wedding on a shoestring

[FaithLoveandGrace]

Hi all,

DP and I are getting married this year and trying to keep things super cheap and simple. We're getting married at our local church so it's cheaper than normal as the vicar isn't charging us his fee plus we get the church hall free. We're then going to the local sports and social club for the evening do with a cold buffet that we / our family are doing. My dress was from eBay for about £70 including delivery and is lovely. Bridesmaids dresses are also off eBay - costing £90 for the two. We're not staying in a hotel as tbh we'd rather just go home and we're not having expensive transport - Dad will be driving me to the ceremony, we still need to sort out a lift to the reception but we'll be getting a taxi home in the evening.

One thing I do need help with doing cheap is the wedding cake. I'm no good at baking so can't do it myself but we don't want to spend hundreds on a cake. Has anyone got any ideas how we can do that cheaply?

Any other tips for a wedding on a shoestring is much appreciated :)

We checked M&S and in the end, our inexpensive cake came from a baker on Facebook. She was also a tutor at a college, and taught food hospitality and cake decorating.

I honestly recommend investing in your photos if you can. We had two different photographers on the day, and you can tell the difference where our money was invested.

Has your DH got a favourite sports team you could write too as a surprise? I wrote to Arsenal, and we received a signed letter from Arsène Wenger congratulating DH on his 'perfect match'.

We made a lot of decorations ourselves and we are soon to sell them. We bought inexpensive LED tea lights in votives from ebay, and then stuck stencilled birdcages on the inside of them.

We made wedding mad-libs and a wedding timeline on excel to display too. We made a photo scavenger hunt for children and a 'draw the bride and groom' activity too. All of these things are now stored lovingly in our wedding momento box.

You don't need a 'wedding cake'. How about a great big stack of sugary doughnuts or fondant fancies on a borrowed stand with a big one on the top. Or a giant pyramid of strawberries with a jug of cream to pour over instead of cutting?
Or go for a savoury cake and use it as part of your buffet (pies, pizzas or cheese)
chicvintagebrides.com/index.php/wedding-cake/wow-alternative-wedding-cakes/
Congratulations!

I went to one wedding with a cheese 'cake' which was a major part of the evening buffet.

Ours is coming from m&s. 3 tiers is £55 and I am going to put a little
More decoration on myself although I want it quite plain and simple. You can have fruit or sponge you choose for each tier and it comes in white or Ivory. My cousin had one and it was fab. Looked and tasted gorgeous.

At a friend's wedding they asked everyone to bring some cupcakes which worked well and it was fun to look at all the different kinds. I've also heard of weddings with a cake bake-off so everyone who feels like it brings a cake and you can award prizes which could be fun too if all done in the right spirit.

We had an m&s cake - one of the wedding ones so prob bigger and more expensive than you're after - but it was bloody gorgeous!

Hello again. I'm buying supermarket flowers the day before too. I've bought some bouquet holders on eBay (1.99) which are like a ball of oasis on a stick so should be easy enough. I'll take a picture when I do them this Friday. Can highly recommend next clearance for clothing. I've just got 3 bridesmaid dresses for £9 each and they're gorgeous x

Can I recommend glueing the flowers in if you can? You can get a hot glue gun from hobbycraft for a fiver. You may find your bouquet disintegrating quite quickly if you just stick them in. The oasis doesn't always hold them that well.

You make my dreams. Thanks that's good to know because I'll only have one chance. I'm using fresh flowers, would I just stick a blob on each stem?

Yes it would just need a tiny blob it stick quite hard. I would put the stem in then just before pushing the head into the oasis put a blob on and push it all he way in.

Wow £9 is amazing!! I'll definitely have to take a look, hadn't thought of there! Sofa when is your wedding? Apologies if you've already said.

Don't hot glue flowers! If you must glue use florists glue but don't use a hot gun on soft stems or your flowers will wilt before you've left the house let alone made it down the aisle!

Can I just say OP, that your wedding sounds absolutely lovely and non-precious. Congratulations and have a lovely day!

PS My favourite idea from the thread is either a big stand filled with cupcakes/iced doughnuts, or asking guests to bring cupcakes. It all sounds lovely and I wish you every happiness.

Are any older teenagers attending? We roped the 16 year old son of one of our guests into being the DJ. We supplied him with music (2 CDs, shows how long ago it was) and he had some of his own. It fairly quickly became clear that our music was more likely to fill the dance floor than his

You can buy florist tape from garden centres and florists. We bought two bunches of carnations from the garage, made some into buttonholes using the wrap and cut the stems off the rest and scattered them round and on our (M&S) cake.

A former boyfriend of mine, actually the one I was still going out with when I met DH, took the photos for us. My flowers were a last minute gift from the best man's wife. I wasn't going to bother with flowers, but what can you say when someone presents you with a goth bouquet of feathers and dried flowers. Given my wedding dress was black it was perfect and I still have it 13 years later.

My dd1 got married last summer & made her wedding cake the night before! But it was a three tier (well 2 cakes actually which were) rice/coco pop cake. They were decorated with melted chocolate & fresh strawberries on one cake & smarties on the other. One cake was just rice krispies (smarties) & the other one was a coco pop layer, rice krispie layer & a mixture layer. They went down very well with the guests & were very cheap to make.This what they looked like.