cleaning up and preparing the reception venue.
Our honeymoon was in a goreous holiday cottage in The Forsest of Dean. It was next to my favourite castle and had a spiral staircase. Its call Y Crwys in Goodrich if your interested.
Verr very best of luck with it. You don?t have to spend a fortune to have a wonderful day. Remember to stop and look around and enjoy it all as well.
Good luck.
Emma xxxxxxxx