Girlfriend wants us to get married. I can see us going back to square one

ninky_2

fairydiamond wrote: »

My dress alone was £650...but with tiara, veil, dress alterations, it has shot up to above £800.

wedding dress hire is a good alternative to buying. it's environmentally friendlier too. you can still get alterations done i believe. plus you can often get a better quality dress if you hire than what you could afford to buy.

http://www.bridalgownhire.co.uk/

fairydiamond

That would be good for some people, but not for me. Its a good idea though. I'm putting £400 towards my dress so my mum doesn't have to pay for all of it. I felt a bit guilty.

Elsas_mamma

Hi, congrats on dealing with your debt.
The hard bit is convincing your girlfriend she can have a wonderful wedding without breaking the bank!
I got married 20 years ago this year:eek:. We paid for it ourselves and the whole thing cost just under £3000(including a honeymoon). Someone suggested earlier that you have the wedding later in the day, that is what we did. Wedding at 4pm, straight onto the evening reception. My family worked together on the buffet and we had so much we were giving it to people to take home!! We had 80 people at the church and 160 for the reception. My wedding dress was brought in the sales, the bridesmaid dresses(6 of them) were from BHS wedding range. They were actually nicer than some in the wedding shop. The 4 pageboys had trousers and shirts from there too and I made cumberbands and bow ties in colours to match the bridemaid dresses. My cousin did the flowers for us. We hired a disco, the hall had it's own paying bar which my dad and inlaws put some money behind so the first few drinks were free.
We had the most amazing day. In fact, my cousin got married a month later and had all the trimmings, a meal in a hotel, a big lavish reception etc and I have to say, it was not as much fun as ours!!;)
The point is, the day is what you make of it not how much you spend on it.

My sister also had a great wedding. She had a registry wedding and a big reception.
Good luck
K

boo80

Last summer we went to 2 weddings, one of them was a church then on to a hotel, the wedding cost 47k!!!!!!! It was lovely but I can't see where the money went. The other wedding was a registry office then onto a pub/inn and we had a bbq and the wedding cake was doughnuts, guess which one was more fun???

Hatster

My mum had been saving up for my wedding for years, and had set a budget for it. However, I thought it was extravagent to spend the budget she had, and so I did a bit of money saving. We had the big posh "wedding" in a stately home for 100 people for £7000, including drinks, canapes on the terrace, and a sit-down meal, and without feeling that we'd stinted ourselves in any way - I'd had absolutely everything I'd wanted. (This was March 08)

We held the actual wedding a month before at the register office, for the 11 close family members, and then walked down to our favourite restaurant who opened up specially for our lunch. We then had a separate party for friends and family, which was the drinks and meal at the stately home.

When I contacted all the possible venues about holding our dinner, I stressed that it was a family do, and not a wedding. Oddly enough, that brings the price down right away.

I had a designer dress got cheap in the January sales, my husband had a new suit which is now his best work suit. My mum and sister made the cake (they went to cake decorating classes specially!) and I did all the flowers for £116.50. My FiL and a friend of mine took the photos.

You can have so much fun doing a wedding if you all chip in - much more fun to be impressed by what your family has come up with than seeing a professional churn out their standard stuff. There's no way a professional could have made a more charming and personal cake than my mum and sister did.

ninky_2

boo80 wrote: »

Last summer we went to 2 weddings, one of them was a church then on to a hotel, the wedding cost 47k!!!!!!! It was lovely but I can't see where the money went. The other wedding was a registry office then onto a pub/inn and we had a bbq and the wedding cake was doughnuts, guess which one was more fun???

:eek:

i'd imagine spending 47k on a wedding would put so much pressure on everything and the expectation for everything to be "perfect" that no doubt everybody was so stressed they forgot to have fun.

it is supposed to be an enjoyable day after all.

claireac

I'm getting married in 9 weeks and 2 days!!

We're having a smallish wedding with immediate family at the ceremony (h2b has a large family though so 60 people), canape reception, speeches and cutting cake. In the evening another 50ish guests, disco and buffet. Then on the Monday we are going to Dominican Republic for 2 weeks with our 2yr old daughter. All in, it's costing us around £5k - much more than I wanted to spend!! I reeeeally fancied Gretna, but h2b wanted his family around.

It's the marriage that's important - I'd get married tomorrow in our jeans if I could lol.

kate_pixie

Hatster wrote: »

You can have so much fun doing a wedding if you all chip in - much more fun to be impressed by what your family has come up with than seeing a professional churn out their standard stuff. There's no way a professional could have made a more charming and personal cake than my mum and sister did.

I think the family working together to create a wedding is much much more meaningful than splashing the cash. My brother is getting married in August, and they're barely spending £4k, which I know is a lot of money, but they've invited pretty much the whole family and are getting married in a gorgeous venue. They saved for a year to get this far and have made cost cuts in a few key areas. I'm doing the cake and am absolutely poohing myself :eek:

Hollyberry

We got married a couple of years ago, and the best advice I can give is to focus on the things that are important to you as a couple, and just bin the rest of the things you think you are "supposed" to have. For example, we had no photographer, no flowers, no favours, no wedding cake, no wedding dress, no attendants...because other things were more important to us. We got married in the week, then hired a big house for a weekend: had people in the pool, lying around in the sun chatting, playing tennis, garden chess, the piano, football, cricket, and jamming in the soundproof cellar. We had a barbie and a freezer full of ice cream, everyone's children playing in the courtyard, and a bizarre soundtrack from the pool room courtesy of godson #1's choice in CDs. We'd love to do it all again for an anniversary...

Awww, sorry for the self-indulgent reminiscences. But remember it's about what will make the two of you happy, and hang onto that rather than what you "should" be doing. Whatever and however you do it, be happy.

boo80

ninky wrote: »

:eek:

i'd imagine spending 47k on a wedding would put so much pressure on everything and the expectation for everything to be "perfect" that no doubt everybody was so stressed they forgot to have fun.

it is supposed to be an enjoyable day after all.

The groom was going mad at the hotel staff because they'd already charged them 47k and now they want another £4 for a pint of beer etc etc. The crazy thing is that they have a tiny 3 bed mid terrace and 5 children, they could of put that money towards their future, not 1 day!