Questions, thoughts and HELP!

emmaglet

Hello, I'm new to the weddings section, being recently engaged, yay. I'm not really sure what I'm asking here - I'm just completely LOST.

We've been engaged about 6 weeks now, still on holiday for 3 of them, and so far we have come up with a few things:

Our wedding theme (Disney's "Up")
A rough date - there's a choice between two months and the year is decided.
Our wedding favours - ha ha, don't laugh, but whilst in Florida over Black Friday I got some amazing deals and they're going to be really unique and extremely cheap.
It must be a MSE wedding - that's not to say we don't spend anything, or we cut corners, but that we look at getting the best deals, best value and we get our haggling hats on.
Wedding photographer - as I've won a wedding day photography package :j

But I have about a million questions going around in my head. We're looking at venues at the moment, but they're an absolute minefield! At the moment there are two potentials:

A built barn with a marquee, set price which covers Friday-Sunday, meaning that we can have a lot of input in setting up, etc (which is what I want), there's no corkage or exclusive caterers, 20 minutes from home and licensed for the ceremony (haven't decided between that or a church wedding yet). Preliminary budgeting (venue, food, evening reception, alcohol, ceremony and cake - no "frilly" bits like decorations, dress, suits, flowers, etc) comes to £8,200

The second is a large house and grounds, the ceremony can take place on the lakeside (or inside ballroom if weather doesn't permit outside), then there's a large marquee with a deck overlooking the lake. But of course this stunning venue has exclusive caterers who charge a good £15+ per head more than other caterers, with a £200 corkage charge on top. We visited this venue at a wedding fayre and although the place was stunning, we felt as though we couldn't have much input or DIY a lot. We're going to this venue again on Saturday and having a meeting so hopefully we can see how much input we could have. Preliminary budgeting (venue, food, evening reception, alcohol, ceremony and cake - no "frilly" bits like decorations, dress, suits, flowers, etc) comes to £9,800.

And to think I thought we could get this done on £10,000, oh how wrong I was :rotfl:

Anyway, I'm just interested in and tips anyone has to share. I'm going to be making a budget bride wedding blog shortly, to go alongside my thrifty/money making blog. Although I want to get some bargains, we don't want a registry office wedding and there are some things we won't compromise on having. We have plenty of time for us to DIY, as well as a very crafty MOH - who is also a fantastic baker, and I love baking too.

Honestly, sometimes I don't think I'm adult enough to be planning a wedding and making such big decisions.

Jessycat

We've gone for a barn option. OH does wedding photography so he's been very hands on with all the plans, he's probably done more than me to be honest. We've got access from Friday to allow us time to set up the barn, then we need to clear the site on Sunday. We went for this option, for the reasons you state above, it means we've got full reign of suppliers that we use and more freedom to do what we want.

DIY for us are:
Invites - OH is designing these
Decoration - one of my bridesmaids has been amazing making hessian bunting, decorating jars etc
Sweet table - doing to Costco/Makro nearer the time
Wine/Beer - sourcing this ourself for the main meal but the caterers are going to provide the glasses and pour drinks

Fire away with any questions you may have

emmaglet

Jessycat wrote: »

DIY for us are:
Invites - OH is designing these
Decoration - one of my bridesmaids has been amazing making hessian bunting, decorating jars etc
Sweet table - doing to Costco/Makro nearer the time
Wine/Beer - sourcing this ourself for the main meal but the caterers are going to provide the glasses and pour drinks

Fire away with any questions you may have

We are definitely doing our own invitations - we picked up loads of card cheap in Florida, and I've already designed the "be our bridesmaid, MOH, etc" cards, and will be using the same design for our invitations - http://instagram.com/p/h89GrVlTVG if you fancy a nosy. I just need to find some suitably sized envelopes. I also think for the invitations I will print on white paper and glue it to the coloured card. I didn't want to do this (card colours are all pale - yellow, blue, green, pink and purple) but I don't think the printed colour shows up well enough.

I suppose my first question is what are those costs you never thought to budget for - every little thing like postage. I've got a list of what I deem to be the obvious costs, but any help is appreciated.

ETA: Also, is £3.5k for the barn a lot? It's their standard weekend rate, but as I mentioned, comes with no exclusions. It just seems like a heck of a lot of money.

Jessycat

We are paying £1500 but it isn't licenced for civil ceremonies so we are getting married in a church nearby. How will you despose of all the rubbish? Even though the owner of the barn likes to be environmentally friendly, she's suggested we hire a skip.

We forgot to budget for wedding rings - oops!

Have you seen this http://www.weddingideasmag.com/free-wedding-planning-spreadsheets-for-budget-photo-lists-and-more/ ?

Following you on Instagram now

emmaglet

Jessycat wrote: »

We are paying £1500 but it isn't licenced for civil ceremonies so we are getting married in a church nearby. How will you despose of all the rubbish? Even though the owner of the barn likes to be environmentally friendly, she's suggested we hire a skip.

We forgot to budget for wedding rings - oops!

Have you seen this http://www.weddingideasmag.com/free-wedding-planning-spreadsheets-for-budget-photo-lists-and-more/ ?

Following you on Instagram now

That spreadsheet looks great - I'll download it at home later.

A church wedding is definitely on the cards - it means a lot to me. Maybe I need to look for event spaces that aren't licensed, that might bring the price down.

We found a possible venue yesterday - really close to where I work (so 40 minutes from home), it is a hotel which on paper I'm not keen on, but the place is stunning and definitely doesn't have the chain hotel feel, despite being a chain. I emailed to arrange a viewing one lunch time, and showed T (the fiance) when I got home. "Oh, that looks familiar" he says, whips out his phone and texts his sister - it's where she got married. D'oh.

I'm embarrassed to admit that I hardly slept last night for worrying about this. It just frustrates me that even with all the money in the world, nothing is going to tick all of our boxes.

I forgot to mention another biggie in my earlier posts........but a Florida wedding is also on the cards!

SavingPixie

Just wanted to say huge congratulations


Florida wedding would be the icing on the cake (if you got engaged there, had a nosy on your instagram as I love Disney sorry lol). xx

Jessycat

I can see why you wouldn't want to get married in the same place as his sister. We avoided hotels as we didn't want something so structed and wanted flexibility to do our own thing. A Florida wedding would be great if that means something to you

Having somewhere unlicensed seems to have brought the price down for us. Originally we had planned to have the wedding and reception at the same venue and had our heart set on this beautiful 17th century house, but it was £3700 to get married there and hire the venue. The reception would have been in a marquee in their gardens as the house was actually residential and although they had a marquee which was included in the price, we didn't like the one they had.

emmaglet

So we've just sat down together and worked out how much we can save each month before the wedding, and the total is just short on £15k. That makes me feel a lot better that I don't have to make extra money for the wedding - I'll be doing that for the honeymoon. I'm not sure we want to go anywhere near that amount though.

Going to see the "dream" venue tomorrow, but it comes with the exclusive caterers and corkage. I just wondered if anyone had any advice about haggling around these?