registry office wedding - help and thoughts :)

codemonkey

EllieJ-x wrote: »

we are in Fleetwood so i think the only hotel close would be the north euston, my oh's cousin married there and i know she said it got pretty expensive in the end, ill look into getting married there and if not im thinking a meal with the rest of the family and maybe some friends after wards in a private room (if it works out cheaper still) might be a nice idea and then we could have a cake and decorate maybe with some flowers on the tables etc.
were trying to do it on a small budget so i cant go to mad!
thank you fr the dress ideas! I'm getting excited! We only decided the other day to do it like this and hoping to be married in April or may!! X

Another useful tip for you: When you call the hotels or restaurants to ask about private dining, do not, under any circumstances mention you're booking it for a wedding. For some reason, the word wedding makes everything very expensive.

One of my friends got married in a monsoon dress and it was beautiful - much nicer than some more expensive dresses I've seen.

pukkamum

I had a registry office wedding and I wore a 'proper' wedding dress, the office was actually a big mansion so was actually more like a stately home wedding.

My husband hated the thought of speeches etc so we just didn't do them, we had a family meal at our favourite restaurant followed by a disco at the local rugby club with pasty and peas for the buffet.

I had a friend take official pictures and asked all the guests to take plenty too, I ended up with the most beautiful pictures, the best were the candid ones.

My cake was 3 tiered, bought 3 iced cakes in different sizes from mark's and then used the fresh flowers from my bouquet to decorate it at the reception.

All in I think it cost about £600 but my dress was bought by my mum, the wedding car paid for by my mums partner and the meal paid for by my sister.

We had the most wonderful, relaxed, happy day.

newcook

EllieJ-x wrote: »

we are in Fleetwood so i think the only hotel close would be the north euston, my oh's cousin married there and i know she said it got pretty expensive in the end, ill look into getting married there and if not im thinking a meal with the rest of the family and maybe some friends after wards in a private room (if it works out cheaper still) might be a nice idea and then we could have a cake and decorate maybe with some flowers on the tables etc.
were trying to do it on a small budget so i cant go to mad!
thank you fr the dress ideas! I'm getting excited! We only decided the other day to do it like this and hoping to be married in April or may!! X

Some places have special deal (and its also cheaper midweek). My local Ramada hotel does weddings priced the same as the year – this year £2014 – and includes evening do, food and ‘toast’ drinks

PinkPrincess83

We got married in a registry office and it was perfect for us as we didn't want a church wedding and we didn't want a hotel wedding either. It was short and sweet, lasted about 20 mins (which for me was long enough anyway!!) and then we had some photos (our registry office has lovely grounds) and then we went off for more photos and then an informal buffet style sit down and then party in the evening.

You can wear what you like, my Mum got married in a registry office and had a lovely burgundy full length dress, a friend has a short knee length ivory dress and I wore a full length ivory wedding dress- with a long train as I didn't see why I shouldn't wear the dress I wanted!! Monsoon and Coast do some lovely dresses if you didn't was the traditional dress.

The one thing I would say is the most important bit of advice I could give and that is 'do exactly what you like and have the day you want'. Do not feel you have to have such and such because everyone else does or because so and so says you should. I wanted hot pink shoes- I had hot pink shoes! We wanted a party that reflected us and our choice of music- so thats what we had.

Maybe_its_because

Hi Ellie,

We got married in a registry office and we loved it.

The registrar let us personalise it in our own way. We had readings & music (non religious of course) and I had a bouquet and OH had a button hole. We walked down the aisle together, but Dad could've if he'd wanted to.
I wore a simple tea length wedding dress (actually it was in the bridesmaid section) which was in the sale and cost about the same as a Coast dress.

We travelled there together on the tube which was v cool.

We followed it by going out for a drink/meal afterwards in the gastro-pub across the road.
I booked a table but mistakenly said the word "wedding" and all of a sudden the price went up and they tried to commit us to one of their packages, pre order and pay for food and commit to a minimum bar bill.

We also had an open invitation to any friends and relatives. I did a quick email round robin beforehand to gauge how much space would be needed and made sure people were aware they could order food if they wanted to but would be paying for their own meal. My folks put some money behind the bar to buy everyone a drink.

It was all very casual, which was perfect for what we wanted. All our guests loved it.

There are no hard fast rules (apart from having to say the legal bit and signing) - just go with what you want.

Google your local registry office, ours had a brochure which gave more info and had photos.

Good luck

MIB

Georgiegirl256

Anything goes really (within reason of course!), regarding your choice of clothing. You can be as dressed up or as laid back as you want it to be.

Our local registry office is on a main road near to Morrisons and McDonalds, so we often drive past it, and have seen everything from the full on big wedding dresses, to people in jeans. Friends of ours got married in jeans (the bride too), and while I was quite surprised, that's what they wanted....another friend of ours who is abit of a goth, got married in a corset, suspenders and fishnet stockings, her hubby who was Scottish wore a kilt....they made it into the local paper too! :rotfl:

One of my husbands rules for our wedding was 'No speeches', I was more than happy to agree with that, as I didn't want unnecessary pressure put on him or my Dad either.

I got my dress off EBay, it was a proper wedding dress but instead of the usual long dress, it was short....I knew straight away I wanted a short dress. I also looked in Monsoon, and they have some beautiful dresses too.

We had fake flowers, but they looked so real, everyone was totally convinced by them and wouldn't have known if we hadn't have said.

We didn't get married in a registry office (Gretna Green), but had a very small laid back wedding all the same. You can have fun tailoring it to exactly how you and your OH want it.

Have fun, and congrats btw!

onlyroz

You don't have to get married in the registry office. You can get married in any licensed wedding venue. We got married here and it was great:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/York_House,_Twickenham

As for what to wear, whatever you like. I got married on one of these:

Kynthia

I know two registry offices near me that are stately homes so you wouldn't feel out of place wearing a full gown if you wanted. You can customise the ceremony in a non-religious way just the same as if you pay the registrar to perform the ceremony at a licensed venue, like a hotel. We had two readings and our choice of music.

My hubbie is too shy to do speeches and had didn't have a best man, so I and his mum did a speech instead after the meal and then we cut the cake.

Make sure you have the day you want and don't restrict yourself to 'tradition' unless you like that particular tradition. We didn't have guests arrive until after our ceremony, so just our parents witnessed that bit.

I went to one civil partnership where we then went back to their house after for a buffet and champagne. It was lovely.

Faerie

I had a registry office wedding. We only wanted a small wedding so just had immediate family at the ceremony and meal but had a bigger party after the honeymoon to celebrate with everyone else. We didn't want the usual wedding traditions, so no speeches, no bouquet, no wedding party, no cake, no first dance. We looked at hotels etc but they were very expensive and restricted in what you can and can't have, I also wanted people to chose what they wanted to eat and not have everyone eat the same boring meal.

A registry office wedding can be as big or as small as you like. Ours had 3 different rooms to chose from depending on how big your wedding was. You can dress the room as you want, but ours had nice flowers anyway so we kept them. You can chose what you want to say, have readings and songs etc (so long as they aren't religious)

I wore a 1950's style knee length wedding dress (with a coloured petticoat and matching coverse much to my mum and mother-in-laws disgust!) and he wore a suit. We walked down the aisle together to our favourite music, the ceremony took around 20-30 minutes, it was lovely and personal. We then walked across the road to an Italian restaurant, they opened up early and had cornered off a section of the restaurant for us. We paid for everyone, was home by 10pm and then went on honeymoon the next morning!

Small, inexpensive but lovely.

cazziebo

codemonkey wrote: »

Another useful tip for you: When you call the hotels or restaurants to ask about private dining, do not, under any circumstances mention you're booking it for a wedding. For some reason, the word wedding makes everything very expensive.
.

This! For everything but especially the hotel/restaurant!