Wedding Tips start here...

zappomatic

nh wrote:

But they charge your guests £3.50 each for delivery, which is BAD... but my sister had hers at Debs and I don't think anyone was that bothered about the £3.50 - it is a bit of a shock when you get to the payment page though!

I think you get a percentage of your gifts' worth back in vouchers as well don't you? I am having mine at John Lewis and even though they don't charge for delivery my gran said: "John Lewis, it's expensive there!"

You can't win!

She needs educating! John Lewis is usually cheaper than Debenhams for like items, what with being 'never knowingly undersold', especially when you add that nasty £3.50 charge to Debenham's prices. I've also heard of people buying in store being talked into paying a further £3.50 for gift wrap.

Admittedly my view may be biased as I work in the Gift List department at John Lewis Oxford Street, but I do personally believe we have the best wedding list product, both in terms of value for money and service; we get quite a few people who defect from us after being treated badly be Debenhams. And our free cakes are much better than what Debenhams serve up in their motorway service station style restaurant :rotfl:

kowalski_2

Hi everyone!
Like many others I have also been reading the threads but as yet have not commented!
I am getting married on October 22nd this year and all of a sudden it seems very close (have been engaged for two years!)
We have made our invitations and order of services ourselves, good old ebay for paper, leaves, glue, envelopes, card etc! (total cost about £60 for 60+ invitations and 120 order of services)
I am also doing the table decorations myself. We saved so much on the invitations and other bits and pieces we splashed out and had silver wire flowers made by a lovey lady in Canada (H2Okay Creative), we have bought vases and stones from Ikea sale and will make them up well in advance of the wedding as there are no flowers to die in the arrangement!

My dress was bought in the sale from a local dress shop (Cloud9 bridal, Cheam) and they are including the alterations in the price!

We are having a buffet meal at a local pub with function room and it is costing £12 per head!

I am only having one bridesmaid (older) and my Mum is marrying me!
It is in my church so is costing £80 including the flowers in the church, choir and organist!

We are not having a gift list but are asking people for Thomas Cook vouchers so we can have a big honeymoon/holiday the folowing Easter (3 weeks in New Zealand - if anyone knows any must visit place please let us know!!!!)


Good luck to all those who are due to get/are just married or have been married for years!

Can't wait for my wedding! Just have to get the groom a suit now!

kowalski_2

Just remembered also got free stickers for address labels for wedding invites (from freebies bit of MSE) from Avery I got 3 free sheets of labels to use in my printer. I needed another 5 sheets so emailed Avery asking where i could buy 5 sheets from as they were only available in packs of 25 in the shops. The lovely people at Avery sent me 7 sheets in the post within a week!

Bless 'em

The Avery sticker thread is still on the freebies bit of the chats! Tried to include link but having a blonde day! Will attempt again later!

Attempt 2...
Look I did it!!!

http://www.avery.co.uk/uk1/forms/form1.jsp

carriec_2

Well I have just got married and the whole time I was planing it, I could'nt stop thinking how can I do this cheaper. Believe it or not my whole day cost about £200
That included the service, my dress, his suite, rings, hair do, & meal.
For the service it cost the most at £75
My dress I hired and got with it ear rings, neckless, bracelet, handbag all for £40
His suite we bought in a sale for £30
Rings were just plain and we went for sliver Im not in2 Gold @ £10 each
Hair do just got it put up £30
Meal was payed for us as a present.
As for Photo's we took are own and will edit them when we go to get them printed.
My wedding was small but perfect.
I enjoyed it more cause I kept thinking of my saving.

JessicaFishy

Wah..my first entry.. hope this works...
Kowalski- re NZ honeymoon destinations- pm me with whereabouts you are planning to go in the country and i should be able to give you a few extra places 'off the beaten track'...
as this is my first entry, im assuming this whole pm thing will be easy to figure out...!
Good luck to all you ladies getting married- it is all a bit daunting i must admit!! Good to have all these handy tips though- Im getting married in the new year but have a lot to organise!! :T

Mrs_Thrift

Congratulations to carriec on your marriage, and to JessicaFishy for your upcoming marriage, and welcome to the boards!

Noozan

I got my wedding dress today! It's a gorgeous ivory satin, strapless, princess line dress. It has an emroidered panel that "swirls" around the top, across a bit of the back and slightly down one of the side panels.

It's an ex display dress though and the bottom few inches is quite dirty and marked from being trailed across the fitting room floors. It fits perfectly in the actual body and since I'm just under 5 foot tall I'll need loads of it hacked off to get the right length, so the doirty bits will be gone.

The best bit is that it was reduced from £899 to £99 in the Berketex sale :j

Katgoddess

Hire a "premium" car for the whole weekend from somewhere like Hertz. Or even two cars. One for bride, one for groom.

Then persuade a non drinker to drive you to and from the venue etc.

The driver feels important to be part of your wedding, and gets to drive a flash car. He can do what he likes with it on the Sunday!

Probably for the same price as hiring a limo.

lilac_cat

I got married a few months ago after using some tips from this fabulous website, I would recommend the following:
https://www.bridesdreams.co.uk for silk flowers, i wanted some blue one's and they were proving hard to find, but this site had some that were perfect. got mine & bridesmaid's bouquet, 12 bottonholes, 2 corsages, cake top & misc flowers for under 50 squids (look in the bargin basement)!
Also had problems findin my dress as I did'nt want all white/cream. Found a perfect skirt/bodice in a fancy dress hire shop which does evening wear (in the sale!) then went back a few weeks later & got the bridesmaid one to compliment my own (also in the sale).
We booked our reception in the campanile hotel near us, which had a little french bistro restaurant - they closed it to the public and let us have it for as long as we wanted, the food was lovely & nothing was too much trouble - whole bill came to £250 for 18 3-course meals, wine & drinks.
hope this helps someone.........

Love_Weddings

I have posted this on a separate thread, and then realised it would have been more useful on this sticky - apologies for duplicating

Hi all

I checked with the moderator before posting out of courtesy as I am a partner in the following site, and they were happy for me post.

One great way of saving money on your wedding budget is to consider second hand, or surplus wedding items from another bride and couple. Remember, a wedding dress may only have been worn for 5 or 6 hours and if professionally cleaned you would find it hard to tell. Also lots of people buy things for their wedding and find they never use them, or buy too many and then sell them on.

I know this doesn't suit everyone, but for those who want to keep an eye on the budget it's worth checking out our free to buy and sell board and you may even be able to recoup some of the costs after the wedding.

http://loveweddings.co.uk/weddingfo...wforum.php?f=10

Hope this helps someone