Only freedom will do

mrsp1987

Our attitude was save money on the wedding and reception so we could spend it on the honeymoon. 2 days versus 14 days.

edinburgher

We got married in Greece, 1/3 of the cost of the UK. We were very lucky in that 30 friends and family came with us and we asked them not to give gifts as we could appreciate that going abroad is expensive (although not too bad as Zakynthos is very affordable). Inlaws paid for the bulk of the wedding, generous gift from parents paid the rest, so we paid for a lovely honeymoon from our own pockets. 5 star sunshine holiday followed by NYC, we have never been so spoiled in all our days :j

• £1.35 to EF (at 55.07% of target)
• £1.17 OPed

Very tired, DD was up midnight to half two :coffee:

AlexLK

edinburgher wrote: »

We have been to a few weddings of that scale. Mrs E's best friend had 200? guests at her wedding and hubby had to sell *land* to pay for it :eek: :eek:

Wow, it's a rather crazy world we live in. :eek:

Karmacat wrote: »

Some of that sounds very sad, Alex

I've come to the conclusion that the size of the wedding has nothing to do with the chances of the marriage lasting ... what was interesting at the Scottish one, was the comment of the photographer's assistant to me, that he knew whether a wedding would last from the attitude of the bride and groom to one another during the whole thing of posing for photographs.

The smallest wedding I've ever been to was one of those "I want to stay in the country" affairs ... I wasn't the one in front of the altar, I hasten to add. Bad days.

Save

That's what happens when you have a mental breakdown. I suppose I've learned over the years I have very few true friends.

I think the wedding has nothing to do with the marriage at all. A marriage takes an awful lot of work and genuine commitment. Weddings are often vulgar displays of wealth (or access to finance) that have very little to do with the commitment of marriage and sincerity of the vows the couple are making.

edinburgher wrote: »

We got married in Greece, 1/3 of the cost of the UK. We were very lucky in that 30 friends and family came with us and we asked them not to give gifts as we could appreciate that going abroad is expensive (although not too bad as Zakynthos is very affordable). Inlaws paid for the bulk of the wedding, generous gift from parents paid the rest, so we paid for a lovely honeymoon from our own pockets. 5 star sunshine holiday followed by NYC, we have never been so spoiled in all our days :j

• £1.35 to EF (at 55.07% of target)
• £1.17 OPed

Very tired, DD was up midnight to half two :coffee:

Sounds much more exciting that getting married in your hometown... :rotfl:

Do you visit Greece a lot? The only time I've been to Greece was on a school Classics trip but I've always wanted to go back. Too hot in the summer, though.

:rotfl: I think your daughter is turning into a night owl.

PositiveBalance

Weddings: I worked in the conference & banqueting section of a *very* posh hotel part-time when I was at uni.

I could tell you stories that would make you snigger and weep in equal measure.

As for £30k weddings, they are really, really not hard to do depending on where you hold the reception.

My favourite ever wedding, though, was a real traditional affair a few years ago in a small church and church hall. Simple, fun, full of love and bits of this and that everyone had contributed and a perfect reflection of the couple.

If I ever get married I hope my wedding is more like the simple one. Although my list of acceptable bands for the reception is stringent and likely to be expensive! :eek: :dance:

smallholdingsister

We had ferret racing in the village hall for our wedding.

mrsp1987

PositiveBalance wrote: »

If I ever get married I hope my wedding is more like the simple one. Although my list of acceptable bands for the reception is stringent and likely to be expensive! :eek: :dance:

If your aim is a low cost wedding I think you find the things that you're willing to sacrifice price on and then that balances out the things that you want to be high quality and/or high price. For us, we had a family friend who has photography as a hobby do our wedding photos and he did it for free. We also got my MIL to make the flower table centres etc but I wanted my bouquet and BM bouquets to be done professionally. Same for the cake. In the end it all balanced out. It it was still flipping costly even for a "cheap" wedding

Karmacat

Married in Greece! Ed, thats great - Greece and Canada are my two favourite countries in the world

edinburgher

Do you visit Greece a lot?

We've been to Greece in 6/10 years of the last decade, so yes! Not recently though (for obvious reasons).

The extras can be exorbitant. Ridiculous example from the recent wedding - most of the male guests were late millennials. We all have reasonable jobs and one of our collective weaknesses is good/'craft' beer (i.e. beer that actually tastes like something). When asking what beer was served at the venue, the groom was presented with the option of bringing his own beer. To do so, he would buy it, deliver it, the venue would *sell it* to his guests and *they* would keep the money! :eek: :rotfl:

• £1.39 OPed
• £1 paid to EF (55.17% of target)

Extra daddy daughter day today, MIL on holiday so can't provide her usual mid week assistance

turtlemoose

We got married here, which was a whopping £130 for the first Saturday in August at 3:30pm . if we lived a few miles closer, it would have only been around £50 iirc! There's a castle ruins in the grounds too which made for some lovely photos (photography done free, by our photographer friend as a gift). We had 22 guests to the ceremony (2 of which were our children). It was lovely - I wasn't overly keen on the idea of getting married but once we were there it was perfect, very 'us'. First anniversary on Monday

Karmacat

turtlemoose, thats lovely


Ed, can I ask your advice please? What would I buy as a cheap, reliable phone, as a "gift"? Talking, texting, photos, and hopefully internet access (are there any without access these days?) Needs to be reliable, and can't use EE or Three, as the signal where it's needed is problematic. Don't need the sim card, hopefully the existing sim can be transferred. I bought my own phone years ago, didn't do my own research, and just bought Martin's recommendation, which was fine, but this isn't for me, and I want to make the best possible choice....