Wedding Tips start here...

laura_k_3

Hi, I'm saving up for my wedding (no official date set yet, waiting until we've both finished Uni and have been in steady jobs for at least year) and I want to make the saving as memorable as the wedding itself - sooooooo, I need ideas! Anything crazy is welcome!! (not humiliating though - I don't think I'd be able to find any chicken suits!!!) So far we have £514 and want to raise at least £10,000, so we have quite a way to go!!!
Any help would be very much appreciated!!!
Love you all!!

mountainofdebt

Now I know a girl wants only the best when she gets married but please think very seriously about spending £10K on one day.

That is a serious amount of money.

jo_jo_7

Hi Pookie, for my hen party my bridesmaid enlarged my baby photos and got them made into place mats at my hen night dinner. Was v. embarrasing as it was a posh restaurant but think it's a good idea! My friends also bought me a little pressie each which would come in handy on my wedding day like white slippers for under my dress when my feet got sore, miniture perfume, etc. Was very sweet of them!

newlywed

You can have a lovely wedding for less than half that.

We spent about £4K and that included honeymoon. Check out the wedding tips and look at ways you can cut down.

Nearer the time, see if any relatives or friends have a nice car and can drive you or the wedding party to the venue.

Get a nice cake stand from ebay and a M&S cake and get the florist to add fresh flowers to top it (or decorate it yourself). You can sell the cake stand on ebay again later - we did, easily.

Seriously, it is just one day and we decided to spend money making our home nice, as we are staying there for a long time.

youngie

getting married is about declaring your love and comitment to each other you don't need to spend that sort of money epecially as you haven't actually got it, have alovely day but don't go overboard,a wedding on a tight budget can be much more personal a real day to remember,get friends and family to muck in to make it a very personal affair

black-saturn

I'm getting married next year and the whole day is costing about £1,000 which still seems like a lot to me. Thats including the clothes, reception, venue, transport, flowers, cake and everything.

gooismeid

Re: clothes, if you want a traditional "meringue"-type dress, check out ebay. Or there are rental shops for wedding dresses - and near where I work, in Cheadle in Cheshire, there's a charity shop with a specialist bridal department! It's St. Ann's Hospice shop on Cheadle High Street, but I'm sure there are other charity shops which do similar things. If you find a dress that you like but it's not the right size, a competent dressmaker can alter it for you. Otherwise, pick an outfit you'll use again, or do what my sister-in-law did and go to a sari shop, pick out some gorgeous fabric and get someone who can sew (i.e. me, in this case!) to make you something unique for a fraction of the cost of an off-the-peg thing from Pronuptia. As youngie says, it's a day about declaring your love, and nobody will notice if you don't have favours, disposable cameras, matching table decorations and confetti and a string quartet. Weddings seem to have turned into some kind of competition as to who can spend the most money these days.

foxy-lady

Congratulations Laura! I have to agree with the others that £10,000 is very excessive. Some people think that the more they spend the more they love each other.
The 'marriage' is more important than the 'wedding'

xx

[Deleted User]

I'm gonna sit in the 'not a tight !!!! camp' - yes, i know this site is about money saving but i've been to a 45K,25K,10K and 3K wedding and I know which was the best (actually the 25K wedding, the food was naff at the 45K one)

Now, i started my graduate job in 2003, it wasn't on a great salary but it was ok, about 18k. I've saved up 12K in the last 4 years on my own (that doesn't include paying off a 2k overdraft and a 3k student loan.. so more likee 17K, if there were 2 of you doing it, you could save 10K in a couple of years of work if you are commit to it.

Personally, i did some websites at weekends to boost up my savings. Think what you are good at and how you could sell that.

Also, ask your parents if they can give you any money towards it.. you never know, they might

cupid_s

I hope you manage to save loads laura.

If you can save 10k and want to spend it on a wedding and can do so without getting into debt then go ahead. We spent about 9.5k but almost half of that was the honeymoon.

But we'd already saved 30k for a deposit for a house and we asked for vouchers as wedding presents and that bought almost everything for our new house.

We are now saving like mad to pay off our mortgage and I often say to OH does he wish we hadn't spent over 15k in 9 months on a wedding and 2 holidays. And we both agree it was the best day of our lives and we are completely happy to have spent what we did as things couldn't have been more perfect. Everyone we know has spent way more than us so we thought £9500 was a bargain! OHs cousin had got married the year before us and spent 3 times what we did. I hadn't found MSE at the time and honestly thought I was doing it on the cheap! Though 5k on a wedding not including honeymoon isn't bad I think.

Even though we'd have less mortgage now I wouldn't change anything we did.

Now about saving money. Firstly, boring I know, check out the OS board and things like that to cut down on what you spend already. Make presents. We've been busy making all the flavoured vodkas recently (mint, foxes glacier fruit, aniseed twist, lemon sherbet, rhubarb and custard and werthers original so far) and loads of people have liked them so much they've ended up taking bottles home with them after visits so we'll maybe give some for presents next year.

Then could you arrange something, such as a murdery mystery night or something similar, write the script, charge for tickets, put on food and rope in the local theatre group (or your friends and family) to act the parts in exchange for food and maybe a small donation to the group - maybe in the local village hall which is usually cheap enough to hire. Would be great fun. Some people we know did this when raising money to fund a charity kilimanjaro (sp?) climb and they did really well.

What about getting people to sponsor you to do something such as climb a mountain or run a marathon for example. Half money goes to charity half towards wedding maybe. Or set an amount you want to raise for charity and everything else is yours for wedding.

I'll see if I can think of anything else. It's great you're trying to save the money. Remember getting into debt to pay for a wedding is definately not the best start for married life.