Wedding Tips start here...

scotgirl

I got my dress from Zinnia Bridal - they sell on ebay but I ended up getting it through their website. It was not the cheapest - £400 in total (dress and jacket) but I would have been double that for the same thing from a shop.Excellent service and the dress is very good quality.I have ordered my bridesmaids dresses from https://www.bestbridalprices.com. They are an Amercian company who ship dresses to the UK. Go into town and try on dresses - take a note of the style name and number and then get a quote. Dresses were £200 each in shop - we paid about £70 per dress!

Fa1ryw1ngs_2

If you are looking to loose weight before the big day i have found a brilliant website the people are great and it is moderated constantly. It also has a wedding section as of today and i have recommedned this site for help and inspiration also it helps o have loads of support
here is the link

http://www.gossiping.net/phpBB2/index.php?mforum=5stonetolose

Yu don't have to have 5 stone to loose even if you only want to loose half a stone or just to talk to someone it's really good
And it's FREE

Rachie_B

i got my maggie sottero julie dress ( with cert of authenticity) from buy direct bridals on ebay ,its a US seller and with all tax,shipping etc is still only cost me £339 ,a big difference in price as i was quoted £750 - 1k in the UK !!!

http://search.ebay.co.uk/_W0QQsassZbuydirectbridalsQQhtZ-1QQfrppZ50QQfsopZ1QQfsooZ1QQrdZ0?

black-saturn

I hope no one minds if I jump into this thread.

I'm planning a wedding which will hopefully be in August or September 2008. I havn't set the date yet but I am off to the registry office tomorrow to do this and these are the kind of dates we are hoping for.

We are on a tight budget and will be doing everything as cheaply as we can. I've just read through the whole of this thread and made some notes. I can't really get 'into it' until I know the exact date for it though. One thing which makes this wedding quite different is that we are not having a reception as such. After the wedding we are going to have a family party in my parents back garden which is huge and then about 2 weeks later we are taking our children and our close family members on a "honeymoon" to Germany. Weve got a deal from a travel company for a 3 night stay for 10 people. Believe it or not this works out cheaper than hiring a hall, DJ, food etc etc.

Anyway, I have made a list of the things we want for the wedding which are as follows (please give suggestions, if I've forgotten anything let me know):

Date and Venue - Does anyone know how much a registry office wedding costs to book?

My Dress - Theres no way I could walk down the isle in a normal wedding dress as I think they look awful and I'm an old goth too. So I have decided on this one in the red - http://www.fairygothmother.co.uk/sm-16.htm Does anyone know where I can get it or one just like it cheaper?

Intendeds suit - Any ideas?

Mini reception and food - Hoping parents will sort this out.

Way of getting to wedding and party - Any ideas?

Cake - Any ideas? Please dont suggest making my own because it would be a disaster.

Bridesmaids - 3 bridesmaids. One of 18, one of 14 one of 12 wearing white dresses - ebay?

Flowers - Red to match my dress. Any ideas? There are some nice artificial roses on ebay.

Rings - Ebay?

Video of the wedding - I'll lend someone my camcorder.

Photos of the wedding - Planning on giving a few of the guests a disposable camera to capture it for us.

Have I missed anything?

Any ideas will be thanked :j

janineo

Hi Everyone,

Thought I'd intoduce myself, I've just spent the last week reading this thread - it's huge!

We're starting to plan our wedding, been engaged 3 years now and I'm really looking forward to it.

We're going to aim for September 2007 - has to be the autumn as we're going to Kenya for the honeymoon and I really want to see the wildebeast migration! OH wasn't hard to convince either :rotfl:

I've picked up some great tips here, thank you all so much! I knew from the start that we would be paying most if not all of it ourselves, so I've been saving since we got engaged. I don't want to start married life with a huge debt!

We've decided to do a family only Civil ceremony in the local registry office followed by a meal at a local restaurant.

We're then going to hire out a hall the next evening and have a big party for all our friends and relatives with a Ceiledh band and a buffet.

As my sister and her BF are chefs and my uncle used to be an Army chef we're going to do the catering ourselves. Having the party the next day saves hassle for them and us!

The problem is finding a venue big enough for the dancing that will let us bring our own food in!
If anyone can suggest anything in the Hampshire, Surrey, Berkshire border area, I'd be grateful!

I'm not going to bother with bridesmaids - I was going to ask my 2 sisters and future SIL, but after reading a few posts here I realised that there's not exactly much for them to do in a civil ceremony and it wouldn't be worth the expense of the dresses. Getting one of my sisters in a dress/skirt would have been difficult anyway! :rotfl:

I'm probably going to go the ebay route for a dress for me - how long does it take for a dress to arrive?

I'm an ebay addict already, so I expect I'll be doing some serious trawling in the next year!

I fully plan to spend more on the honeymoon than on the wedding - but I'm expecting the honeymoon to cost £6000! It's a once in a lifetime kind of trip, and there is no way either of us could spend 2 weeks on a beach. We'd be bored after 2 days! :rotfl: (And I'd be lobster red!)

One thing I'm worried about is a photographer. I hate having my picture taken, and there is no way I could pose for pictures for several hours like I've seen at some friends weddings recently.
Would photographers be okay with taking just 10 or 12 photos? Just a few professional ones, and I'll ask the guests for copies of theirs. Most people have digital cameras now so it's no hassle for them.

Thanks again for all your tips, and I'll keep you all posted how it goes!

:T
Janine

Becles

janineo wrote:

Would photographers be okay with taking just 10 or 12 photos?

The photographer we hired initially would have only done a few pics at the wedding ceremony. He would have taken pics of groom & party arriving, me and party arriving, then group pics afterwards. These didn't take long.

We also paid extra for him to go to the hotel and take pictures of us with the cake, and in the hotel gardens. They had beautiful Japanese water gardens which made a lovely background for the pictures. This only took about 20 minutes, so it wasn't too long.

The wedding was in Scotland though, so I don't think he would travel to where you are! Ring round and see what local ones can offer you though.

Hope all your plans go well

Rachie_B

janine

instead of having your sisters bridesmaids / maid of honour etc

what about asking them to do a reading?

as you might know a civil ceremony is very short so we "bulked" it out a bit with 2 readings

one by my best friend and one by my step father in law

just an idea

Callisto

black-saturn wrote:

I hope no one minds if I jump into this thread.

I'm planning a wedding which will hopefully be in August or September 2008. I havn't set the date yet but I am off to the registry office tomorrow to do this and these are the kind of dates we are hoping for.

We are on a tight budget and will be doing everything as cheaply as we can. I've just read through the whole of this thread and made some notes. I can't really get 'into it' until I know the exact date for it though. One thing which makes this wedding quite different is that we are not having a reception as such. After the wedding we are going to have a family party in my parents back garden which is huge and then about 2 weeks later we are taking our children and our close family members on a "honeymoon" to Germany. Weve got a deal from a travel company for a 3 night stay for 10 people. Believe it or not this works out cheaper than hiring a hall, DJ, food etc etc.

Anyway, I have made a list of the things we want for the wedding which are as follows (please give suggestions, if I've forgotten anything let me know):

Date and Venue - Does anyone know how much a registry office wedding costs to book?

My Dress - Theres no way I could walk down the isle in a normal wedding dress as I think they look awful and I'm an old goth too. So I have decided on this one in the red - http://www.fairygothmother.co.uk/sm-16.htm Does anyone know where I can get it or one just like it cheaper?

Intendeds suit - Any ideas?

Mini reception and food - Hoping parents will sort this out.

Way of getting to wedding and party - Any ideas?

Cake - Any ideas? Please dont suggest making my own because it would be a disaster.

Bridesmaids - 3 bridesmaids. One of 18, one of 14 one of 12 wearing white dresses - ebay?

Flowers - Red to match my dress. Any ideas? There are some nice artificial roses on ebay.

Rings - Ebay?

Video of the wedding - I'll lend someone my camcorder.

Photos of the wedding - Planning on giving a few of the guests a disposable camera to capture it for us.

Have I missed anything?

Any ideas will be thanked :j

Hi Black Saturn,

First of all, does your hubby to be want to wear a traditional suit or something a bit different? Suit hire seems fairly reasonable (not that I've looked into it loads yet) and you can get some nice styles of suit including 'frock' coats, am going to try and get my bloke to go for that style. If he wants to wear something completely different, try Ebay.

For the cake, we are going for two or three different sized sponge cakes from Marks & Spencers - works out to about £70 for (I think) three cakes, but I haven't checked the prices for a while.

For transport, do any of your friends or relatives have a nice car you can borrow?

Pretty much anything else, I would trawl Ebay for...

Also, you can't book a civil wedding until a year beforehand. Some registrars will 'pencil' you in before that time, but some will tell you to call back exactly a year before.

I love your dress by the way!! I'm definitely not going for a white dress either, but I can't decide on a colour or style... have still got 2 years to go though!

scotgirl

Hey Black SaturnThe dress is fab but looks like a fairly simple design - I would get some quotes from dressmakers to see if they can do it cheaper?

janineo

Rachie_B wrote:

janine

instead of having your sisters bridesmaids / maid of honour etc

what about asking them to do a reading?

as you might know a civil ceremony is very short so we "bulked" it out a bit with 2 readings

one by my best friend and one by my step father in law

just an idea

That's a good idea!
Does anyone know any resources for readings?
I know they are very strict about the content at civil ceremonies :rolleyes:

Janine