Wedding Tips start here...

Tondella

pookie wrote:

have just been to john lewis for ribbons as needed to show MIL/ flower lady/ aunt who's helping my colour combination and none quite right on e-bay. does anyone know any cheap websites etc. that i can get ribbon from (my colours are pretty specific, unfortunately)? i need 3mm wide ribbon...

pookie, I'm lucky enough to live in london and there is a fabulous ribbon/haberdashery store here called VV Rouleaux
http://www.vvrouleaux.com/
I plan to get all my cake ribbons, bouquet ribbons and a sah for my gown from here, they have an excellent range of colours, widths and textures and do mail order. Having just looked on their site it looks like they have stores in newcastle and glasgow too.

Tondella

Hi Guys

well we started the new year by toasting the year in which we will be getting married. So I've been doing a little internet investigations this morning. It's going to be a money saving wedding in the sense that not everything will be the cheapest possible but the money will be spent where it makes a difference and not on frippery. We tried out our trial wedding cake over christmas (made by OH and I) and were really knocked over at how lovely it tasted, so that's us committed to making our wedding cakes (though we may pay to have it professionally iced, it looked a little rustic!). Cake will be served as dessert so we only pay for two courses, I've persuaded OH to settle for a lovely sparkling wine instead of champers (actually Rick Stein persuaded him after he did an excellent review of English sparkling wines), I'm going to attend a bridal bouquet course at my local college so i can make mine and my one bridesmaid's bouquets using flowers bought wholesale from a flower market; we're washing out bon marche jam jars for vases at the wedding; gearing up to making our wedding invites (though at loggerheadds over the design) and going to use small brown envelopes of forget me not seeds as wedding favours.

I found this website http://www.frugalbride.com, which alothough canadian (making the links to providers useless) they have great tips for making your own favours, bouquets etc etc.

Happy new year to all you 2006 brides and grooms!!

nickangel_2

Hello there, I'm making a BBC documentary about frugal livers, and would love to be able to feature a couple who are planning to get married on a budget in January or early February 2006. If you fit the bill, and if you'd be interested in talking to me, please email nick.angel@centuryfilmsltd.com - remember to leave a telephone number and say where you're from! - or call the office on 020 7378 6106, or my mobile on 07770 632 122. I'll call you straight back.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Nick

emmajg

I was on a budget with my wedding (May 04) I think I spent just about £2k but £1k was the day & evening reception.

Luckily my hobby is origami so I made all my invites, favours boxes, menus and name places.
I wanted real roses for my hair but I couldn't find any I liked so I made some out of paper.
http://www.powerofmoo.com/ourwedding.html

I got some good deals at http://www.confetti.co.uk/ as they have great sales! I've just bought a load of gift wrap for 10p a sheet when it was £1!

I was very lucky with my wedding dress from Monsoon. I was orginally going to get their store card as they gave back 10% in vouchers but I happened to walk past the store and they had a 75% off sale. I got my dress for £60 thou the matching shawl was full price at £65!

I hired the suits from Moss Bros and at the time they had a deal if you hired 4 suits you had the groom's free.

If you ever need any help let me know as I know how difficult arranging a wedding can be.

Em

Tondella

emmajg wrote:

I was on a budget with my wedding (May 04) I think I spent just about £2k but £1k was the day & evening reception.

Luckily my hobby is origami so I made all my invites, favours boxes, menus and name places.
I wanted real roses for my hair but I couldn't find any I liked so I made some out of paper.
http://www.powerofmoo.com/ourwedding.html

I got some good deals at http://www.confetti.co.uk/ as they have great sales! I've just bought a load of gift wrap for 10p a sheet when it was £1!

I was very lucky with my wedding dress from Monsoon. I was orginally going to get their store card as they gave back 10% in vouchers but I happened to walk past the store and they had a 75% off sale. I got my dress for £60 thou the matching shawl was full price at £65!

I hired the suits from Moss Bros and at the time they had a deal if you hired 4 suits you had the groom's free.

If you ever need any help let me know as I know how difficult arranging a wedding can be.

Em

Wow! Emma love the photos, especially the guy with the purple hair, how thoughtful of him to tie in with your colour scheme. Origami place settings are such a great idea too, must dig out my old origami book.

I'm really pleased that Martin has mentioned this thread, can't wait to talk moneysaving with some 2006 brides and grooms!

fuglyjowls

When I got married for the first time (a long time ago) a friend of my husband-to-be offered to video the wedding & reception for us. We took him up on his kind offer as we hadn't planned to video it as we were too skint.

The only problem was he wasn't very good at videoing!! The ceremony was okay as he was sat still but after that it was a bit like one of those documentaries where they chase baddies around! The best part was the video of the reception - the drunker he got the more he filmed another friend's bottom as she was dancing in her tight dress (it was a lovely bottom!!) - his wife wasn't too impressed when she saw it though

All in all not quite what you'd expect but a good laugh nonetheless. So if you want a video get a friend with a camera to do it but choose someone who isn't a drinker/womaniser LOL.

When I got married the second time we printed our own invitations to save costs using cards with a picture of the venue on the front (an old barn which you can hire out) and a nice posh font on the computer.

cinderella31

Wow! My Prince Charming popped the question on New Years Eve…. I met Prince Charming on ParentsAlready.com (before it was recommended on this site as the cheapest online dating site… - I can certainly vouch for it working!) Prince Charming is widowed with 3 young children, one of whom is autistic, and I have one daughter from a previous marriage. So the wedding doesn’t just need to be cheap and lots of fun but involve the children as much as possible too! The kids are aged between 4 and 9, and are ecstatic at the thought of us getting married. Have thought already would be fun for them to design the invitations themselves, with them inviting people to Mum and Dad’s wedding. Does anyone have any other ideas on how to get the kids involved and also possible venues in Sussex or Kent that would be suitable for the big day…. (obviously will also be some older relative there….)

As for the honeymoon, I think the kids want to come too! Any tips on how Cinderella and Prince Charming can get a bit of time to themselves too? We love the kids to bits, but it would be nice to at least get the wedding night to ourselves…

P.S. also getting my house extended to fit everyone in – any ideas for cheap ways of furnishing etc and getting it all done quickly and easily (luckily know a good builder…)

Thanks very much in advance for all your suggestions! Happy New Year!

Lady_In_Seat_65

We had a money saving wedding on 18 June 2005.
Best wedding ever according to many of our guests.
We had the service at our local church at minimum cost, we used the flowers for the reception in the church so we didn't have to fork out twice for flowers.

Our reception was in the 17th century Manor Farm Barn in our village. The farmer rented the barn to us for £100 for the whole day with access the day before and day after the wedding.
We didn't have to do much decoration in the Barn as we went with it's natural charm.

A friend works for a major luxury car dealer and arranged for a car to take me to the church. The 'venue' is at convenient walking distance of our church, so no transport needed. We walked to the 'venue' and after the reception we walked with all our guests in procession through the village to our home where we changed clothes and departed for our honeymoon by foot to the train station.

For the reception we found a local caterer who managed to deliver a huge lunch buffet and afternoon tea for about £10 a head. We didn't have much food left over, so nothing went to waste.

My MIL made us the most wonderful wedding cake. We're no fans of the usual fruitcake, so MIL making the cake for us meant we were able to pick our own Chocolate Mud cake.

We had booze brought over by our Dutch relatives, at much less cost then if we would have paid here or even go on a booze cruise. We sourced some local real ale for those who didn't want the Dutch beer (though we had some left of the ale as nothing beats genuine Grolsch). My FIL is a wine expert and selected some good wines & champagnes at good prices - we had the pleasure of doing all the pre-tastings, so we enjoyed them before the wedding as well.

We got married in the morning and to avoid people (especially with children) getting bored, fed up, getting tired or too drunk we limited our reception to the late afternoon.
Not only did this save us money on food and drink, it was obviously highly appreciated by our guests.
It turned out to be a long enough day and people actually appreciated not having to get back home late at night, having to hang around all day and evening (or book a hotel for the night), and those who wished to party on went out for drinks at a local pub after we left for our honeymoon.

We didn't get a pro-photographer in, but these days with everyone bringing a (DIGITAL) camera, we had so many photos to pick from, we have been going through them for ages!!!
We have collected over 2000 photos of our wedding!!!

We didn't have favours - what are they for anyway???
You're already treating your guests to a day of free food and booze and you send them a home made Thank You card afterwards.
We used our many digital potos to pick out lovely shots of our guests and used these on our Thank You cards. They thought it was really original and loved the cards!

We did buy some gifts for the main helpers at our wedding as the bridesmaids, ushers and best man have helped us setting everything up. I had a friend who did my make-up, a home hairdresser who didn't charge much, two friends who were witnesses, parents and in-laws who all helped out setting up and cleaning up after we had left for our honeymoon.

For an impression of our wedding day see:- www.mark-nic.seat61.com/wedding.htm

wannabe

can you help I have a friend in New Zealand and she wondered if I could help with ideas for hair for her. I have all the mags from my wedding but cannot send them. Are there any websites that would help?
Many thanks

mini

wannabe wrote:

can you help I have a friend in New Zealand and she wondered if I could help with ideas for hair for her. I have all the mags from my wedding but cannot send them. Are there any websites that would help?
Many thanks

I tried a google search & got this

http://www.weddinghair.com/

&

http://hairstyles.free-beauty-tips.com/wedding_hairstyles.html

You could try a google images, I tried searching wedding hair
http://images.google.co.uk/images?svnum=10&hl=en&lr=&q=wedding+hair+

adding flowers to the search

http://images.google.co.uk/images?svnum=10&hl=en&q=wedding+hair+flowers&spell=1

tiara
http://images.google.co.uk/images?svnum=10&hl=en&lr=&q=wedding+hair+tiara

You can play with different searches, short hair. long hair if you have the time

HTH

mini