Struggling to see where I could save money!

shellsuit

Photography 500 - 2family members are taking our pics, they do have really good cameras.
Rings 500 If you wanted to, you could get both for £200ish
Cake 100 – made my friend £50, tesco cakes, decorate yourself.
Stationary 200 – everything needed My stationary cost around £30, for day and evening invites, clintons and hallmark, from ebay!
Gifts x11 120 gifts for what? and who? and why? we're not buying any gifts!
Flowers 300 are these for fresh? have a look for foam, they look so realistic!
Vases & candles 90 Ikea, bet you'd get them for less!
Suits 100 Suits? for who?!
Wishing Tree 50 A what? lol
Reception decoration 100 – to include table confetti, mints, match books and table trivia Confetti? the confetti will already have been thrown by the time the reception comes! You don't NEED the other stuff either, they are just a 'want'.
Children’s packs x10 100 Don't bother, parents should keep their kids under control.
Favours 50
Hair, make-up, nails ect 200 Find a friend who could do hair, you do make up, and just get nails done.
Bride and groom gifts 100 Don't bother, you have a whole day for yourselves, greeedy lol! x





You can cut down easily, it just depends on what you want to cut down on.

p.s. ignore the confetti coment, i just noticed 'table' now, oops lol!

cleomolly

Right, read all the replies and am beginning to think there is still hope ; )

Ikea is a definite must judging by what you have all said, I will certainly be paying them a visit. I had based my budget on some 50cm lily vases for £4.60 each x 9 tables, also 40 x candle holders, and the 2 vases I had planned to use on the wishing tree.

The hair and make-up defiantly needs work, the price was for myself and MOH, including hair and hair for step mom. I don’t even wear make-up so will check out the stall in Debenhams, great idea. I will work on this!

I wouldn’t want to do away with the favours as I believe people will really love those! I agree though the kids packs seem to be a little steep, all I was thinking is I wouldn’t want them to get bored so wanted to fill bags with lots of little bits, like balloons, bubbles, camera’s and also some sweets and carton of pop so less pressure on mom and dad on the day with ‘I’m hungry’ ‘I want a drink’ ect.

The rings are a funny one, as I had my engagement ring made and we would like our rings from the same place. They are in palladium.

Photography – I’m really happy with this as it is to be done by my MOD’s partners parents and they have done us a great deal I feel, we get a £250 album included, 28 photo’s each for the parents of bride groom, and a cd with all the photo’s on without copyright on!

I think the cake is a steal too as it is the Best Man’s mother making it, 3 tiers and will be fruit, sponge and choc………(yum….yum……shouldn’t have thought about it!!)

Stationary – this includes pocketfold invites and all the inserts x35, gatefold invites x60, menu’s x9, order of service x36, Table plan, table names x9, this price includes all ribbon which will be used for invites, cake, car, wishing tree, gifts, flowers ect.

Gifts are for glass tokens which double as place names for the top table, and will say ‘Thank you’ too, I think a good price, I contacted someone who sells them on ebay for £15 and she did me a good deal at £10 each plus £10 delivery for them all.

Suits – only £100 as were buying the Best Man’s, groom goes free and all others are paying themselves, very kind of them.

The wishing tree I would like to keep as the messages will then be put into our wedding album with a photo of all of the guests! This comes in with the photography price, I suppose it will only be a vase and some twigs though so with a little creativity (which I may need to borrow?) I could get this down to next to nothing!

And I agree bride and groom presents may need to be scrapped! I just wanted to give him a pocket watch on the morning of the wedding, but you’re right we’re together for the rest of our lives, plenty of time to treat each other!

I’ll keep working on it though and thanks again for all of your help and advice, really appreciate it.

missimaxo

You should be able to get a pro photographer for less than £500 depending on whats included in the package.

Ebay is a good place to look for photographers as well!

cleomolly

Forgot to mension which has come to mind when reading your post bubble - the wishing tree is important as we would like ot emigrate one day so this is quite important to us hence not just having a guest book. x

Stephb1986_2

Instead of a wishing tree couldn't you have like a glass vase nicely decorated for everyone to put their wishes in?

What about wedding cars? You haven't mentioned them.

The kids party bags deffo get stuff from poundland, scrap the drinks because they will go everywhere the kids will be fighting over flavours or having something different.

Buy stuff in bulk are you having a buffet? if so you can get napkins ect from the likes of makro.

Hair and make up you can watch you tube videos on how to do styles ect, Invest in some good make up brushes I have just and you can't half tell the difference. Get MOH ect to do their own hair and make up or atleast pay for themselves

Good luck

Steph xx

cleomolly

Thank you sellsuit - I'm thinking hard as too how important the stationary is at the moment, as someone said above they do all end up in the bin apart from close family members who may keep them.

The gifts are for 11 glass tokens, engraved to say things like 'James Thank you for being our Groomsman' doubling up as place names for top table guests and favours.

The flowers are fresh and this is for a £70 donation to the church florist, my bouquet, MOH's wrist corsage, flower girls wand, 9 table decorations, top table decoration, cake flowers, and a large display for entrance to the venue. I'm meeting with the florist next week so hopefully this will come down once i get the exact quote.

Thank you, I like your thinking, may be I'm just worrying about other people too much! buts that is how i feel i need to be when planning this wedding!

cleomolly

Steph, I like the idea for the wishes, I'll have a good think about this. My dad is a vintage car fanatic so we're having his Austin 7 which he's really excited about : ) your right about the drinks, I can just see them coming up to me to cry over why they have that flavour of drink and getting it all down me! lol

It's hard when knowing what is reasonable in asking people to pay for? my MOH is buying her daughters outfit so I only see fit that i buy hers, it would help if her mother (my fathers oartner) would help a little you'd have thought she'd have wanted too but NO I'm even paying for her hair do!!

Stephb1986_2

cleomolly wrote: »

(my fathers partner) would help a little you'd have thought she'd have wanted too but NO I'm even paying for her hair do!!

I would an all! It's her choice if she wants to look a mess or not it shouldn't be down to you it's your day!

Steph xx

bubble96

cleomolly wrote: »

Forgot to mension which has come to mind when reading your post bubble - the wishing tree is important as we would like ot emigrate one day so this is quite important to us hence not just having a guest book. x

I get that, but it is the things that are written that are important to you - unless you are actually keeping the tree as is after the wedding, then the actual tree is just for decoration. You said you were going to put them into your wedding album which is lovely, so you could just have whatever pretty paper/card you were going to use on the tree and pass them out to save cost.

However, i do think it is a beautiful idea, but looking at picks online you could definately do it much cheaper i reckon, so it would be a nice thing to keep as it adds something a bit different - everyone should have something special at their wedding!

shellsuit

cleomolly wrote: »

Thank you sellsuit - I'm thinking hard as too how important the stationary is at the moment, as someone said above they do all end up in the bin apart from close family members who may keep them.

The gifts are for 11 glass tokens, engraved to say things like 'James Thank you for being our Groomsman' doubling up as place names for top table guests and favours.

The flowers are fresh and this is for a £70 donation to the church florist, my bouquet, MOH's wrist corsage, flower girls wand, 9 table decorations, top table decoration, cake flowers, and a large display for entrance to the venue. I'm meeting with the florist next week so hopefully this will come down once i get the exact quote.

Thank you, I like your thinking, may be I'm just worrying about other people too much! buts that is how i feel i need to be when planning this wedding!

I'm done with worrying about other people, it's mine and OH's day, so as long as we are happy with everything, hopefully everyone else will be, but if they're not, it's tough!

Our budget is the same as yours (well it's 2K but i know it will creep up to about 2.5) and that's for everything apart from my dress, the buttonholes and the stationary as I've already bought those.

We've just had a baby plus we've got a fortnights holiday during next summer school holidays which is costing a shedload, so even though we would love to have everything perfect, we're just finding things that we are happy with and that won't cost the earth because the most important thing is just to have a great day with our closest friends and family, and becomes husband and wife!

And lets face it, who would know where you bought things from unless you tell them?

Cheap doesn't have to mean tacky