Wedding Tips start here...

Rate_tart?_sticks_and_stones.....

Can anyone give me any advice about menu planning for a sit down dinner for 130 wedding guests? We have chosen our local golf club, for the size of the dance floor and very reasonable bar prices. The food is of a reasonable standard normally but I am a little apprehensive about their ability to manage mass catering without having overcooked meat and mushy veg and quite a few of our guests are 'foodies'. Any suggestions would be most welcome. ???

shadow1_2

I went to an exhibition last week, as i am getting married next year. You can find all that you want from these Wedding Exhibitions. Whilst i was there i saw a beautiful white dove in a presentation display cage, i went over to enquire and was surprised to be told that the white doves were to release on the day of the wedding to show the symbol of love. I have got one of their information packs and i was pleasantly surprised, on what a great deal it was. Here is there email if anyone else is interested classicdoves@ntlworld.com

Jo4

I wish this site had existed when I got married, 4th September 1998! Our wedding cost over £14,000, but I would do it all again although with the help of this site it would probably cost at the most half of what we paid!!! It was your everyday wedding, nothing spectacular but what we wanted.

We had a horse and carriage to take Dadand I to the Church, 2 Rolls Royce to take our 4 bridesmaids (I have 4 sisters) and 2 flowergirls (I had only 2 nieces then), flowers at the Church, videoman (who recorded me going to the Church in the carriage and me and hubby coming from the Church going part of the way to the reception), photographer (cost £1400, for album, big photo and frame for wall, was supposed to cost £600) 200 guests at the reception in a hotel, my gown was £1200 reduced to £650 in a sale, hired all the mens suits (5 men, 2 pageboys), bought bridesmaids dresses and sold them on again, Cake cost £295 (was 6 tiers, 2 on the left, 2 in the middle and 2 on the right, the one in the middle had a fountain underneath with the colour of water in it which our bridesmaids wore, on top of the middle 2 was the Church we got married in done in icing and us outside it, the 2 on the left and the 2 on the right had stairs sprayed the same colour as part of my gown, which were going up to the Church, on each of the stairs where 2 bridesmaids and 2 groomsmen and each side of the tiers was done with the identical celtic design that were on our wedding invitations), wedding invitaions, thankyous .... cost less than £300, Honeymoon was to Gran Canaria only cost £600 and the list goes on!

Anyway the point I am trying to make is that we did cut corners but obviously if this site had existed we would probably have had to spend less! Six years on almost and yes we are still together except even happier than the day we got married which we didn't think possible!!! :-[ We don't have children yet which may be why we are still happy according to some people. Although we knew each other for 4 1/2 years before we started going out, then we got engaged after 3 1/2 months of going out and married when we were engaged 5 1/2 years.

Good luck to anyone getting married and congratulations to those who have just got married!

LyndaG_2

The dress I want was £1500 and I got an exact copy made and two bridemaides dreess made for £600, could have done this a bit cheaper by getting girls dresses from Moonsoon factory shop, but because saved so much money elsewhere we could afford it.

Em,

I would love to know where you found a tailor to make the copy dress getting married in 2006 and don't want to pay silly money for a dress for 1 day! Also where is the moonsoon factory shop for Bridesmaids dresses?
thanks

Lxx

jonathancridge

Free software for making invitations, order of service, thank you cards etc...

http://www.download.com/Serif-PagePlus/3000-6675-10183725.html?tag=lst-0-2

A nag might appear when loading application but you can close this.

gemmie_2

Hi, just read all the useful information about weddings. as Im getting married in june 2006.

An extra note to the wedding dress tip and debenhams. In addition to getting the 10% off when you open a store card, if you do it while there is a blue cross sale on you can get a further discount of 25%. The max price of a debenhams dress is 250 pounds. My dress was already on sale because it was coming to the end of the line (debenhams change there wedding dresses in december) and then it got reduced further in a blue cross sale and to top it off. I got 10% off when I opened a store card.

Hope this helps

P.s. I got my dress and two brides maid dresses for a total of 175 pounds.

sally_pearson

A tip about flowers. My sister in law got her flowers from our local green grocer and they were absolutely perfect and about a third of them price quoted elsewhere. I'll be going there. but I'd rather go to a flower market and do my own so if anyone knows a market in the north east, tyne and wear I would really like to know.

lynneinjapan

Just got engaged and starting to make wedding plans. I've found this thread invaluable - thanks everyone for all your tips!

We got engaged (in Windermere - the lake, not the town!) on Friday 13th August, and I was also born on Fri 13th, so - after reading this thread - we're considering going for a Fri 13th wedding day. That means either May 2005 or Jan/Oct 2006. Unfortunately I'm a teacher so these dates could be a little difficult!

Jay-Jay_4

Just decided to get married and as it's second time around for me it's going to be different.

My first weding was the typical stereotype, frock, cake, cars, hired suits, too many guests, church, meal for 70 reception for 150 and an interfering mother-in-law who organised a scottish piper and a football mascot! (a man dressed as a lion...i kid you not!) It ended in divorce!!!

Having realised that the amount of money spent is not direcly proportionate to how happy you will be I have decided to do it a bit 'simpler' this time. I would be happy to marry my chap in register office dressed in a bin bag but as it's his first time we have to compomise.

We had fallen in love with a castle in the lakes but upon enquiry were told that the charges for exclusive use of the castle for a minimum of 30 guests was £2100!! After explaining what we wanted they came back with use of one room midweek for £970! still a bit pricey but it's a beautiful room and includes a 3 course meal. We can take our own wine for £2 ph corkage.

We're having a late ceremony (4.30pm) so we wont have a reception, instead we're paying for everyones accomodation within the castle grounds and we'll head back there after the meal for drinks. we're asking everyone to bring their favourite tipple for the evening.

The service, venue, meal and accomodation for all 18 guests pluss us will come in at around £1600 which is still a bit pricey but they'll all get a little holiday out of it too!

I'll be buying a dress from monsoon or in the jan sales, chappies bro will be playing the guitar as we walk in to the ceremony and there are no bridesmaids to pay for.

If you really want to cut costs and can bear to shorten your day, go for a later ceremony, that way you only have to feed/enterain everyone once!

Miss_Scrimp_n_Save

Hello!

I had my wedding just over a week ago (Sunday 15th August) and am still over analysing every detail of it with anyone who will listen!

One thing I will say is, remember to relax and enjoy the day. I was very calm leading up to the wedding ceremony etc, but once we were at the reception, I was constantly on the look out to make sure everything was happening as planned - in reality whether everything did go to plan or not didn't really matter as no one else knew things went wrong and they all loved it.

Even when a fuse went and all the lights went out during the meal I heard comments from people saying how romantic it was to eat by candlelight - they thought it was a planned thing!!

At the end of the day, my advice to anyone getting married would be to try as hard as possible to leave your 'party planner' role behind as you leave for the church and adopt the 'bride, who everyone is going to love' role!!

Also, make sure you get as many photos from your guests as possible - we have got as many brilliant photos from friends and family as we have from the photographer.

If your friends/family have digital cameras then get them to put them on a CD for you and then you can take it round to family and show it to them on a DVD player (ours automatically puts it into a slideshow for us - don't ask me how!) My other half has been taking our DVD player (one of our more generous wedding gifts) to all the grandparents to show them pictures which they have really appreciated!

Anyway, enough rambling. If you have a wedding coming up then enjoy it and relax!

Ms Thrift.....your wedding must be coming up soon - GOOD LUCK and have a GREAT DAY!