Advise on wedding planning - what do I actually need

[CraftyGirly90]

My fiance and I are currently planning our wedding and I don't want us to get bogged down with any unnecessary things.

I'm just looking for advice from others out there about the things we actually need to book/buy/ focus on and the things we could do without if we wanted/needed to. Any advice is welcome, TIA xx

Venue
Licence
Witnesses

Anything else is jam.

Don’t bother with wedding favours. What a waste of time, energy and money they are. Guest books, they’re all bollox too - just more crap to store. You will not look at keepsakes nearly as often as you think. Think about a cake and get one you actually like - if you even want a cake. You don’t need to spend a fortune - once you’ve stuck some flowers on it nobody knows the difference between a £50 cake and a £500 cake. I have made all these mistakes and more - castles, vintage cars, cathedral veil, the list is endless. If I was doing it again I’d pick a pretty village hall, have no more than 50 people, get in a great Italian caterer, put plenty of wine on the table, have a decent band, and everyone home /off to the pub by about 10pm.

We had the registrar, us, and two witnesses and half a year later the priest, us, and two witnesses.

Is it a wedding you're wanting, or a marriage?

Marriages are cheap. You just need to make arrangements, turn up at the register office with the correct paperwork and 2 witnesses, say the vows and you're done.

Weddings appear to be a fuck sight more "aspirational" these days and involve all sort of shit like party favours, cringeworthy dance routines, some insanity that is putting all the chairs in a dress, "first dance" (kill me now) and an inedible cake that is somehow more important to be Instagrammed than eaten.

It's a symptom of our increasingly competitive society, fueled by social media. See also: Proms. When did this become a UK thing and why? End of term disco was a thing. How did "Getting your dad's mate to hire a limo to take you all back to school in your expensive frocks" get into it?

Oh god, I'm ranting like an old gimmer, aren't it. I'm going to come out with "you young whippersnappers" next.