Wedding Tips start here...

dave_gill

How long in advance is it wise to start planning a wedding?
i.e. if I wantred to get married in the summertime - how long before would I (we) need to start organising things?

Any tips would be appreciated.

Jay-Jay_4

dave_gill wrote:

How long in advance is it wise to start planning a wedding?
i.e. if I wantred to get married in the summertime - how long before would I (we) need to start organising things?

Any tips would be appreciated.

As soon as possible really. The main thing is to book the church/registrar and place where you want the reception as these tend to be booked up especially if you want a weekend wedding in the summer. Some people book a couple of years before so the sooner you want to get married the sooner you need to decide where and when, and book your venues.

All the other stuff tends to be more flexible so you can organise things at shorter notice.

Slinky

LearningToSave. wrote:

does the venue you are having allow you to bring your own drink and charge corkage? although the corkage seems a lot at around £2-£3 a bottle on average its a lot cheaper than buying.

We've just changed our minds on the venue we originally booked. they wanted to charge £8 for corkage, and it was all 'you can't do this, you can't do that'. Felt that all I could do was turn up and be today's bird in the white frock, him today's bloke in the dark suit, and the following day it would all be somebody elses turn.

We've now booked to get married in a stately home where the organisers seem lovely, and the reception in a really lovely village hall where the only restriction is don't burn the building down.

ag359

This is my first post, so feel free to move it if its in the wrong place or whatever...

Anyone having a wedding in the sheffield area, I would highly recommend Whirlow Grange as a conference venue. I have no connection, other than that I have just had my wedding reception there, and it was superb value for money. It's owned by the diocese of sheffield, so is not in the business of making huge profits. It charges nothing for the hire of the reception rooms, so you only pay for food and drink, and that was really competitively priced at £20 per head for a three course meal, with 50% reductions for children under 16 (yes, 16!). The food was really good quality, and the setting is nice, with beautiful gardens. Their service was impeccable, and the quality (although I may be biased) was much better than a lot of weddings I have been to at golf clubs, country hotels etc. Overall the whole reception cost about £2000 in total, which included the use of the venue, a three course meal for 80 guests, and all the wine and champagne for the meal.

Basically much better value than anywhere else I looked, as most venues charged £500-1000 just for room hire!

Hope this is of use to someone...

alison6692

Hello

Just to let you know that cosmopolitan bride is offering a free bottle of anna sui LOVE 50ml if you take out a subscription this month. 1 year sub = £16.99 - thats six issues.

You need to quote ref: SA11 from cosmo bride oct/nov 05

love alison

p.s free offer for pout lipgloss for cosmobrides in this editon too.

Slinky

There is a huge sale in The Designer Room at Dickins and Jones in Regent St, London. I wandered in there just for a quick look yesterday, discovered the sale by accident and bought myself a dress which would have cost £1749 for £1019 including alterations.

It's absolutely fabulous and I would never have been able to afford it at full price.

They've got a huge selection, some much cheaper, so go take a look in your local D&J

lynneinjapan

We ended up having just three hand-tied bouquets (one for me and slightly smaller ones for my two bridesmaids) and cheap glass vases which we left on the top table and put the flowers in just before we sat down for the meal, so they doubled as table decorations. Didn't bother with any decorations at all on the guests' tables, and I doubt whether anyone missed them! It was a lovely venue though, and didn't really need any additional decoration.

As the guests arrived, along with music playing, we had a PowerPoint slideshow running, and I'm told that that went down very well. I'd started preparing it months before with a selection of pictures of family (going back as far as our parents' weddings) and friends. It was all animated so that you got a few seconds to look at each picture and decide who it was before the caption appeared. We provided a laptop to run the slideshow but the venue supplied the data projector and screen; if you use a venue that also hosts conferences and suchlike then they're bound to have this equipment available. It's a nice personal touch that keeps people entertained and doesn't cost anything at all, apart from a few hours to put it together. (Of course, you do need to have access to a laptop and you'll probably need a scanner for the older photos.) If you'd like to see the slideshow then you can PM me and I'll give you the link. It's quite big though, about 4MB, so will take a while to download.

MyLittlePony

Hey All,

Has anyone gotten married in Uganda? I realise it's probably not a top 10 destination for such events but just in case someone has I'd like to hear how they managed to organise it and how much it ended up costing them.

My fiance and I are planning to get married there next summer (he asked me to marry him while we were on the Great Wall of China so it followed that we should go somewhere unusual for the main event and some of our affines are Ugandan) and we're just starting to think about the logistics of it all.

Let me know!

alison6692

Hello

is anyone a budding poet? we are thinking of asking our guests to include three songs they would like to hear and get the dj or band to play them. I was hoping to ask using a rhyme but all I can come up with is this

when you rsvp to this invite
we would love for you to write
three songs you would like to hear
...........???????

I thought this would be a good money saving idea instead of a DJ or to make a compilation cd of these songs to play whilst the band are resting.

Alison
x

Becles

It depends on the DJ!

If it's a decent DJ you'll be sent a questionnaire before your wedding asking what music you want, how involved you want the DJ to be, age range of guests etc. The music will be digitally stored so they won't be able to play your CD, but if you tell them in advance they will source a digital copy of the music for you.

My OH is a DJ and his motto is:
"cheap entertainment is rarely good......... quality entertainment is priceless"