Wedding on a shoestring

Donk_2

Got engaged at NY. Me & OH are thinking of summer holidays 2012 to tie the knot. We will save up as much as can until then but we have done a provisional wedding list (we both have big familys and lots of friends between us) and its looking like 80 - 100 for the wedding, and around 200 - 250 in the evening.

I know we have time to plans things, we have already thought about people who can help us with things such as making the cake.

Our main problems are venue (to accomodate the number of guests) and food (we don't want to spend more on feeding our guests than we do on our own honeymoon). Any ideas?? We don't want a church wedding, neither of us are religious and we're open to the ceremony at the registrary office and meal etc elsewhere.

We want our wedding in Manchester so everyone can attend, the most important thing to us is having all our friends and family there on the day, we don't want to have to start reducing our guest lists.

MrsTinks

I'll move this to the wedding board for you

horsechestnut

Saved hundreds £s on my daughter's wedding by having it on a weekday instead of the usual Saturday. The venue also included a free Bridal suite for the day and night of the wedding, free corkage on our own wines and champagne, free orange juice for the non-drinkers and jugs of water on the tables for the main meal.

RainbowChild_2

horsechestnut wrote: »

Saved hundreds £s on my daughter's wedding by having it on a weekday instead of the usual Saturday. The venue also included a free Bridal suite for the day and night of the wedding, free corkage on our own wines and champagne, free orange juice for the non-drinkers and jugs of water on the tables for the main meal.

Sounds fab where was that?

BTW DONK COngrats

Donk_2

We have discussed having it on a Friday, we figured if we let people know enough in advance those coming in the day will be able to book time off work.

Sounds like you got a good deal, i think we need to find a few places and try and haggle them down.

Donk_2

Thanks Rainbow

Dinah93

If people are close enough to be coming to your wedding, they'll take a day off. Fridays have been the same price as Saturdays in my experience, consider Monday - Wednesday as these are the cheapest days. Consider doing a buffet meal in the day time instead of a 3 course sit down meal, we're just having bacon and sausage butties and wedges on the evening do and only catering for 75% of the guests as most people will have eaten already.

Donk_2

I like the butty idea for the evening do, like you say, some people will have ate already.

Mon-Wed may be cheaper but not sure alot of the guest would enjoy themselves enough knowing they had work the next day.

Skintmama

Congratulations:)

It depends on what kind of wedding you want to have and how much help you have. A very popular thing around here is to book a village hall and then get caterers in to do a buffet, that is then eaten as a sit down meal. Halls are comparatively cheap venues and £12 a head (here in rural Devon!)provides a cold meat, quiche, salads buffet accompanied by nice bread/rolls and hot new potatoes, followed by a choice of desserts and a cheeseboard.

The issue is then the alcohol, either getting someone in to do a bar (sometimes local pubs are happy to do this), getting a licence, or providing the booze yourselves. A compromise could be Bucks Fizz and more bubbly for the toasts, plus a couple of bottles of wine per table provided by you and the guests bring their own additional drinks.

The only problem with this is you do need people to set it all up and take it all away afterwards! Teenagers can often be paid to do quite a lot of this though! I never mind doing this for friends/family (for free obviously;)) as I think weddings are joyful events and most of us are only too happy to contribute to what can be a very costly day.

Good luck with your plans and try not to get too stressed out by it all!

Dinah93

Just going by the 'shoestring' mentality, monday-wed is usually 20-40% cheaper than thursday-sunday. However when you find the right venue you'll just have to see what deals they do. It all depends on if saving money is the most important, or having the perfect venue/day etc is top of your list. I'm usually very careful with our money, but when it comes to the wedding he wanted a big bells and whistles day, so we've gone all out.

chelbel1981

Donk wrote: »

Got engaged at NY. Me & OH are thinking of summer holidays 2012 to tie the knot. We will save up as much as can until then but we have done a provisional wedding list (we both have big familys and lots of friends between us) and its looking like 80 - 100 for the wedding, and around 200 - 250 in the evening.

I know we have time to plans things, we have already thought about people who can help us with things such as making the cake.

Our main problems are venue (to accomodate the number of guests) and food (we don't want to spend more on feeding our guests than we do on our own honeymoon). Any ideas?? We don't want a church wedding, neither of us are religious and we're open to the ceremony at the registrary office and meal etc elsewhere.

We want our wedding in Manchester so everyone can attend, the most important thing to us is having all our friends and family there on the day, we don't want to have to start reducing our guest lists.

If you are in Manchester contact Martha at Sachas Hotel and see what she can do for you