Wedding Tips start here...

Getting_Better_With_Money_2

Hello all,

Well Best Beloved and I have finally set a date - December 2007 :j , so now the planning begins! I'm looking forward to reading all the tips on here as we will have a very tight budget. The two things I am most concerned about are venue and drinks! I want to be near to where we live so our choice of venue is somewhat limited and my probable choice has a VERY small bar -- It's what puts me off the place to be honest.

I don't yet know if they would allow us to sort out our own bar but here is where I get confused. I am planning to provide mulled wine as a first drink and drinks with the meal, but I would ideally like a decent paying bar for the evening -- Is there any way I can do this, how does it work and most importantly how much does it cost?? There will probably be between 100 -- 150 guests?

Has anyone got any ideas please?


Cheers :beer:

alison6692

Congratulations Getting_Better

I think you are going to have to go to the venue and discuss options - so this may mean shopping around. My venue won't offer corkage so I am paying alot of money. However you can shop around. As every venue is so differnet it is difficult to advise you on your questions. Sorry
x


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Just to let you all know I have found a fab site

http://www.charactercreations.co.uk

The lady does wedding toppers (mounted on wooden plaque - so you can keep it) for £15. She doesn't have picture on her website but I am sure she will be able to email a pic for you. They look fab.

Alison
xxx

Also I am using a fab person to do my invites. PM me with your email if anyone would like her email.

pootle55_2

We got married in Cuba with a few close family and friends, it cost £950 each and all we had to organise was what we were going to wear. As it was hot we had the men in a Hawaiian shirt and comfy trousers theme, and I bought my wedding dress for £160 from a little shop in london, nr Oxford Circus tube station called Ashley Love Bridal. They have a website which is Ashleylovebridal.com and all of the dresses are made to your size in the colour you would like and the service was excellent, much better than Debenhams. The flowers, decoration of wedding location and evening reception was all included in the price of the holiday. Also this was our honeymoon so we didnt have the cost of a holiday on top. When we got home we had a big party to celebrate our wedding where everyone who could not afford to come with us could join us there. The party was held in a local club, so if we paid for £500 of food we had the room and DJ for free. The drinks were very cheap so we put some money behind the bar and it lasted a very long time, so virtually everyone got free drinks all night. Everyone was happy, we all saved loads of money!

rainee

can highly recommend the tesco wedding cakes. i bought one for my text door neighbours 60th wedding anniversary last week and we had some yesterday very moist fruit white marzipan and the icing was yummy my daughter had 5 pieces!!

rainee

i forgot to add get your vino from tesco @ calais we got ours last week i'd emailed them and got 10% off as it was a wedding plus got 12 free bottles of wine too

Contains_Mild_Peril

My wedding (back in 1992) was a low-budget one, but I made the mistake of letting relatives pay for things that I hadn't tested; my mother payed for the venue's own buffet when I'd originally planned to do my own, but since she offered to pay for the venue to do it, I agreed to save money. I had never tried their buffet food before. It was awful. Apparently there was a misunderstanding about what time it was required for, so it was put out too early, with only paper towel stuff to cover it. When it was served, the sandwiches were hard, the crisps were soft, everything else was burnt, and there was hardly any vegetarian food even though this had been specifically requested. Luckily my mum brought a few extras herself, so there was at least a little decent food.
We also let my mother-in-law pay for a "singer" she knows to perform, even though I hadn't heard him. He was also awful. Apparently pubs sometimes actually pay for him to perfrom, and I still have no clue why! We also had a very good disco, which the DJs, who were friends of ours, did for next to nothing, but I didn't want to offend my new mother-in-law by asking the singer to go away and let us have more of the disco.
The thing that really infuriated me was when my well-meaning future mother-in-law got us a wedding cake as a surprise. My grandfather, a retired baker, traditionally makes the wedding cakes in our family, and he makes the most gorgeous cakes: so it was one of those occasions when the words "you shouldn't have" are taken as a nicety, but I really meant she shouldn't have!
It was mostly a lovely wedding, though. My mum helped me do my hair, and I made the posies from dried flowers bought from a supermarket, which I arranged and tied with white ribbon. I declined a kind offer of a loan of artificial flowers, which I don't really like, but fresh flowers were too expensive.
More of the white ribbon was applied to hubby's brother's friend's white car to make a suitable wedding car.
My dress and veil were bought from ad in the local paper, and cost £45. I was able to try it on before I bought it, and my mum had it taken up for me since I'm rather petite. I got a headdress from Oxfam for £2.50, and a pair of white shoes for 50p. If I recall correctly, I think I bought the invitations from a car boot sale! We didn't have a professional photographer, but I got some lovely photos from relatives.
Having relatives and friends provide wedding goods and services as presents is usually a good idea, particularly if you have friends/relatives with relevant talents (e.g. hairdresser, baker, photographer) but I would advise you to make sure you know what you're getting. Go and listen to a DJ/musician/band before booking, sample the food you're thinking of ordering, look at the photographer's previous work, etc.

lynneinjapan

It's already nearly two months since my wedding - doesn't time fly?!

alanalea, it sounds as if you used waimanman for your dress too! Am I right? Send me a PM and I'll show you mine if you show me yours!

***PHOTO ALBUM SUGGESTION***

Potentially useful if you have lots of nice wedding photos from different sources and aren't quite sure how best to display them...

Since my wedding, I've been spending a disproportionate number of hours working on a MemoryBook from Snapfish. You know those mega-expensive Italian coffee-table wedding photo books you can get? Well, this is a much cheaper version of more or less the same thing - by which I mean that they cost about £20 as opposed to £1000ish! There's a 25% discount for duplicate albums so we should be able to get an album for ourselves, and a duplicate for each set of parents, for under £60 in total, including postage. I haven't yet had the books printed (see below) so I can't yet vouch for the product, but will post again when I have an update.

(There are several companies offering similar services nowadays but I thought this one looked like the best combination of quality and price - the cheaper ones often tend to be spiral-bound, which wasn't what I wanted for a wedding album, whereas these ones are linen-bound hardback books, just under A4 size, with a choice of colours.)

They don't do fancy stuff like bleeding photos off the edge of the page, and they only offer a limited selection of page layouts. However, I've been using Paintshop to make up montages of several photos for some pages, and uploading each montage as a single JPEG file so that as far as Snapfish is concerned it's a single photo, but when it's printed there will be several different pictures on the page. This has allowed me to include stitched-together panoramic pictures and a copy of the seating plan, among other things.

Still trying to iron out some difficulties though, as my montages are appearing truncated when I put them on the page, and the Snapfish Help people are taking an awful long time to tell me what aspect ratio (width vs height) I should be using. Their pricing is ambiguous too - I'm sure I shouldn't be charged more than the basic £19.99 for my book, as the minimum number of pages is 20 and there's no extra charge for double-sided printing, but they're trying to charge me £33.40 because the site says my book has 38 pages, so I'm questioning that too. It has 37 SIDES but only 20 SHEETS, hence the confusion - their info page seems to use "pages" for both. I reckon it's still not bad value though, especially with the discount for duplicate copies.

alison6692

Can anyone reccomend a band ? or DJ. I am in Hampshire although I don't think it matters as most of them travel.

Thanks in advance.

..... XXX..........XXX..............XXX..........XXX..........XXX

Just because I am having a quiet night

Here are my Top Ten Wedding Favours for under £1 per person.

1. Fortune Telling Fish. 10p each. Bargain.
https://www.partybox.co.uk

2. Personalised fortune cookies. £85 for 300 you can find them for similar price in smaller quantities by googling.
http://www.candydesigner.co.uk/acatalog/Personalised_Fortune_Cookies.html

3.Seeds in an envelope with a lovely rhyme (see my previous posts for ideas about wedding rhymes to print on the envelope).

4. Shot glasses (which you could use as a toast with a difference, use flavoured vodka...very yummy) and then use glass paints to write peoples names on them and they double up as place names.
I am finding it hard to find online sites for cheap shot glasses but I have seen sets of 4 or 6 in pound shops.

5. Currently in Tesco they have this range of cracked glass effect tableware. One of the things they have is a T light holder which is under one pound. You could tie lovely ribbon around them or personalise or just simply decorate for your guests to take home PLUS buy the matching vases which are about £2.99 for the tables so it all looks co-ordinated.

6. Some lovely smellies at boots

http://www.boots.com/shop/product_details.jsp?productid=1062704

or

http://www.boots.com/shop/product_details.jsp?productid=1003648&classificationid=1039234&slmRefer=000

These are a total bargain and work out at 25p each tub of bath crystals

7. Great for a Christmas wedding - Individual tree decorations. You can pick up lovely ones in the supermarkets, local craft fayres, disney store, ebay. You can colour coordinate them to go with your theme.

8. This will need some helps from family and friends but how about asking everyone to keep jam jars and then filling them up with sweets - Then add your own personalised label.

9. Add a raffle ticket to each place name and then at the end of the grooms speech he can pull out the winning ticket which is - A round of drinks? Bottle of Champers for that table? With the raffle ticket you attach a little rhyme saying thanks to your guests.

something like this

It means so much to us
to have you here today,
that we wanted to say Thank You
in a very special way

Though this little gift could never
repay you what we owe
for your time, your love and friendship
please take it as you go


10. Hershey kisses seem to be all the rage in the US and I found this little rhyme to go with them
"We thank you for coming,
with a spoonful of kisses,
to bless our beginning,
as Mr. and Mrs.!"


Alison
xxx

ps. hope this makes sense I have been awake all night and am feeling sleep deprived now.

Becles

alison6692 wrote:

Can anyone reccomend a band ? or DJ. I am in Hampshire although I don't think it matters as most of them travel.

Have you tried this site?
http://www.mobilediscodirectory.co.uk/

It's professional DJ's, so they might not be the cheapest but they will offer a quality service. Many have decent lighting rigs, digitally stored music (no scratched CD's!), and the relevant insurances such as PLI and PAT tested equipment.

alison6692

Found these wedding parasols

£9.99

http://www.dotcomgiftshop.com/shopdisplayproducts.asp?id=27&cat=Gifts+for+her

I love this site for all things girlie, they have the best chocolate candles.