Moneysaving Wedding

Tammer

Hi,

I'm getting married, hopefully next year.

As a loyal moneysaver, I'd really like to hear advice on the best places for holding the wedding without spending a bomb. The horse has already left the stable on the dress but everything else if up for grabs.

I'd really like tips on things like:

>invitations
>decoration
>favours
>Drinks on the day
>cake

For background, we're planning to have it on a Sunday and to run the whole thing from about 12pm to 7pm only. We're also looking to hold it (the post-ceremony part) in a non-traditional venue - a restaurant that you wouldn't normally think of as hosting a wedding.

I'm also thinking that we should say to people that we don't want any wedding presents and instead ask them to help us with aspects of the wedding or honeymoon to make it more a more involving process and to save some budget too.

I've done a search on this forum as there have been posts like this before but it's been really hard to find anything with links to sites where I could get things like invitations.

Any help would be great.

Tammer

msb5262

Hi OP,
Try the Weddings board on this forum...
HTH
MsB

Gillyx

How about the wedding forum on MSE? It's renamed at this time of year to Christmas and other festivities or something similar but there will be loads of ideas over there.

I would say it's a bit cheeky to say you don't want presents but please help with the cost of the wedding/honeymoon. I wouldn't mind much, but I know my parents would find this unsavoury.

Best thing to do is state you don't wish presents only the guests company, and if they choose to go down the route of cash, they've chosen that of their own accord.

barbiedoll

"The horse has already left the stable on the dress"

Hahahaha, at least you're honest!!


Have a look at the wedding forum, there's loads of help on there. If you really want to save money, just buy some invitations from a nice stationery store and get a book from the library on calligraphy, buy a fountain pen and do them yourself. That's what I did and they looked so good that I got asked to do the invitations for my sister's and my sis-in-law's weddings too!

PinkPrincess83

firstly- as others have said hop over the wedding and annivesary board, you will get loads of tips.

Im getting married next July and am doing it as moneysaving as possible, this includes:

Day ivites I made myself (and im not crafty at all and was chuffed with how they come out)- I got some plain ivory pearl a6 invites and envelopes (about £5), a butterfly hole punch (about £3) some pink ribbon (a couple of pounds) and some card which I cut down to size (about £2) so in total about £12. For evening invites I ordered free postcards on vistaprint and I ordered rsvp cards which double up as song choice cards and all I paid for was postage at about £10.

Drinks on the day- my venue do a very cheap corkage so I am buying my own wine on supermarket deals- is corkage an option at your venue?

Cake- I joined a local wedding page on facebook and found a lady doing a great deal on a cupcake tower. (and they look and tasty amazing). M and s do plain iced fruit and sponge cakes that can work out cheap- especially if you catch them on 3 for 2. You could then hire a stand fairly cheaply and add some ribbon and any other decorations yourself for not very much.

Favours- im not having them, I really wanted a sweetie table so am putting the money into this instead, but these can be done cheaply- things like homemade items ie biscuits. Do you have any ideas what kind of favours you want?

Decorations- do you have any ideas what kind of decorations you want? if you do people on the wedding board will be able to give some great tips on doing it the money saving way.

I have also waited for codes when I wanted things from debenhams, and a site called glitzy secrets for my tiara. For my wedding ring I found my perfect ring in goldsmiths so coverted £70 of my tesco vouchers (3X value) so had £210 towards it. Cars- Im having a nice silver merc rather than a mega flash traditional car- this has saved money.

Im trying to think where else I saved money- I cant think of anything else but will add if I think of anything.

ellay864

Here's a link to the weddings board...I got married last month but still love going over there. Really friendly bunch and you'll get loads of hints and tips
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/forumdisplay.php?f=142

Tammer

Aaaah, the wedding forum... I dunno how I missed it previously! Thanks for the help folks, I'll have a look through it.

Bufger

For inspiration heres what we did:

• Made our invites

• Local school choir sang before and after ceremony (church donation)

• Catholic Wedding (church donation, any amount)

• Borrowed new Jaguar XJ from someone we knew as posh wedding car (free)

• Ribbon for car (£30!! rediculous but we left that late)
• Suit hire for me plus grooms men (£300)
• Wedding Dress (Her mum paid)

• Amateur Photographer with experience (£500 incl all prints and album)

• Evening venue (free, as long as you pay for their food - cheapest one chosen and ended up being £1k for 100 people) Very picturesque location so the wedding photos turned out great
• Sweet buffet - found a small local sweet shop that had retro sweets in jars. For £120 they went to the venue whilst we were doing our vows and set up a fantastic sweet buffet display of all the old classics (something like 20 massive jars!). They only wanted empty jars back afterwards.
• Honeymoon - my parents paid for us to go to cancun for 2 weeks! we're very lucky :T

We didnt have a wedding breakfast which is the really expensive bit. For gifts we found some great ones online, we got engraved flagons for my groomsmen that said thankyou etc for £25 incl postage, flowers and wine for the ladies.

if you live near coventry i can give you the details of some of the places we used including the fantastic venue. We planned it well and were able to save for it in only a couple of months and now we're hitched we dont have any wedding debt. Its worth being MSE about your wedding because the people make it fun not the price!

Seanymph

For our invites we got someone we knew to draw a pencil drawing of the church on one side of A4, typed the church name on a piece of paper and photocopied the two together......... photocopied the invites/orders of service/can't remember what else you had to have but there were loads...... she charged me £10 for the picture - we photocopied onto card and put inserts in with the text. To do that we made the same colour paper, slightly smaller and I 'sewed' them in with red corded thread - which cost about £4.00. The Ex OH photocopied them all at work

Favours can be made or planted or whatever (pot plants of lavendar? homemade biscuits).

We hired a hall, got all our booze on sale or return from Tesco and picked what was on special offer - glass hire is free from them.

housewifeintraining

One of the ways we saved a lot of money was by not having a sit down meal - we had a cream tea instead which worked really well! It was great it not only saved us lots of money but we were able to walk around and chat a lot more and was easier on family who had a long way to travel back and wouldn't have been able to stay for a long meal.

Bufger

I also forgot to add we said we didnt want traditional wedding gifts and if people wanted they could get us B&Q, Homebase or garden centre vouchers instead. We ended up with over £1000 worth! we did the garden and 2 rooms up which is what we wanted to do but could because we were skint.