I need HELP.......where do I start?

[sammysam]

I'm starting to worry now....we really want to get married next may/june. We have done nothing yet.......and dc2 is due in 7wks So i'm thinking if we don't make some plans now it won't be til after Chrsitmas before we do!

We had wanted to get married abroad but not sure if this will work now. We pictured being on a beach with friends/family coming for a week, somewhere in Europe. I just don't know where/what etc and i'm worried about people coming/not being able to.

So do we just do it here? We wanted something a bit different as we have both never really wanted a 'traditional wedding' as we aren't good in formal situations but i'm lacking in ideas and am worried that we will just end up following the normal pattern of things. We also want to keep the budget as low as we can as the money we have saved we really need to use to move to a bigger house.

I don't know where to start! And the lack of energy I have at the moment isn't helping

Please can I have any ideas/thoughts/suggestions etc before my head explodes!

Hi Sammy,
Dh and I had a fantastic wedding. We got married in a register office with a ceremony and vows we wrote ourselves and just v close family (16 in total) and then had a really lovely meal out. For our honeymoon we stayed in a chalet in Scotland for 2 weeks (£250).

Dress (£100) from Monsoon (DH wore a suit he already had). Bridesmaid (DNeice)'s outfit £17 from Next. I made the 'wedding favours (we had cake boxes with a glass heart pebble - £2 for 10 and a poem DH and I had chosen). People read the poems out at at the meal and most people cried! Made our own cake (on hen night - night before with 4 generations of girls) from victoria sponge, swiss roll and icing and various 'props (it was a lighthouse as that is where Dh proposed.

Whole thing (including honeymoon) came in at less than £1000 and was just exactly what we wanted. Wonderful, wonderful day with so many happy memories.

If you wanted more people, instead of restaurant, you could have a big BBQ...

The day is about you and DP - make sure you do what you want!

Wow-£1000! That is amazing!

Trouble is we are really not sure what we want and really I think what we want can't happen within our and everyone elses budget.We would love to get married on a lovely warm beach. But we do really want everyone there. So not really do-able

Other than that we open to any suggestions. If money wasn't a problem we'd prob go all out (my sis is with her wedding in december) but we can't justify the crazy costs, when our house is too small for all of us!

I'm happy to make/do alot myself although must be sure to remember that I will have a young baby with me whilst i'm trying to do all of that so that may restrict me a bit!!!

I don't even really know what to do re the actual place we get married-i'd like a chuch-but only because I love the buildings-we are not religious and wouldn't want a religious ceremony so that rules that one out and dp refuses a registry office-i'm not too keen either as the local one isn't very nice. So where else is there?

I'm so lost! Once we get some stuff sorted i'll be fine.......I hope

Where do you live? How many people is 'everybody'? Remember, you don't want to make it a real drag/expense for everyone else to get to! DH and I ended up paying more for one couples stag / hen do's (each only a weekend) than we paid for our own honeymoon!

We live in Cornwall, so warm beach isn't sooo tricky - you can have a v short ceremony (just the legal bits) in a reg office, and then your own ceremony wherever you want (there are people who will come and do a secular ceremony - our friends had a FAB wedding in the penguin enclosure at Bristol Zoo!).

So if you're anywhere near the SW, you could have the ceremony on a beach and then a big beach barbie, or hire a youth hostel for the night and have everyone stay over for buttons...

(This is fun.... sorry I am getting carried away but it's six years since ours so seems a long time ago now!)

We're in Dorset so not to far away at all! The trouble is the weather in this country....

I'm not sure how many everyone is but there are friends I know wouldn't be able to go anywhere abroard who we'd want plus other people eg my sister who would pay but after her wedding in december where they have gone crazy and spent far too much money i'd feel bad asking them to. We both have small families-which is a good thing! I don't think we'd be talking a crazy amount of people at all as we both don't want to invite 'random' rellies etc (prob won't go down well with my granny but heh ho!!!!)

I'd LOVE to do a ceremony on the beach in this country and a beach bbq but if it rained.......

Get as carried away as you like-I need the help

Oooooh. Ohhhhh. What about something like this

Depending on budget, you'd be amazed what you can do with a Marquee these days! So if you pick a venue on/near the beach - worst case scenario it isn't that idealic in that you can't wander down the beach, but you'll still be close and can decorate to make it feel beachy. We went to a wedding in a field a few months ago which was lovely and although it rained, it still had that lovely English countryside feeling, even though we were all in the marquee the whole time. It was lovely lovely.

And you can do a lot to bring the beach "theme" into the venue so that even if people can't walk out onto the sand, the sand is there - eg lots of blues for the colours/ driftwood and shells as centrepieces/ "sea" candles (I don't know where you buy them but DP bought me a little candle with shells inside it for £1.50 and I love it)/ sand pit for any kids etc etc.

WOW! That looks amazing-totally something we'd love to do! It is just back to the weather thing again........I suppose we need to just expect rain....

OhBling-how much are we talking for a marquee?
I'm liking this idea a lot!!!

hi Sammysam

Some really close friends of ours got married here www.clovelly.co.uk/red_lion_intro.php. The wedding and meal wee all in the hotel. The location is about as fantastic as you can get in the UK - we all stayed in the hotel (there were about 40 of us including children). We all paid for our own room 7 B&B which cut down the cost.

Ooooh-that looks lovely! Will have to have a propper look once dd is in bed!

Thank you so much for all the ideas-keep thm coming!!!

It depends completely on how big the marquee is, but I was quite surprised at how reasonable it can be, relatively speaking. The challenge of course is that a Marquee involves hiring everything else - tables, chairs, glasses, cutlery etc etc so the Marquee itself isn't the main cost, it's everything else.

If you can attach a marquee to a venue of some sort perhaps that could work well.

Do a quick google search for marquee hire and your area and you'll be amazed what will come up.

Feeling bit down-just had email back from woman who had the diy cliff top wedding-adding it all up it came to about £12000.
I know that that is quite cheap in the scheme of things (and actually we have the money to just about do that) but that is way more than I was expecting and way more than we'd like to pay. Also had some brochures through and they are ££££££

I just wish I had the energy at the moment to look into other ideas!

And I wish we didn't need that money to move! It is so hard to see these lovely places/ideas and to think how could we make it cheaper?!

Sorry for the moan I'll snap out of it now!

Hi
a few thoughts...

IME the key to having a fab but not too pricey wedding is to avoid buying anything that is specific to weddings.

Our wedding was fairly big (90 people) but was really not too expensive because after the registry office bit we had a party etc at a place that didn't usually do weddings. The only pricey bit of the whole do was my dress because I wanted a "proper" wedding dress.

Is there anywhere local that you've had a fab meal or a party? Or do you know anyone who works in catering? Do you have a favourite UK place that you've been on holiday?

Don't be put off by the prepackaged brochure nonsense. They are for people with no imagination who want to show off

Thanks muddleduck!

The only places locally I've had really nice meals are tiny little places so aren't an option
Great idea though-if we hired out a whole restaurant or somewhere surely that would be cheaper? Just need to find one!

The brochures are just there is one (really nice) place that charges almost £6k just for the venue-not including food, tables etc

If you want to email me I'm louisa _ read @ hotmail dot com . I got married in Cyprus and would be glad to show you my pics, plus tell you how cheap it is! With the advent of low cost airlines flying to Cyprus your friends and family can come just for 2 days or 2 weeks... btw we had a party for those who couldn't make it when we got back which was such fun, we banned the dj from dance music and said cheese all the way!!

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eloise did you see that this was from last september??