my big free wedding?

VintageBelle

Do many people owe you favours which could be returned in the form of helping with the wedding in some way, or could you ask people to contribute to the wedding instead of a gift?

mrsHall2b

Sorry its taken so long to reply to these!

wiggels wrote: »

I got married 3 years ago on the cheap. We got married at the register office £60 on a Friday. Before that we paid £33 each for our bands you have to do that anyways. I had no cars, we booked a photographer for £100, she uploaded all the photos on a disc for us. I got a new dress off ebay, rings from Argos.


Our do was at our local conservative club for free, we know the owner. We had no day do, just a night do. Our parents arranged the food and wedding cake as our present. My friend was the dj, our favours where mini love heart sweets, 100 packets for a £5 then £2.50 for sweet wrappers with our name on to cover the packets.

Overall it came together and was a good do.
Tbh I think less is more, Good Luck xxx

yeah i think id quite like a candy cart in the evening as there will be a lot of kids there and it can be used in place of desert and favours so will just spend money on that which can be done pretty cheap from bookers cash&carry place and ebay. we will be getting married on a thursday and i only plan on having an evening do after, everyone lives really close so it wont be an issue for them to go home first (or back to my house if they so wish.

i really am looking at keeping it very simple and not going overboard.

tillyenna wrote: »

One thing I would say - is on the 'things I wish I'd done/hadn't done' board loads of people mention that they wished they'd not spent any money on disposable cameras - hardly anyone uses them, apart from kids (so you just end up with all the 'feet' pictures), they cost money to develop. Plus everyone has camera phones now


A free alternative would be to sign up for a wedding website, the one we use (mywedding.com) gives you a free app, which your wedding guests can then download, and add their phone photos to - so you'd have all the pictures in one place... totally free!

thankyou for that, i may just get a few then so i can print off kids photo hunt type games as there will be quite a few kids, and im hoping my local college will develop them for me

the wedding website idea is a really good one so far ive started a blog which has gotten me a few offers & ideas.

VintageBelle wrote: »

Do many people owe you favours which could be returned in the form of helping with the wedding in some way, or could you ask people to contribute to the wedding instead of a gift?

no i dont tend to do favours but i do have friends & family who can do things, and i live 5 minutes away from my local college so i may be able to contact them about doing some bits.

i know they do catering, photography, hair & beauty and music so i may ask if theres any volnteers, if i cant get anyone else.

Mint1955

Don't bother with disposable cameras as you will spend a fortune on getting them developed to find really rubbish photos.

Went to a wedding at the weekend that had a sweet cart..... What a shambles kids going crazy and even worse adults filling the bags to the brim and then putting them in their bags to take home I was astounded.

Better as someone suggested get online photo sharing.

If you want to do sweets for the kids why not put them out with their names on as personal gifts.

mrsHall2b

Mint1955 wrote: »

Don't bother with disposable cameras as you will spend a fortune on getting them developed to find really rubbish photos.

Went to a wedding at the weekend that had a sweet cart..... What a shambles kids going crazy and even worse adults filling the bags to the brim and then putting them in their bags to take home I was astounded.

Better as someone suggested get online photo sharing.

If you want to do sweets for the kids why not put them out with their names on as personal gifts.

as i said with the photos im going to ask the college to develop them for me. and else im just going to have kids pinching my camera (i take it everywhere so yes i will be taking pictures on my won wedding day...) my stepson ALWAYS pinches my camera so to save that they can have disposables.

the sweetcart it would be okay people filling bags as whatever isnt eaten has to go home with me which will then just end up going off or my kids will just be sick all the time from pinching too many sweets..
and it would be instead of desert as im not really a cakey person and neither is OH and itll be in the place of favours, so i wont have to worry about what favours to get.

i can see how the things youve mentioned could bother other people but my wedding party is mainly going to be kids and only close family so personally for me they wont be much of an issue.

Evil_Olive

I thought I was pushing it with my budget of £2000
Good Luck and I'll be watching this thread with interest as I'm having to source a lot of my stuff for free to keep within budget.
Maybe we can swap some ideas.

Here's a few of the 'free' or 'nearly free' things we're doing...

I'm growing a load of old fashioned, cottage garden type, asters (a quick growing annual species) in my garden - I grow them every year and they are like weeds! So I know they are unlikely to fail and we should have loads from quite a small bit of ground. They are massive daisy type flowers on a long stem, like gerberas but with much stiffer stems and come in bright pink, fuschia, purple & mauve shades. Mine and the bridesmaids bouquets and all the buttonholes will be made of these with a bit of gypsophelia and ivy.
Disaster backup is buying a few supermarket bouquets and making everything out of those.

We're also not having a sit down meal but still wanted to put something decorative on the tables in the pub we have for the evening. We have asked family to keep all their empty wine bottles for us (my sister is a complete wino so we should have plenty by August ) I'm printing out fake wine bottle labels with our names etc on to stick on the bottles and we'll put one aster in each and put them on the tables.

I've asked people to donate old bedsheets which we will paint abstract medievally/pagan style designs on in the wedding colours and use as hangings to decorate the venue. I also looked up the coat of arms for my 'new name' and painted it onto one of the bedsheets which we will hang up at the 'head' of the hall and a friend is making a load of decorative 'green man' masks to hang around the place - using up lots of my crafting 'stash' into the bargain

We've got friends & family bringing the buffet food - highly co-ordinated by my mum as we didn't want to end up with ten bowls of coleslaw and nothing else.

An aunt is baking us three different size cakes (one fruit, one madeira and one chocolate) and covering them in plain white icing. We will put these on a tiered stand and drape ivy from my sisters garden over it (de-bugged and sterilised first!)
I'm investing in a load of mini cake boxes from ebay and bits of the wedding cake will go into these as the 'favours'

Relatives and friends are using their own cars to ferry stuff and the wedding party about on the day.

I also wouldn't bother with disposable cameras - hardly ever seen any good photos from this. I've asked three or four friends who do photography as a hobby to wander around with their cameras on the day and asked the most experienced of them to act as 'co-ordinator' to make sure that all the 'essential' photos get taken.

Don't be afraid to ask for favours in lieu of a wedding present - my experience has been that people are really eager to help.

themull1

mrsHall2b wrote: »

i think bright pink/fuchsia (sp??) and turquoise so ive got a bit of leeway trying to get 5 BM dress' because of the age group differences.


i love the 2 colours together.

Oooh that will be lovely. i love those colours too.