Wedding Tips start here...

diamondsky

HI,

I found out that you pay £60.00 to the registry office to give notice of wedding and if you marry at the registry office you pay the registrar £40.00. If you have a civil wedding at another venue, you pay the registrar up to £395.00, gulp...plus up to £500.00 for hire of venue, gulp... I thought by having everything in the same venue it would cut costs down. The Liverpool and Wallasey Registry Office are not in nice positions, so I'm reluctant to marry here and am considering the Chester Registry Office but don't know what it's like.

Tondella

depending on how you feel about it, you could always get officially married the week before your wedding celebrations, then at least you're not paying for the registrar to come out or paying for a licenced venue? For me though, the wedding is all about having your family and friends witness your vows.

Becles

RE: Free £50 at Debenhams

We set our wedding list up there today. It's really easy to do. You give all your details to the wedding advisor, then she gives you a barcode scanner. You go round the store scanning the items you like to go on the list.

When you've finished, you go back to the desk and the advisor downloads the information onto your record on the PC. It's can then be accessed instore, over the telephone and on the internet.

You get a folder containing a wedding magazine, a voucher for a free cup of coffee each in the restaurant and 20% discount off anything bought in the restaurant between now and your wedding day. You also get a supply of cards to give to people with your wedding list number on, each with a 20% restuarant discount voucher on but these can only be used one. You get 2 gift cards - one for people to add to instead of presents, and most importantly the free £50 one! :kisses: You can spend it there and then if you wish, or keep it to spend later.

The only thing I didn't like about the list is the fact the internet doesn't show you the item you are buying. I logged in and it just gives a shopping list such as "blue mugs" but you don't get to see what the mugs look like.

fiobee

diamondsky wrote:

HI,

I found out that you pay £60.00 to the registry office to give notice of wedding and if you marry at the registry office you pay the registrar £40.00. If you have a civil wedding at another venue, you pay the registrar up to £395.00, gulp...plus up to £500.00 for hire of venue, gulp... I thought by having everything in the same venue it would cut costs down. The Liverpool and Wallasey Registry Office are not in nice positions, so I'm reluctant to marry here and am considering the Chester Registry Office but don't know what it's like.

Each registry office is obliged to charge the statutory fees (in Scotland, this is £103.50 - notices, ceremony and certificate copy) but the cost of the registrar to attend a licensed venue is at the discretion of the local council, as far as I'm aware. In Edinburgh, for a weekday attendance, it is an additional £150. Perhaps a different registry office will charge less/different?

If you still want to do it all in one location, a cheaper alternative might be to contact your former university - or any university you like. A friend got married at Aberdeen and my OH's cousin got married at Oxford. Alumni (graduates) get discounted rates for university chapels and you can hire halls/rooms cheaply. If it's during the hols you can also stay in uni accommodation.

welshnoonoo

This site has a few articles and one in particular about getting married on a budget as well as a handy on-line budgetting tool:

Mrs2Be

Might be something of use.

Jackies

VickyA wrote:

Many congratulations! :T

I think that alot of jewellers do the discount thing. I got a diamond set in platinum (diamond from OH's family and it was alot cheaper than buying it "whole") at a small jewellers and they are giving us a 20% discount off our wedding rings. However, they just have the one shop in Lincoln...... not exactly a chain!

every little helps!

november

I've got a date - 28th October

Update on what we've done/cost in case its of use to anyone else:

Dress - was off ebay yonks ago - its actually celtic style and black and purple Cost about £25 if I remember rightly and it was new and what I wanted

Tiaras - ditto ebay £19.49 for mine (bid) and £37.98 both the bridesmaid's (buy it now as I daren't risk not getting something that went with mine). All celtic in style

Registrar is £238.50 - this is £30 each for notice fee. Rest is for cost of registrar coming out to our venue. We have an appointment to do the notice thingy in a fortnight at which point we have to pay the £60 plus a £50 deposit on the rest.

Venue is provisionally booked. According to registrar they need to know you have provisionally booked your venue before you go in to give notice and book them. We will be putting deposit on venue when we have done the notice thingy at the registrar.

Venue is costing £250 for wedding and £200 for evening do plus food :eek: Bit more than I wanted but its the only venue round here we both really like. Food will be buffet (cheapest option). Venue is lovely and friendly. They 'throw in' a complementory bridal suite for the night and also give a discount on guests rooms which is good as we also need 2 family rooms for guests.

Emailed Goldfinger about rings ages ago but they never got back to me. Saw them at a wedding fayre today which is good as they have the ring I want (yes Celtic again ) so they are coming round next Saturday. They do work in other areas of the country other than London and the woman was most apologetic they hadn't replied to my query, and annoyed that they had nearly lost her a customer, she was going to 'have words' with them.

So the way I did it was:

1) Got dress
2) Went to local council website. Searched under 'w' for weddings and found list of venues, registrar's office and other useful stuff on what you need/what to do.
3) Viewed a few venues and ordered brochures
4) Made 'rough list' of numbers and asked who would come to wedding/eve do (as appropriate)
5) Friend volunteered to be photographer
6) Nieces volunteered to be bridesmaids (my daughter said something about 'over her dead' .........) sister organising their dresses
7) Got tiaras
8) Provisionally booked venue
9) Contacted registry office to see if they were free on same date. Booked appointment for giving notice and provisional registrar booking to come out to venue.
10) Made appointment for Goldfinger rings to come round. They make them for you in gold, white gold or platinum; visit you at home and rings are from £70. (I found them c/o Moneysavers thread )

Oh and I've registered with Debenhams but it says you can't post your list until 3 months before the wedding. I wanted my voucher

I don't think I'm doing bad as I've got until Oct. Only invites (making them on computer), music, groom's clothes and my kid's clothes to go plus organising rest of stuff with venue wedding organisers

I've spent money on what I wanted to make it the day we wanted e.g. venue and am not spending anything on things we don't want e.g. car, flowers, cake. I admit I'm lucky to have a friend who's a photographer but if I hadn't I think I would have roped someone else in rather than pay for photos

p.s. Confession - I spent another £50 on ebay on a dress for the evening party as I figured I would be tripping over the wedding one if I tried to dance in it. OK I admit it - I love buying clothes plus its still only £75 on 2 dresses which is a bargain given I could have spent more than that on one

Nessa

Talking of invites. I've just saved myself £260!
I was going to buy save the date cards at £45 for 20 and invites and everything else on Debenhams for £280. Total of £325.
I was a bit reluctant to spend that much, which is why I hadn't got around to ordering anything yet.
In a magazine this weekend I spotted an invite I liked. It was from M&S.
I've priced what I need including some blanks to make into save the date cards and all in it will cost me £65.60!
If you spend over £10 they send you a free CD rom to help you customise the invites and print the inserts (a5 insets included) on the computer.
Delivery is £3.50. If you buy it all at once that's all you get charged for delivery.

I had toyed with the idea of making my own but having tried a few I couldn't get it up to my standards. I'm a perfectionist!

Here's a picture of the wedding invite.

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and the link to have a look at what they offer

Marks wedding invites DIY

Hope this helps someone else!

jodrellcat

Just found this post! Wish I had known about it five months ago. Anyway my daughter's alternative wedding was fantastic. The church was the most expensive over £500 !!! - and the choir couldn't sing! Anyway here are our tips. We hired a string quartet through Chetham's School of Music in Manchester (they were professional players not students), they played at the church before, during and after service and then packed their instruments and hi tailed it back to the house for the reception. No flowers in church, it is not that short of place but filled the house with dozens of supermarket roses bought the day before. Daughter's bouquet was gift from sister, catering by friends, cake bought in Selfridges after-Christmas sale,table cloths were cheap double sheets, cutlery bought wholesale, lots of good champagne bought in pre-Christmas offers from Co-op,Majestic warehouse and Bottom's Up, wine from a local auction, beer by friend who runs pub, table decorations by artistic friend,, transport for couple - a vintage tractor. Fantastic family party for nearly 100 followed by a brunch the next morning for those with stanima. And the sun shone even in January.
PSSST anyone want 10 double sheets and 200+ knives, forks and spoons?

princess10

Hi there, I am planning my wedding for september and would like everyones opinion on the idea.


Marriage in registry office at 12.00.
Wedding meal in Aroma
On to village hall, to decorate,plan etc.
Party guests arrive at 7pm.


We have about 25 at the ceremony so dont want a big sit-down meal.
We will have to decorate,do tables,lay out home prepared buffett ourselves so need a bit if time in the middle.

We plan to leave some guests in aroma while we decorate.


I would welcome any ones opinion or thoughts as we are doing it all ourselves.