I *WILL* book my wedding this year!!

emlou2009

I've been engaged since September and so far all I've done is decide on a venue and a date! Oh dear! Basically I just need to know we can afford it before we definitely book it. We've decided to go for the Holiday Inn £999 deal, and ours includes room hire for reception and service, wedding breakfast for 30, evening buffet for 100 and DJ. Not 100% on the drinks included, but I think its just sparkling wine with the toasts. I had thought about going for a village hall type reception to try and save some money, but I think in all honesty it would probably be more expensive, and as our local Holiday Inn is lovely I dont think anywhere else we could afford would be nicer.

I am trying to make out a fairly accurate budget so I can work out what exactly I need to save for. But I cant seem to think of most of the things I need in the first place!! Please help

So far on the list I've got of things we'll need to pay for, aside from whats included in the deal,

Dress/shoes/jewellery
Tiara/veil
Suits
BM dresses/shoes
(Not having cars as we are staying there after, and I am probably going to stay there the night before :money:)
Registrar fees
Rings (although this might just be mine, as OH already has his great great grandparents rings, but I wear silver/white gold and the rings are yellow!)
Flowers (artificial)
(Will get a friend to do hair and will do make up myself, but will get "nice" products to do it with so do need to budget a little here)
Table centrepieces
(Will get friends to do photography, know a few people with skills and posh cameras!)
Cake (will most likely do this myself, thinking a supermarket fruit cake for cutting and cupcakes)
Chair covers would be lovely, but they are something that will be thought about if we can afford them, not something that we would want to budget in, if that makes sense!
Invites (Vistaprint!)
If it works out cheaper to, most of the smaller things will be coming from ebay, and my dress will most likely be landy/milly.
Not sure about where the BM dresses will come from, but they dont need to be bridesmaidy IYSWIM, just nice and matching!
Unless everything works out very cheaply I'm not going to bother with favours either, just token somethings for the BM's (probably sparkly but cheap jewellery for the day?) and immediate family.

What have I missed???

frannyann

emlou2009 wrote: »

I've been engaged since September and so far all I've done is decide on a venue and a date! Oh dear! Basically I just need to know we can afford it before we definitely book it. We've decided to go for the Holiday Inn £999 deal, and ours includes room hire for reception and service, wedding breakfast for 30, evening buffet for 100 and DJ. Not 100% on the drinks included, but I think its just sparkling wine with the toasts. I had thought about going for a village hall type reception to try and save some money, but I think in all honesty it would probably be more expensive, and as our local Holiday Inn is lovely I dont think anywhere else we could afford would be nicer.

I am trying to make out a fairly accurate budget so I can work out what exactly I need to save for. But I cant seem to think of most of the things I need in the first place!! Please help

So far on the list I've got of things we'll need to pay for, aside from whats included in the deal,

Dress/shoes/jewellery
Tiara/veil
Suits
BM dresses/shoes
(Not having cars as we are staying there after, and I am probably going to stay there the night before :money:)
Registrar fees
Rings (although this might just be mine, as OH already has his great great grandparents rings, but I wear silver/white gold and the rings are yellow!)
Flowers (artificial)
(Will get a friend to do hair and will do make up myself, but will get "nice" products to do it with so do need to budget a little here)
Table centrepieces
(Will get friends to do photography, know a few people with skills and posh cameras!)
Cake (will most likely do this myself, thinking a supermarket fruit cake for cutting and cupcakes)
Chair covers would be lovely, but they are something that will be thought about if we can afford them, not something that we would want to budget in, if that makes sense!

If it works out cheaper to, most of the smaller things will be coming from ebay, and my dress will most likely be landy/milly.
Not sure about where the BM dresses will come from, but they dont need to be bridesmaidy IYSWIM, just nice and matching!
Unless everything works out very cheaply I'm not going to bother with favours either, just token somethings for the BM's (probably sparkly but cheap jewellery for the day?) and immediate family.

What have I missed???

Ebay is great for dresses, so many on there that they go quite cheaply without having to go aboard, just filter choices to 'UK Only'
BM dresses look at high street shops and online at Very etc, loads of bargains to be had. The Reg fees are steep where ever you are, ours including notice fees, booking fee and cert fees plus the fee for them actually to be there are nearly £500 :eek: No way round that, unless you actually go to reg office. As for invites, strongly suggest you register with Vistaprint and then wait a week, the free offers come flooding in, we got 30 linen finish day invites, plus envelopes, 100 evening invites plus envelopes and pen (don't ask!!) and 30 save the day magnets came to only £15!!

emlou2009

Ah invites, thank you! Knew I'd forgotten something! There's bound to be more lol

The registrar fees are ridiculous, £175ish to get married in the registry office inclusive of fees, but like yours around £500 to get them to come out! If it wasnt for the fact that cars would be more expensive than the difference, we would just book it for the reg office instead! Plus it makes sense to have it all in the same place, OH isnt from round here so has family and friends not in the area that will be coming, its just easier to have it all together as the HI and the reg office are a good 10 minute drive apart!

laura2481

emlou2009 wrote: »

Table centrepieces
Chair covers would be lovely, but they are something that will be thought about if we can afford them, not something that we would want to budget in, if that makes sense!

For table centre piece ideas google 'cheap wedding success' and look at their section on 'flowers' for ideas. I'd post a link but for some eason whenever I try to post links to this site it comes up as a broken link

And I think some of the Holiday Inns are offering chair cover hire as an optional extra... worth looking into?

laura2481

frannyann wrote: »

As for invites, strongly suggest you register with Vistaprint and then wait a week, the free offers come flooding in, we got 30 linen finish day invites, plus envelopes, 100 evening invites plus envelopes and pen (don't ask!!) and 30 save the day magnets came to only £15!!

That's a good tip :money:- I don't want invites from Vistaprint as I'm going to make my own but I like the idea of the Save the Date magnets and I may get a cheap offer...

emlou2009

Our HI are doing chair covers, but they have liased with another company to do them and they're still about £3.50 a cover :eek: if we have 100 chairs, thats £350 which will be a huge percentage of what we want to spend really, as nice as they are

slummymummyof3

Friends of ours hired a hall and DJ and paid for a fish and chip van to supply everyone with freshly cooked fish and chips - it was a great day and a very novel idea.

chelle2k9

"Rings (although this might just be mine, as OH already has his great great grandparents rings, but I wear silver/white gold and the rings are yellow!)"

Not 100% certain of this but you could check with a jeweller to see if the rings could be rhodium plated in the way that white gold rings are? just a thought if you wanted to use these rings for sentimental reasons x