Wedding Tips start here...

lynneinjapan

shellybelly wrote:

Has anyone bought their wedding dress from ebay? If so what was it like, any sellers you would recommend?

I got mine from eBay seller waimanman, new, cost less than £50 inc postage and arrived from Hong Kong in less than a week. It was a little tight around the ribs (probably due to me taking inaccurate measurements - try filling your lungs up before you measure yourself!) but I got a local tailor to let it out for another £15.

Callisto wrote:

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.

- But don't let this make you think that there's no need to book your VENUE until less than a year in advance - we booked ours 11.5 months before the day (had to be a summer hol wedding to allow for honeymoon as I'm a teacher) and all the Saturdays in the summer hols had already gone and there was only one Friday left so we got that. Popular venues are often booked up 2-3 years in advance!

janineo wrote:

Does anyone know any resources for readings?
I know they are very strict about the content at civil ceremonies :rolleyes:

B'ham register office has a book of ceremony scripts and suggested readings that you can choose from - they'll loan it out on request, about 4 months before the event if I remember rightly. Your local office may have something similar. hitched.co.uk and confetti.co.uk are bound to have lots of ideas too.

We also had the "Today is a day you'll always remember" one - and another one that was very personal, contrasting the bride & groom's personalities. I wrote the initial draft and then the guy who was reading it completely rewrote it far more wittily, and the register office were fine with it - in fact the girl I spoke to said it was the nicest reading she'd ever seen! As long as you don't include any religious references they should be happy.

For your music, "religious" song lyrics (basically anything mentioning God) used to be disallowed for civil ceremonies but I believe they're permitted nowadays, according to a newspaper article I saw a few months back. I think it was in the Independent, and I think I've already posted a link to it somewhere in this thread.

paigesmummy

Hi everyone. im a newbie. im hoping to get married sept next year money permitting) but we still havent got a venue (great start i know) Baasically we live in basildon essex and want a venue somewhere in essex, thats quite flashy but wont brea k the bank. Can anyone suggest anything? Oh and it needs to be licenced for civil ceromonies too. I already have ordered my dress this morning wanna see http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/CRYSTALS-CINDERELLA-TULLE-WEDDING-DRESS-GOWN_W0QQitemZ280013167133QQihZ018QQcategoryZ46507QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem#ebayphotohosting

Agutka

november wrote:

Anyone used Debenhams Wedding List Service? I am finding them pretty useless so far.

Registered my wedding date and it said someone would contact me. No-one did but it also said you couldn't register your list until 3 months before so I figured maybe someone would contact me just before then.

I'm one week into the 3 months now and want to finish my invites. My understanding is they give you a card of something to put in the invites (I know John Lewis do because a couple of friends used John Lewis recently). I need to confirm my numbers minimum 6 weeks before the wedding so want to get the invites out !

Still no contact from Debenhams so I tried online. The site just sent me in circles for about 1/2 day but I did eventually get to the bit where it said I couldn't post a list until my host store had been in contact. I am assuming my host store is Bristol as its the nearest but they haven't confirmed that as I haven't heard anything from them

I emailed them via their website and 5 days later still no response.

I went with Debenhams because it said you got a £50 voucher but it seems they don't want my custom

Anyone else had problems. Or should I have done something else they aren't telling me

Maybe I should phone Bristol and ask but I'm losing faith in their service (or lack of) rapidly so am not sure if its worth while. If they are this bad so soon how can I be sure their list service is any better?

Hi there,
I believe you have to contact the wedding service and then wait for the local store to contact you - nothing stopping you from contacting them direct. I hope your nearest store is one of the big ones with lot of stock.

I used them and wasn't overly impressed with the service, it was all fine upfront, but you can only use in-stock items, the internet does not seem to stock the same as the shop, so you get a lot of substitutions. When I was sent the presents after the wedding there was stuff in there no one had bought and when people bought stuff after the list had been delivered (they only do one delivery, although they charge the guests a fee each) I have not been informed about it!! I think they owe me some bedding...

But it's totally worth it for a free £50! And free coffee. (you get one of those credit cards credited with the cash, so you can spend on it when you like)

Do the list even if you don't actually use them.

If you're in a hurry, the argos list gives you a number straight away, on the internet that you can give out to guests.

november

Update

I telephoned Debenhams and the call centre was unable to put me through to Bristol but took my number.

3/4 hour later I received a reply to my email saying they would be more than happy to investigate what had happened.

While I was composing my reply to the email Bristol Debenhams rang and apologised. Apparently the system should notify them within 2 days of someone registering a wedding but in my case it hadn't. They confirmed my details were on the system.

An appointment has been made for tomorrow I am going scanning (I bet my OH can't wait )

Many thanks to Agutka

To anyone else who may find it useful. Debenhams are still giving out the £50 vouchers as he said I would be given one tomorrow (together with the free coffee ) and if you register with them you should receive a response sometime between 3 days and a week.

I will give Debenhams full marks for the 3 apologies I have had since they have contacted me

Agutka

Excellent outcome, worth the phonecall.
Enjoy yourself tomoro, it's very surreal 'spending' imaginary money. And you can always change it all on the internet later, so no pressure.
Have fun, and good luck with the wedding plans too :T

scotgirl

paigesmummy wrote:

Hi everyone. im a newbie. im hoping to get married sept next year money permitting) but we still havent got a venue (great start i know) Baasically we live in basildon essex and want a venue somewhere in essex, thats quite flashy but wont brea k the bank. Can anyone suggest anything? Oh and it needs to be licenced for civil ceromonies too. I already have ordered my dress this morning wanna see http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/CRYSTALS-CINDERELLA-TULLE-WEDDING-DRESS-GOWN_W0QQitemZ280013167133QQihZ018QQcategoryZ46507QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem#ebayphotohosting

Wow - the dress is beautiful!

Miss_Penny_Pincher_2

This is a great thread! Two weeks ago we finally decided to have our wedding this October! All provisionally booked for us. We are trying to do full hotel wedding for £3,000 at a beautiful 15th century hall = white dress, bridesmaids, 3 course wedding breakfast for 40, evening buffet and DJ for 120 guests, flowers, favours, cake etc. Even though we don't want to cut the professional photographer it looks like that is a big area to save costs. My mum and sister said today that they would contribute towards this so now I'm madly trying to find one that doesn't cost the earth but whose portfolio I like. The cheapest I have seen where I like their style is £544 which includes photos on DVD but doesn't say number of photos. Sounds reasonable but does anybody know of any cheaper reputable wedding photographers in Lancashire?

bobbytwo

hello all, my wedding plans are well under way having borrowed lots of excellent ideas from this chat forum.

There's just one other thing I would dearly love to arrange - a Crepe machine for our evening reception.

I am struggling to find anyone in the Sussex area that either offers to come and do it all for you OR for somewhere that just hires out a machine so i can find someone to make chocolate pancakes all night, mmmmmmmmmm

my good lady is crepe crazy and i'm certain she'd love this - anybody any ideas???

Thanks

jiblets1

Miss_Penny_Pincher wrote:

The cheapest I have seen where I like their style is £544 which includes photos on DVD but doesn't say number of photos.

Be careful with the photos on DVD if you are thinking of using these for reprints. Check on this, because many photographers provide a DVD/CD slide show which you can not use as negatives. Lots do aswell, but it is worth checking.;)

Miss_Penny_Pincher_2

Thanks jiblets - on website it just says 'DVD includes all wedding photos' so I will double check this with them! Since I posted I saw a couple of others that were over a £100 cheaper but only provided photos on CD which could be used to print photos from. I think we may go with that instead and buy our own album and have a few large prints made up ourselves. Has anybody else tried that?