Wedding savings/saving

tillyenna

Even though it's already booked - you can still negotiate in the 'would you be able to just add this in' kind of negotiations. Might not save you any money - but will get you more.

Andy_89

Update MKII

We had the contract through for the wedding, no mention of Silver package so I am relieved I can now negotiate accordingly.

The small print tells us that we are required to book 10 rooms at the hotel as a MINIMUM, not including our commplementary room. Now at £130/night I can't see many, if any, of my family stopping over especially considering they live a £30(MAX) taxi ride from home.

The wife to be has told me she has found, and bought her dress, mega cheap £250 I am told. Sadly has no saving on my budget as her mother was always going to buy it. We have managed to sort some table names etc for £10 (printed off pictures in a frame from B&M) so I may save £100 there!

Suits are going to be hired and are looking at £50/person so there could be another £500.

I need it because my honeymoon is coming out at £800 more than my budget

Wedding ring shopping Saturday, well not buying but finding what we want and see how much it is. Well probably end up buying if the price is right.

runawaybride

she did well with her dress.
what will you do about rooms ? thats an extra £1300 on top and if guests dont want to book you will probably have to pay for unused rooms. 10 rooms is a lot as a minimum.
good luck with the ring shopping.

tatabubbly

Maybe let the out of town people know that you have rooms available?

Our hotel is provisionally booking 10 for us and if they aren't used or booked up 8 weeks beforehand they automatically release them for the general public again!

Your budget is roughly the same as mine. We've bought a lot of stuff off ebay and local suppliers.. Seems to be cheaper than the high st.
We've saved quite a lot and its hopefully gonna come in at around €17.5K but considering we earn €60K a year its not a problem for us! Only spend what you have available, it's always the best plan!

Andy_89

tatabubbly wrote: »

Maybe let the out of town people know that you have rooms available?

Our hotel is provisionally booking 10 for us and if they aren't used or booked up 8 weeks beforehand they automatically release them for the general public again!

Your budget is roughly the same as mine. We've bought a lot of stuff off ebay and local suppliers.. Seems to be cheaper than the high st.
We've saved quite a lot and its hopefully gonna come in at around €17.5K but considering we earn €60K a year its not a problem for us! Only spend what you have available, it's always the best plan!

We earn around £50k between us, but given the short notice it has been a bit tight. The more solid prices I get in the better, I can then see where there is room for movement.

Tomorrow will be a good day for prices, I hope!

tatabubbly

Me and Oh are having a longer engagement just so we can ensure we have the wedding paid off this year in 2014, our wedding isn't until Sept 2015.

Ebay I have found will be your best friend, along with Amazon for some products.

We are lucky in that our parents are paying for cars, which we weren't going to have but can now and my siblings are paying for our cake.
I have solid prices for pretty much everything except wedding rings.. That and little decor bits may be the only bit we will go over on..

Andy_89

Well I am just off the phone to the venue and they are unwilling to offer any discount for me upgrading our package, due to the package being 'already discounted' her indoors has her heart set on this upgrade so I am stuck really.

They won't even give me a free room for her the night before.

I know for a fact if I threaten to pull out, as it were, they will call my bluff and offer my deal to somebody else.

I feel like I am over a barrell at the moment.

runawaybride

just make sure you have read ALL the small print so you arent going to be hit with charges for anything else. if your fiance has her heart set on this venue is she willing to compromise on everything else in order to get it ? id be more tempted to look for somewhere else. i think you really need to work it all out to the last penny so you dont get any shocks later.
how did the ring shopping go ?

Andy_89

It didn't the weather was too nice so we sat in the garden all day, was fantastic!

TopQuark

tatabubbly wrote: »

Your budget is roughly the same as mine. We've bought a lot of stuff off ebay and local suppliers.. Seems to be cheaper than the high st.
We've saved quite a lot and its hopefully gonna come in at around €17.5K but considering we earn €60K a year its not a problem for us! Only spend what you have available, it's always the best plan!

Not everyone thinks like this though. I earn a six-figure salary myself, with OH is not too far behind me but we find the idea of paying 20k for a wedding to be outrageous! Of course we could afford to pay it, but to be honest, we aren't prepared to as most things related to weddings are highly overpriced. I'm not tight, I'd just prefer to spend my money of other, more worthwhile things.

I bought my dress from China for 140 quid and it is beautiful. It is not absolutely, perfectly flawless, but to be honest I don't care; I'm going to be wearing it for a few hours for one time only, so in the grand scheme of things, it's really not that important.

Ditto the flowers - we'll have no fresh (cut) flowers at all; all the bouquets are silk and the table decorations are actual plants, which were much cheaper than arranged cut flowers.

We made the invitations, table plan, place settings, table names and decorations ourselves.

For wine we visited the actual vineyards and bought in bulk directly from the producers, to that saved quite a bit (although OH is from a wine-producing region of France and thus it was possible; I realise not everyone can do this).

The only thing we have splurged on is the honeymoon. Travel is our major passion and hobby in life - it's how we met and it defines us, so the honeymoon was a great excuse to go on a trip of a lifetime :j