Wedding Tips start here...

Guinea_2

Rachie_B wrote:

did they give you a rough idea of price / did you talk through your budget and ideas etc ?

no point in booking someone that come june you wont be able to afford !

Yes, we had a look at prices and designs but the girl didn't take our details and just said come back in June. I'm a bit worried about this as there could be loads of people with August weddings all being told the same thing!

schemadesign

I'm getting married on 3rd March 2007 Nr Bicester and am in need of a photographer. We have a budget of £500. Can anyone recommend someone. All we want is photo's after the church service then the usual family shots at the recepetion and of course cutting the cake. Not bothered with shots of the bride getting ready.

many thanks

please email me at carlwillis@yahoo.com

Rachie_B

Guinea wrote:

Yes, we had a look at prices and designs but the girl didn't take our details and just said come back in June. I'm a bit worried about this as there could be loads of people with August weddings all being told the same thing!

yeah i agree!

it wont hurt to see a few more and maybe they will give you more info / allow you to actually book !!!

mattb74

I recently got married and saved a fortune and thought I'd briefly pass on how we did it:

1. Designed and printed all invites, reply cards, thank you cards, place settings, directions, hotel info and table setting board ourselves with a mac and an old epsom colour printer. Original fonts can be downloaded free from dafont.com and installed into word very simply.

2. Friends helped with hair, photos, video.

3. Got married at Pentacost meaning red and white flowers in Church - so just gave a bigger donation.

4. Used my dads Triumph Herald as the wedding car but have heard of people buying old classic cars, giving them a good wax then selling them on after the wedding. I would have done this if not for my Dad's help.

5. BIGGEST SAVING!!! Found a restaurant we really liked that seated ~80 people and did great food for ~£30/head and booked out the whole place for the wedding day! There was no hire charge because we were effectively just
booking a restaurant for a large group and the best thing was all the guests got a full menu choice on the night as you would in a restaurant but which is unusual at a wedding. Saved at least £4K compared to the other places we were looking at and we didn't need to worry about caterers either. We had the place from 5pm til midnight.

6. Bought a Oswald Boateng suit from Bicester village for £400 instead of £1200!!

7. Bought three tiers of wedding cake from Marks and Spencer totaling £100. Which was delicious but BEWARE these cakes are very moist, not solid bricks so the tiers began to lean before we cut it!!!

8. Got copies of photos printed for the family online for 5p a print (many online companies do this sort of price for large orders)

So the major expense was the food at the restaurant which was well worth it because the restaurant was so good.

Hope this helps.

Matt

Unknown1234_2

After being engaged for 2 years, my partner and i have now set a date, giving us a timescale for savings. We are getting married in Ascot, Berkshire on the 06 February 2010.

Here is my budget so far:
What Price
Venue for wedding and party 1000.00Chair Cover 40 @ 4.00e 160.00
DJ 7-12pm (5 Hours ) 310.00
Champagne on arrival 50 ppl @ 4.75 champagne, 20 @1.30 orange 263.50
Champagne toast 70 ppl @ 4.75 champagne 332.50
"Buffet" 50 people @ 13ea 650.00
Registrar Bracknell Forest 322.00
Guest Book 15.00
Cars 150.00
Hotel for 1 night 250.00
Inivtations 40 Day / 30 Evening 158.00
Order of Service? 40 86.00
Balloons 500.00
Table Confetti 60.00
Cake 50 cup cakes-£5.00ea 250.00
Wedding Rings 380.00
Dress 600.00
Tiara 100.00
Hair & make-up Hair & Make-up trial & Day 200.00
Nails Full Set 45.00
Suit Hire a Full suit 100.00
Best Man suit 100.00
Shaun shoes £50 shoes 50.00
Flowers Bridal Bouquet-£70
4xbutton holes-£4.50ea
3xcorsages-£10ea
3x Table arrangement-£60ea flowers-298.00
Photographer 900.00
Fireworks Show 8 mins 600.00

Grand Total! 7880.00

Have i missed anything?

The basic plan for the day is to get married with 40 guests around 5:00pm then have photos and chat, the rest of the guests arrive at 6:30pm the party starts, buffet around 8:00pm.

Is this realistic?

Thanks

Emms

Melissa_Hewett wrote:

After being engaged for 2 years, my partner and i have now set a date, giving us a timescale for savings. We are getting married in Ascot, Berkshire on the 06 February 2010.

Here is my budget so far:
What Price
Venue for wedding and party 1000.00Chair Cover 40 @ 4.00e 160.00
DJ 7-12pm (5 Hours ) 310.00
Champagne on arrival 50 ppl @ 4.75 champagne, 20 @1.30 orange 263.50
Champagne toast 70 ppl @ 4.75 champagne 332.50
"Buffet" 50 people @ 13ea 650.00
Registrar Bracknell Forest 322.00
Guest Book 15.00
Cars 150.00
Hotel for 1 night 250.00
Inivtations 40 Day / 30 Evening 158.00
Order of Service? 40 86.00
Balloons 500.00
Table Confetti 60.00
Cake 50 cup cakes-£5.00ea 250.00
Wedding Rings 380.00
Dress 600.00
Tiara 100.00
Hair & make-up Hair & Make-up trial & Day 200.00
Nails Full Set 45.00
Suit Hire a Full suit 100.00
Best Man suit 100.00
Shaun shoes £50 shoes 50.00
Flowers Bridal Bouquet-£70
4xbutton holes-£4.50ea
3xcorsages-£10ea
3x Table arrangement-£60ea flowers-298.00
Photographer 900.00
Fireworks Show 8 mins 600.00

Grand Total! 7880.00

Have i missed anything?

The basic plan for the day is to get married with 40 guests around 5:00pm then have photos and chat, the rest of the guests arrive at 6:30pm the party starts, buffet around 8:00pm.

Is this realistic?

Thanks

Are you looking to cut back on that at all or is that how much you are willing to pay? A lot of things on your list seem quite expensive so if your wanting a 'moneysaving' wedding then you could save a fair bit on that. You seem to pretty much thought of everything though

Emma

jiblets1

Melissa_Hewett wrote:

he basic plan for the day is to get married with 40 guests around 5:00pm then have photos and chat, the rest of the guests arrive at 6:30pm the party starts, buffet around 8:00pm.

Is this realistic?

Thanks

Have you checked on the time? I remember the registrar telling us all weddings had to be done by a certain time. I can't remember if it was by 5 or later, but I remember weopted to have our wedding at 4 to be safe.

Also have you thought about what music you want to walk down the aisle to? Becaue if you want a harpist/string quartet it'll need to be budgeted.

Wedding Jewellery? Gifts for best man/parents? Favours? Children's entertainment? (even just colouring books etc) Honeymoon? Bridal underwear?

Don't forget to have what you want tho, anything that isn't your style just ditch it and sod tradition.

Good luck!

Joyful25

Hey guys, have just started planning our wedding for March 17th, er 2007 :eek: we've been engaged since January :happylove and were going to leave it for some time but because of some inheritance we've decided we'd like to marry & have a bit of an extended honeymoon and see some of this planet.

We're keeping to a budget of £4,000 (for the wedding day) and looking through Melissa's list a couple of things struck me (can I say how good it is to see someone so organised!!).
- Have you budgeted with this year's prices in mind or how much things will cost in 2009/10 as naturally that will make a difference (prices always seems to go up every January).
- Emma is right - things like photographers don't have to cost £900 if you can barter for a very tailored package; they want the work and shouldn't be too awkward.
- Remember the January sales - I'm going to get a lot of things then (my one and only bridesmaid dress, flowergirl dress, even our wedding rings - how romantic :rolleyes: )
- Consider things as presents from family or friends. My bro-in-law has offered to pay for night in hotel, my mum has paid for dress, auntie doing wedding cake, grpahic designer friend doing invites - all as presents. It's definitely worth calling on the skills or contacts of people you trust
Also, I think the biggest thing you have to think about change in circumstances. You're talking about something 3 years away....how many more people will you get to know, will families expand (i.e nieces/nephews/cousins etc that you don't have now)

I think if you're willing to be flexible from the outset with both numbers and prices, then you're on the right path.

Anyway lecture over :j this messageboard is my Bible and hopefully I'll be passing on some tips of my own?!?!?

Unknown1234_2

Thankyou for your comments.

That is my maximum budget, i tried to over cost for the possible rises in prices by 2010.

: )

summerday

Hello,

The venues in my area where you can have a civil ceremony and reception on the same site are all pretty expensive, so to try to keep to our budget I am thinking of going ahead with the venue which seems just perfect, and they let you use your own caterers and supply drink with no corkage fee. So, we were thinking that we could get married later in the day and just have a buffet for the meal as a sit down meal would be out of the budget with the venue hire being so high. But would it feel a bit wrong to have the only meal, do you think? And how do you think we could get the speeches in/ at what time this way?

Finding it so hard to get my head around all this, any comments gratefully received, sarah