Wedding Tips start here...

highguyuk

Something I would be interested in ... how old were you when you were married, and how long had you been seeing/dating/courting/etc your OH?

clairey_em

Hi Highguyuk,

We were together for about 11 months before OH popped the question but I had known him for about 5 years, just not very well, and he was going out with someone else then, as was I.

We got engaged on 10th May 2003 and got married 17th Sept 05, we deliberately waited to save up some money as we didn't want to take out any loans to pay for the wedding. I was 26 and OH 30 (although his birthday was the day after the wedding)!!

are you thinking about popping the q??

clairey em x

skystar

highguyuk wrote:

Something I would be interested in ... how old were you when you were married, and how long had you been seeing/dating/courting/etc your OH?

I got married at 24 and my husband was 28.

We met in November 2002, moved in together Jan 2003, got engaged March 2003 and then married July 2004.

We never knew each other before we met. His friend who I kinda knew thought we would get on and set up a kinda "blind-date" scenario.

Emms

We met online in June 2001, met up in August 2001, engaged October 2001. Feb 2002 I had quit my job in Northern Ireland and moved to Scotland. Weve had a long engagement and are getting married May 2007. :)

Emma

Redbedhead

We get married in August of this year and are paying for about 92% of the wedding ourselves (can you tell I have a detailed budget ).

I do feel for the people on here who have had their weddings taken over by their parents as we have also been in danger of that from my future mil, who despite contributing 5% of the cost thinks it means she should be consulted on everything, have her friends there for the whole day (she wanted 10% of the guest list to be her friends including some people I have never met :rolleyes: ) and is generally being a complete pain.

We are quite lucky in that we both have good jobs and I am debt free, while my fiance will be debt free this month, so we have saved for the wedding and will have enough money to pay for everything by then. The cost before honeymoon is about £13k, with an additional £1k included for contingency costs and another £4k for our honeymoon (a trip to Oz which we have been planning for a couple of years).

The one thing we were both agreed on was we did not want to go into debt, so on any items where we have gone over budget, we have looked at ways of clawing that back, therefore I am making our stationery (tonights job!) and we are not having cars. We have however spent money on the things that are more important to us - a lovely venue, great honeymoon and yummy food and drink.

I don't think you need to spend this amount to have a wonderful wedding but unfortunately we live in a expensive area and we both fell in love with an expensive venue. We only plan on doing it once, but I do get the wobbles when I think how we could have used the money to reduce our mortage!

emma_b_4

we met 5 years ago, we will be 23 and 29 when we get married (wow looks right a big age gap when i write it down but it isnt at all you wouldnt even notice it!) we get married 2 weeks before im 24. we will have been together 6 years on our wedding day, engaged for two, living together for four years and with an 8mth old bambino if all goes well (13weeks at the moment!)

callansdad

callansdad - You contradict yourself. You say that you would rather the drink was flowing but can't afford to supply it. Save the money from the act and put it behind the bar. After all 36 Adults at your wedding is not going to cost a fortune especially as you say the venue is cheap. Rough calculation 1000 divided by 3 quid a pint divided by 36 adult equals 9 pints a person. As I say it's just a rough calulation but I bet you'll all have a better time. When it runs out then everyone buys there own and I bet you wont have to buy anymore yourself.

You didn't get what i meant. Its family only at the wedding and meal. There will be around 200 people at the dance at night. We have to put on decent entertainment at night, thats the most important part to us considering our background in pubs and hotels, we have seen some really crappy bands in our time. What i meant by drink flowing is that some of OHs family have been to weddings where its a £5 for a pint, they end up sneaking a bottle in with them and don't really enjoy themselves. We picked a club with cheaper drink and they are all really looking forward to it. It will cost £2 for a pint, £1.50 for a nip of vodka with a dash etc.. Here is a basic rundown of some of the big costs.

Wedding Venue: £500 (including accom for groom and best man the night before, registrar fees, bagpiper and photographer, blooming good deal!)
Meal (including drinks): £1200 +
Venue for night: £100
Bus: £200
Limo for me: ?? (My dad is mates with the guy so he is footing this one)
Band for night: £1000

As you can see thats £3000 already, not taking into account, cameras, flowers, favours, cake, wedding dress, bridesmaids dresses, kilt hires and all the other little bits and pieces. Most of the cost is going towards food, drink and giving everyone and ourselves a night to remember. All the other bits is probably about £1000 all together. We have asked for no presents as we have everything that we need, all we want to do is people to show up and have a good time. I wasn't contradicting myself, i was just merely saying that i would rather shell out for decent entertainment to give everyone a good time then pay for all the drinks for 200 people but have no music or a band we don't like. We did want one guy to do it, we have known him for years and he was brill but he has just moved away and packed it in so we were a little bit gutted, we would have been about £500 better off.

hjb123

We are putting a wedding on in the summer and everyone through the day gets free drinks then once the night do starts people have to pay for their own drinks! Luckily we arent getting charged corkage as we arent in a hotel!

We are hoping to buy the drinks cheap through a supermarket or online with good offers - having a great time sampling the different wines trying to decide which to get!! Its just working out how much to get but we are working on a glass when get to the reception, maybe a top up as they sit down. Then bottles on the table - red, white and rose, roughly 3 glasses per person - which we working on half a bottle? Then a glass for the toast.

Redbedhead

We have worked on 3 drinks for everyone during the drinks reception (hour and a half) then approx. 3/4 of a bottle of wine for each adult guest during dinner. There will also be water on the table.

For the toasts it will be champers, allowing a glass per person and getting 6 glasses per bottle (I think it may be closer to 8 for champers but at least you should have more than you need and can top up) which means about 12 bottles of champers (70 ish guests).

From 6pm in the evening there will be a pay bar available, however any wine or champers that has not been drunk from the daytime will be available for guests if they want to stick with wine instead of spirits or beer.

jobbingmusician

hjb123 wrote:

roughly 3 glasses per person - which we working on half a bottle?

Yes, you are right. 3 SMALL glasses of wine equals, or is just over, half a bottle.

A small wine glass is 125ml. A wine bottle is 700ml or 750 ml. So 6 small glasses in a bottle.

Be careful though - small glasses of wine are REALLY small - for example, most pubs seem to serve wine in 175 or even 250ml glasses nowadays. (This is nice, but completely mucks up most people's unit counting - and can be dangerous if people are driving. Their 'only 1 glass' is actually twice as much as they are estimating!!! :eek: )