Wedding Tips start here...

Claire_Manc

Hi All,

My first post but wanted to share with you my saving tips.

Firstly, valid until the 19th June 2010, Argos are selling a 2mm platinum D shaped ladies wedding band for £99.99. Usual price is £149.99, so a great saving and cheaper than anywhere else I have looked.

Secondly, we are getting married on the 30th April 2011, and we are trying to do everything for under £5000, which on paper seems hard. We are having our reception at the Thistle Hotel in Manchester, and got our whole reception for £2000 which includes sit down meal for 50, evening buffet for 100, DJ, bridal suite to name but a few of the perks. Amazing value for money.

For flowers I have found a site called Sarahsflowers.com which do artifical flowers but the cost is so cheap. They were rated as the number one flower supplier in I think the wedding ideas mag. The bouquet I want will cost less than £50 and I can keep it forever.

All im stuck with at the moment is finding my wedding car. Maybe its just me trying to be prudent with money, but some of these companies seem to charge far too much for a car for a few hours.

Does anyone in the Manchester area know of any companies that are reasonably priced or does anyone have any ideas on how I can save money with this???

Also, need some advise on getting my wedding dress. Whats your thoughs on purchasing of the internet??? Can anyone recommend a good company to use? I have looked on Ebay and seen that there are lots of Ebay shops which seem to be based in China. Is this a good idea or something to be wary of???

Many thanks in advance and best of luck to you all.

Claire
:-)

alainax

Great thread!! Im getting married in January and my scrimpings so far include:

1. Getting married on a tuesday ( a sentimental date for us)
2. Geetin married in a historical ruined palace ( absolutely stunning) costing £800!
3. Reception in the local very nice bowling club £50 - who have given us full use of thier kitchen.
3. Step mum doing the catering - buffet style
4. Step mother in law to be doing the stationary ( its stunning!)
5. Bridesmaids dress from ebay, all worn once, not a mark on them four for £100!
6. flower girls dress rom TKmaxx, £15 each.

showtunesgirl

Claire_Manc wrote: »

Hi All,

My first post but wanted to share with you my saving tips.

Firstly, valid until the 19th June 2010, Argos are selling a 2mm platinum D shaped ladies wedding band for £99.99. Usual price is £149.99, so a great saving and cheaper than anywhere else I have looked.

Secondly, we are getting married on the 30th April 2011, and we are trying to do everything for under £5000, which on paper seems hard. We are having our reception at the Thistle Hotel in Manchester, and got our whole reception for £2000 which includes sit down meal for 50, evening buffet for 100, DJ, bridal suite to name but a few of the perks. Amazing value for money.

For flowers I have found a site called Sarahsflowers.com which do artifical flowers but the cost is so cheap. They were rated as the number one flower supplier in I think the wedding ideas mag. The bouquet I want will cost less than £50 and I can keep it forever.

All im stuck with at the moment is finding my wedding car. Maybe its just me trying to be prudent with money, but some of these companies seem to charge far too much for a car for a few hours.

Does anyone in the Manchester area know of any companies that are reasonably priced or does anyone have any ideas on how I can save money with this???

Also, need some advise on getting my wedding dress. Whats your thoughs on purchasing of the internet??? Can anyone recommend a good company to use? I have looked on Ebay and seen that there are lots of Ebay shops which seem to be based in China. Is this a good idea or something to be wary of???

Many thanks in advance and best of luck to you all.

Claire
:-)

With regards a wedding car, do you know of anyone with a nice car? We asked my distant cousin and good friend to drive me as he owns a very nice Mercedes.

And as for Ebay wedding shops, I can recommend Milly Bridal who trade as Cinderella's Bridal on Ebay.

dearbarbie

a great read, although surely some of this thread needs archiving! 2003?!

im getting married in 2012, wanting a may bank hol and the few venues i have approached (for working out our budget) have said a saturday on a bank hol won't cost anymore, but will just have a minimum guest limit. we're having quite a few people so should be okay!

mum bought my wedding dress as a gift

having a church wedding, booking date next weekend (being overly prepared but imagine a may bank hol is a very in-demand date...plus I live in London and am getting wed in Yorkshire...!

thats it so far

trying really hard to work out what to do next! all so expensive!!! loving the tips here...

kelster77

Hi, this is the first time I have looked at or replied to this forum, but after reading through many of your fab saving ideas, I wanted to share some of mine with you. We are getting married in September 2010 and only booked it 3 months ago. We did not have a particular budget, but I wanted to achieve it on as little as possible. The total has worked out at £3500 for absolutely everything (not homeymoon as our best man bought this as our present - whoop whoop)

1) Booked local registry office - May not be somes idea of perfect wedding ceremony venue, but the grounds of our local one iare beautiful and if we are lucky to get nice weather, will have fab photos

2) Hunt for venues that allow you to have your own catering. Some (most) of the ones I visited requested you to have their catering, and the prices for this were extortionate. Some wanted £15.00 per head for sausage rolls and mini eggs! Finally found a local sports ground with lovely room and grounds which charged £200 to hire and can bring your own catering. The drinks are less than pub prices, not like you get when booking in a hotel.

3) Dress - Bought in sale reduced from £750.00 to £375.00

4) Shoes - Found the ones I liked in Dune, then searched e-bay for a few weeks until someone posted some. They were £100 in Dune, but I paid £56.00 and they came with matching bag

5) Cake - I am having a cupcake tower (100 cakes) with a top tier for £150.00 and these will double as desserts. Know you can get cheaper cakes but had my heart set on one of these and at a wedding fair I went to, they wanted £1.95 per cupcake!!!

6) Decoration of venue - I was thinking of doing this myself or getting people to help but as it would mean people being there the morning of the wedding etc, I opted to pay someone to do this. I found a lovely company (acompleteweddingpackage.co.uk) who do this at a very reasonable price. Am having chair covers, table cloths, centrepeices, etc. Found their prices to much more reasonable than some others I looked at

7) Rings from Argos - Same quality that you would get elsewhere but at a fraction of the price. Got both rings for less than £160

8) Photographer - Was going to opt out of having one but found a professional photographer advertising on gumtree offering a 50% discount on wedding package. Paid £300 for all day coverage (including home visit in the morning) and this includes photos on CD at the end for you to get printed etc. Gumtree have some fantastic bargains on there.

9) Wedding invites - Went to Clinton cards and bought their packs of invites in the sale for 40p per pack (RRP was £8.99) so great saving. Been in there since and they still always seem to have some on sale.

10) Got RSVP cards, place setting cards (double up as menus), bubbles, favour boxes, personalised favours etc all from e-bay and they have cost next to nothing. Also people on e-bay are so helpful and willing to change/amend things for you to personalise etc

11) I really wanted a candy buffet and after seeing the prices to hire these (approx £250-£300), was thinking I would not be able to have one. Then thought, I can do this myself! Bought various jars, bowls etc from Poundland, 99p stores, TXMaxx and charity shops, did not spend more than £2.00 on any jar. Bought some gold ribbon to tie round these to make them look nicer and bought scoops from ebay. Then bought all the Pic n Mix sweets from an e-bay store and having all gold, white, yellow, brown sweets to tie in with my theme. Bought loads of sweets, got reduced postage and some free on special offer. All in all, my candy buffet has cost £70.00

Flowers - Free as sister-in-law to be was a florist

DJ - Free as relative is a DJ

Hair/Make-up - My friend is a hairdresser and doing this for me as a reduced fee, also as she enjoys doing make-up to, will do this for free!

I know that some people will be able to spend less, but I thought for what I have got (I cannot think of anything I have had to go without), I have done fantastic. It has just taken a little time and input from me rather than having to pay people to do things for you.

whitelipizzaner

When my daughter got married recently I was absolutely broke...and she expected me to pay for it all! Her dream dress was £4000...and so it went on.
I started to play, and managed to find excellent manufacturers, made the cake myself, did the flowers...and had never done anything like it before.
Inspired I have now set up a new online company, fairytale dreams, with a free weekly savings "how to" guide; reasonably priced, made-to-measure, fabulous wedding dresses, and I BUY THEM BACK after the wedding...FANTASTIC!

I know that I am right, because wedding shops are moaning about me on the internet - bring it on. They have ripped off brides for too long.

whitelipizzaner

showtunesgirl wrote: »

With regards a wedding car, do you know of anyone with a nice car? We asked my distant cousin and good friend to drive me as he owns a very nice Mercedes.

And as for Ebay wedding shops, I can recommend Milly Bridal who trade as Cinderella's Bridal on Ebay.

I had similar issues when my daughter got married. Now I have set up a new online wedding dress shop fairytale dreams. I charge reasonable prices, and BUY BACK after the wedding...even offering a TRY AT HOME service before you buy!

showtunesgirl

whitelipizzaner = :spam:

Giles23

Athome1 wrote: »

Hello everyone:wave:

Please can you help with some ideas for gold wrapped sweets other than Frara Roche (sorry can't spell it!) or the hard toffees used to flavour vodka? Am helping to organise a wedding and my bit is to decorate the tables. I'm doing balloons and platters with gold wrapped sweets and jelly beans and a scattering of tiny cupids, hearts and balloon shaped cut outs (raided from my craft box:p)

Cheers:beer:

my sister just showed me a Heston Blumenthal - Style ingrediente which allows you to gold-plate any food or clear drink you like. It's totally non-chemical and healthy and you can use it to cover pretty much anything in gold. And the other little gold balls you mean are Ferrero Rocher - I know because I just ate one..!:)

Giles23

Ok, quick update from my side. We have agreed on the wedding to happen next August so still some time to go. Got a few things out of the way to spread the cost a bit, we got a used dress which a friend of my fianc!e will change for her so it looks like a totally different (and therefor new) one. Phew - that was a big one out of the way and only cost GBP 350.00.
We got our rings from http://www.weddingrings-direct.com/ - the guys there were really helpful and we got two platinum rings for under 1k which according to our research is pretty good. But more important than the price was the quality of the service and the goods - would have happily paid more for them, the rings are fabulous. Just need to make sure we don't lose too much weight now till the wedding..
Last but not least I would like to share a wicked website full of good ideas http://www.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!/ (the link was edited out, sorry. no idea why. google for cheap wedding success and you will find it) this looks like the real thing and we got some good links to other websites from there and some really good ideas for the decorations as well.
Hope this helps, all the best with your planning..
Giles