Wedding Tips start here...

nessquic80

i went to my local dunelem mill shop last week and found wedding and evening invities, iwanted to make them myself seeing how much they were in the stationary shops then to my utter delight, me being a money saver an all, i found these invities, white card with big silver interlocking hearts in the middle surrounded by tiny silver hearts, but here comes the best bit, marks and spencers on the back,10 in a pack, £3.50 on the front crossed out to 49p,if that is not a bargin my name is barbie!!!!

nuttybird_3

Rachie_B wrote:

i used hillcrest bridal for my evening dress (which was actually a mori lee bridesmaid dress lol) lindsay is fab i "met" her on the Hitched website
lots of Brides very happy with her service

www.hillcrestbridal.co.uk

Hi RachieB

Thanks for putting the link up:T - I couldnt find it via 'Hitched' last night.
nuttybird

FlowerBob

Our Low Cost Wedding (About £4000 inc honeymoon) :

We didn't set out to be 'cheap', but we got married 7 weeks after we got engaged, so it just worked out that way. Various work commitments of both sets of parents meant dates were limited and we didn't want to wait ages so having got engaged in October we were married mid-December.

big day = close family only = 13 people including the 2 of us
Was really worried about this but actually
- all our friends understood and no-one complained
- made sense as got married where my parents live which is 150 miles from us and our friends
- meant we could enjoy the day, and at our big do afterwards could enjoy seeing people without having to concentrate on getting married.

Ceremony = £98.50
Lunch for 13, in a private room = £42 per head (Saturday in December, v nice food, posh hotel did us a good deal)
Bar bill = Dad paid but insists 'not too painful' !
Taxis = £85

I wore...
Dress (Episode shift dress in chocolate brown with matching cardi, worn several times since) = £240 (most expensive dress I've ever brought!)
Coat (Embroidered heavy jacquard 3/4 length coat from Coast in cream with rust coloured embroidery, really suits my colouring, half price in mid-season sale, absolute bargin, wear now with jeans and boots) = £99
Shoes (John Lewis) = £45
Posy of roses made from Xmas flowers from M&S = £20
+ V upmarket suit, tie, shirt, shoes for Himself = £450 (yes we spent a bit there too but he's worn it all many times since.)

Night in hotel = £65 (Booked on internet special discount, lovely room)
Flights to honeymoon next day (and back again!) £268
Week in hotel on Tenerife £950 (OK we splurged a bit here - had a suite. Was like our own mini flat including jacuzzi. Such luxury.)

In January we had a big party for friends and family when everyone had the post Christmas blues ...
Hired a local arts center in return for a couple of days labour painting it and £50 contribution.
Acoustic jazz band = £300
Curry for 120 people including loan of things to keep it warm and serving stuff = £400 (negociated with fav. local takeaway)
Calico and streamers and candles and baloons to decorate = £100
(Got friends to come for the day to help put them up.)
Shop bought puddings (gateaux and merangues) = £40
3 cases of Asti Spumanti on offer from tescos (toast only, it was a 'bring a bottle' do)
Plastic plates/cups/paper tablecloths/plastic cutlery from Macro = £50
Mum made the cake
Would have worn the coat again, but somehow ended up buying £40 ballgown from Debehnams in the sale after Christmas - haven't managed to wear that again yet...

We had three rooms going - one for the band/dancing, one for the food and in the third we put loads of board games (we borrowed as many as we could). We kept finding the strangest combination of people playing together, it worked really really well.

Had to persuade friends to come and help clear up the next morning - bribed them all with promise of a cooked breakfast afterwards.

Loads of people claimed to be really impressed with the party, I think we were more relaxed than we would have been on the day itself. At both occasions, we asked everyone to take lots of photos and get a second set of prints done, or email us with their electronic ones.

Also, we had a scrapbook at the party. On the invites (printed ourselves, sent out inside Xmas cards to save on postage) we asked everyone to take a photo of themselves on our wedding day at the time we were being married and bring it with them. Then we stuck them into the scrap book at the party and got everyone to write a message.

We had a lovely lovely wedding day, and a fab party afterwards. I absolutely recommend doing that, it means you are much calmer and really enjoy the party bit. If you keep the wedding really really small, no-one can get offended about not being invited, because only parents and siblings were invited (well if anyone was offended we didn't hear about it). Plus by all means wear a big white dress if you want, but for me it made miles more sense to have something I would wear again. Because the coat is cream, I do look 'weddingy' in the photos. Out of season helps keep costs down (the band was much cheaper in January) even though both our dos were on a saturday. My other (unoriginal) tip is to rope in friends as much as you can to help.

And yes, curry is unusual, but it being a cold winter evening it went down well, even if I did send a runner to the local chip shop for emergency supplies for any non-curry eaters!

Whatever you do - enjoy!

jiblets1

That sounds great FlowerBob - thanks for sharing...

I like the board game idea!!

freddyfivefingers

Soph wrote:

Hello everyone

My partner and I are getting married in September 2007. I can't wait to start trying on dresses, for which I'm going to stay with my sister in Glasgow so we can go on a dress hunt round all the shops there. (We live near Skipton in North Yorkshire so are limited when it comes to wedding dress shops).

My money saving plan is to try on loads of dresses in shops to find what style I like and what suits me and then try and get the dress either on the internet or in the sales cheaper that the actual price!

Anyway, I've already been searching the web for some ideas and I've come across this website called https://www.moonlightfashions.co.uk, on which are some gorgeous dresses for extremely reasonable prices - I am absolutely loving codes WP6087, MOW7027, A-10209, MW05701 and WP10169, all of which are priced between £159.99 - £229.99 (exc VAT & delviery etc.)

To me this seems too good to be true, the dresses are absolutely gorgeous. However, the thing that worries me is that the website doesn't look very professionally put together when compared to a lot of wedding sites - there are a number of spelling mistakes and some of the pictures aren't very clear. Also, there doesn't seem to be any details as to the location of the company.

Anyway, apologies to go on for so long, but I was wondering if anyone had used this website before and what they thought - obviously I do need to try dresses on to see what suits me etc, but do people think something like this would be too risky?

Any comments on what people think would be much appreciated.

Many thanks, Sophie

I came across the moonlightfashions website when my then fiance and I were looking to choose her wedding dress (I wasn't going to help choose it though )and the photos did seem very poor and in some cases looked like they had been cribbed from other retailers - even the watermark had been put over someone elses! The grammar was very inconsistant too which was also very off putting.

After much trawling through shops and websites she settled for a dress from https://www.q-pid.co.uk (style number #9-1117) and she found that they were very helpful in helping her measure and with any questions she had before purchasing (bearing in mind it is all internet based). The dress took 4 weeks to arrive and was perfect in every way, and far exceeded our expectations.

rhubarbs

Soph,

I bought my wedding dress in Berketex Brides in Glasgow from their outlet store. The outlet is under their main Glasgow store, I think its on Buchanan Street, you need to book an appointment. Its worth a look, when I was shopping (1 1/2 years ago) they had a great range of dresses at really good prices.

alison6692

nuttyrockeress wrote:

ANother 1st September 07 wedding here.

Quite content now we have booked registrar, reception and ceremony.

Our's too is going to be a wedding done on a budget. Already I have had an offer to have a wedding cake made as a wedding present which is fantastic, more than I could of wished for.

The ceremony is 15:30 at Newstead Abbey Orangery (the biggest extravagance) with the reception at the local parish hall - doing our own catering hiring a mobile bar.

The plan is about 70 people at the ceremony then 150 for the evening party.

I will be having a wedding dress and don't really want to scrimp too much on this, no bridesmaids though.
Hopefully my cousin will drive me in his merc.
All the invites I will make myself.
I will go to a florist for my bouquet and the button holes and corsages but I will do silk flowers for the registrar table and make decorations for the reception.

Haven't decided about a photographer yet but am in the it only happens once brigade and I would like a few lovely photo's of the ceremony.

Still have a lot of other things to sort and love some of the tips from here that I am getting.

One little shock though - registrar fees - £264 :eek:

If you need silk flowers I can vouch for

http://www.flowergem4u.co.uk/home.htm

I promise I don't work for Linda I just know her through hitched.

Love alison x

Becster

Just started looking for wedding rings. V exciting. Found a ring I likein a local jewellers but its a grand, so now have to start looking around to see how much we can get something similar for!! Any ideas???

Not really money saving at all, but can anyone tell me whether you should wear your wedding ring over your engagaement ring or vice versa and whether you should wear your engagement ring during the ceremony at all??

Rachie_B

you are supposed to wear your engagement ring on your right hand during the ceremony

so then after you have exchanged rings your E ring goes back on

so its wedding ring then E ring

HTH

R x

linzibean

I'm glad someone else asked that, I didn't know either