Wedding Tips start here...

chocolatecupcake_2

hello everyone, i'm new here too, but have been reading the messages in this forum with great interest. I'm getting married in November of this year although my parents are trying to get us to move it to September or October of this year!!

We are going to have 2 weddings because my family is Hindu and Indian background and my OH is from an English Background. My parents are paying for the Indian wedding and we will pay for a registry marriage and reception......I am having a bit of a panic as there is so much to organise and its appears so little time!

I feel as though I have no say in how the traditional Indian wedding will be - I want it t be perfect, as it will be the main celebration, but I feel that what we want doesn't appear to matter and because we can't afford to contribute to this bit, we can't say too much....aaaaaaaaanyway..... we need to do the English bit as cheaply as possible.

Its the food bit thats giving me grief.....at the moment we have booked a 3pm time for the registry office, this was the latest time we could get. We have a function room above a pub booked (its a really lovely room and where OH proposed) but thats at 7pm....not sure what we should do between 3.30pm and 7pm......

We were going to put on a buffet late evening, but realised that people that come to the actually ceremony will need feeding and drinking between 3.30 and 8.30pm

Any ideas? Our whole budget for the English wedding is about £1200 and that needs to include everything such as venue hire, hire of DJ decks, food, decorations.

So far, the costs are:
Venue Hire £300
Decks £125
Staff £50

I am looking at alternative venues, as this one says we can't provide our own food. They are charging £17 a head for the buffet and we have about 100 guests we want to invite

Thank you for reading

lynn.roberts

choclatecupcake.....have you thought of hiering a comunity center? Then you can all contribute to the food so many people ask what they can do well if one does a load of mini sausages another does samosas...might keep price down. May I also suggest that you try for a photographer who does vouchers...mine does and people who dont know what to get give them the money then they get a gift card to give us but the photographer is cheeper. Wedding Cake try M&S they do basic cakes which you can build and far cheeper than having one made...they do ivory and white iceing fruit cake is available on the shelf and sponge or choclate need to be ordered a week before and have a 5 day shelf life but please check I may be wrong on the shelf life. may seem tight but let the guests get their own food as you will be feeding them later and afterall you will be just married(again! ) and time alone will be in short supply.
Try an offlicence they may hire glasses and you can do sale or return on alcahol unless you are friendly with a landlord. Decorations what about balloons you could fill with hellium(spelling rotton) which can be fun for adults when they start using it to talk and if they dont little ones will love them....I am letting the children take the balloons instead of getting favours for them. Do you need staff big table with food on and get on the mic to tell them its there...Paper plates so no breakages to pay for. try www.gethitched.co.uk you might find an alternative place to get married and have do in same place £17 is expensive for a buffet I am paying £20 for a sit down and wine. They are lending me a room free of charge to change to save on cars(would have been £200) My best advice is make sure you get people to do the work who you would have a cuppa with will take a lot of the stress out of it. Please make sure you tell groom when booking honeymoon he tells them it is a honeymoon and get travel agent to put it on booking form...you will probably get a nice fruit basket and maybe a bottle of fizzywine or better!
Hope this is of help

lynn.roberts

Invitations: If you make your ownwhich is really easy to do but dont know how to word the invite have a look at www.invitationdepot.com There are 36 pages with plenty of ways to invite anyone to your do!

kiddy_guy

Guys - any thoughts how I can produce a map for my guests to show them the way to the church and venue - tried wedding mapper but didn't work for me! Thanks!

littlel_3

My sister did mine for me, don't know what mapping site she used but all I did was put two maps on the day invites and one on the evening, with an arrow pointing in to where the venues were (they had local area in them) and then underneath I had all the local hotel names and numbers, we printed this on nice paper and they came out really nice, I could try and find out which mapping sight she used. Alot of people have sat navs now anyway, so will only need the road names.

shopaholic1373

kiddy_guy wrote: »

Guys - any thoughts how I can produce a map for my guests to show them the way to the church and venue - tried wedding mapper but didn't work for me! Thanks!

have you tried www.weddingpath.co.uk
you can make you own wedding web page it also has a wedding map on it for church ceremony and reseption
heres mine to give you some ideas guest can also rsvp on your site
http://cumminsandgoings.weddingpath.co.uk/200894

loulabelle44_2

This thread is amazing! So many ideas.

My H2B only proposed a week ago, so it's early doors for us. Planning to get married in 2009. I'm just starting to look into the wacky world of weddings, and already having heart failure looking at the cost of veunes and catering!
:shocked:

But no doubt I'll be going through the whole thread when I have some spare time.

mirrorimage0

:T congrats to you and hubby to be, there is loads of stuff of on here , ideas and cheap ways of doing things, just ask for advice on what your looking for and which area you are helps too, 2009 isnt that long away in wedding terms hun so the earlier you start planning the more you can spread your payments out. x hope you enjoy:beer:

jellybean78

Passing on the savings if you're thinking of buying from here (it's an aladdin's cave of bits and bobs, you'll be spoilt for choice!).
www.confetti.co.uk - enter promo code AFF0508. Assume this is for the whole of May judging by the code name.
Happy shopping!

MsChazzer

SuzanneWW wrote: »

Barnardos sell NEW wedding outfits that have been donated to them by maufacturers and bridal boutiques. You can pick up a dress for half the RRP or less. See if you have one in your area.

There's one about 5 minutes walk from my house in Edinburgh, must go and have a look sometime, our one you need to make an appointment to go in, don't know if that is the same for all of them.