Your advice on an OS wedding please?

AccyAlly

Congratulations Kittykate :j

Not sure if u saw One Show, last night. Theres a couple on there who are bartering with the hotel, church, cars etc etc. So thats a thought.....

Me & Hubby got married 5 yrs ago, in a register office (neither of us go to church); had meal in a country pub and then a get together after. Bought my dress from Debenhams, and then matched all colours according to that.
Did own invitations and place cards. Asked all guests for copies of their photos on CD or email, then could select from there for album/pictures. Took own CD's for music at register office,meal & later. Car from Uncle. Cake and favours done by Sister in Law. All in all cost well under £1500 including honeymoon.

It was the best day, enjoy it as it all goes by in a whirlwind!

Put your heads together, and Good Luck!!

Daisy_Daisy_2

Hi, congrats!
ref the photos - go to http://www.kodakgallery.co.uk/PhotoBookOverview.jsp
if you get friends & relatives to take the photos, you can upload onto the kodak website and put together a printed photo book (large ones from £39.99). you can include words and captions and the quality is excellent. I have done one myself (but not for a wedding though).
I made my own wedding dress but hire is good. Oxfam have a good wedding dress service too if you don't mind that.
places like M&S do good wedding cakes that you can stack up, and then get the florist to do a fresh cake top if they are doing your flowers. (or go to somewhere like hobbycraft and get some atificial flowers & a vase?)
for cheap printing try VistaPrint http://www.vistaprint.co.uk/custom-invitations-multi.aspx?GP=4%2F15%2F2008+3%3A43%3A22+PM&rd=1
they are currently doing wedding invites from £1.99 for 10 - custom printed.
We hired a cheap marquee and had our reception in a relatives garden, and hired all the crockery, glasses & tables & chairs from the local arts centre.
Tesco's used to do glass & flatware hire too.
Some of the supermarkets do buffet plates to order, so you could try that.
we got married in december though so my sisters in law made hotpot type meals and served them. All in all the whole wedding cost £1400 (no honeymoon though!)

queenpig

Comgrats.

Just a few tips till i have a propper think.

Photos, wont be as classy as a photographer, but get everyone or ever everyone who takes a carmera as for the lone of the negitives or and extra copy that you pay for.

Favours, I bought a tube of love hearts for everyone.

metherer

Congrats to both brides, and apologies for the length of this post!

DH and I got married June 06 for just under 4k, and we didn't feel we'd missed out on anything.

First up, the dress. Do you want a traditional dress? I didn't. (I'd look like a marshmallow in white..) So, I actually bought a bridesmaids dress. I went to Sugared Almonds in Ilkley, and they showed me the dessy group website. Picked a fab dress (Full length with a matching full length organza jacket), selected the colour I wanted (Wine Red), and it was sent over from America. They tailored the strap length, overall fitting etc, to me. I bought that and another (Navy, knee length for my best friends wedding the weekend after) for just under £200. For two fitted dresses. And my wedding dress is still talked about!

My bridesmaid was 8 at the time, so we went to debenhams and bought an off the peg for her. She chose it. It was white, with sparkly butterflies across the top, and tres cute.

Invites: We made our own, but if you don't fancy doing that, have you any crafty friends? I bought a couple of packs of plain white cards, some 'envelope seals' (Stickers) in silver with a celtic knot design for the fronts, and some peel off lettering. Printed out the insides. The evening invites were plain write postcards, with the same stickers and printing. They looked quite classy, because of the crisp white and silver. Cost maybe 50 quid including ink? That was for 25 day invites and maybe 50 evening ones. Oh, and the place cards for the reception. (Pack of 50, silver edged, which I wrote.)

I also made the invites for my friends wedding (never take on two at once!!!) and hers were done for under £350, including orders of service, day, and night invites. (Loads of them.)

Photos - shop around. If you're feeling brave, ask at local colleges whether they have any photography students who would do it. We spent £350 and ended up with a lovely album with around 60 photos in. (Did some montage pages hence why we got so many in! Managed a picture of every single guest.)

The wedding cake - Mum made a small round fruit cake and plain iced it. She then wrapped a wheel of Wensleydale cheese in clingfilm and iced that too. Voika, a two tier 'cake'. (We love fruit cake and cheese). It was decorated simply with some fresh flowers. For the evening do she did a big flat one, plain iced again, which we sliced up in advance.

Speaking of flowers, my sister used to be a florist so did ours as a wedding present. Have you anyone who is keen on flower arranging? We had a gorgeous spray for the 'book signing' table, which then moved to the top table at the reception, plus 8 smaller round arrangements for the tables. I had a bouquet which mixed silk tulips (I adore them, but it was june) in a colour that matched my dress, with white crysanths and lots of ivy. My bridesmaid had silk stargazer lilies.

Favours - probably spent the same as you are thinking of - miniature whiskies for the men, and chocolates for the ladies. Mum bought some favour boxes and filled them from thorntons. The kids got goodie bags with a comic, colouring book, tiger tail ballons, those things you throw at the wall that walk down.. Our brothers in law spent most of the reception sending tiger tails whizzing over the guests head! great fun. Hawkins Bazaar is good for things like that.

Catering. The wedding breakfast was done at the venue, but the evening do was done by my family, courtesy of Morrisons. Lots of platters of meat and fish, their big salad bowls, plus onion bhajis, samosas, chicken drumsticks, salads, and some veggie spring rolls.

Venues/Timings. Now, this is obviously up to you, but here's what we did. We chose the Red Lion Pub at Burnsall because they have a gorgeous oak panelled function room. Stunning. We had just under 40 people and it was perfect. We got married at 4.15 pm, so the wedding breakfast lasted into the evening (Function room converted from conventional wedding seating to the dining room while we were outside for photos. People left the bar by about 11. We stayed overnight.

The next day we went up to my home village, where my family still live. We spent the afternoon doing up the village hall with tables, balloons etc. The actual Evening do was that night, the day after the wedding. As I mentioned, the buffet was done by us. We had a ceilidh band in, and some CD's on stand by for when they left. I think we went to bed about 3am...

The day after, Sunday, anyone who was still around went to my mums for sunday lunch - the buffet leftovers with fresh salad, hot new potatoes, etc.

So, a 3 day celebration, 2 dresses, 4 nights hotel (2 at the red lion, and 2 in my home village) for under £4k.

If I get chance I'll put some of my photos up.

Well done for reading to the end!

Metherer

Pitlanepiglet

Firstly congratulations!!

We got married in Feb last year, we reckon it cost us around £3500 for 120 people. With unlimited wine on the tables from 4pm onwards, also lots of Cava and mulled wine.

Firstly, can you reconsider your date? Summer weddings are much more expensive, it's a hell of a lot easier to do a deal out of the main season? We work within motorsport so it was always going to be the off season for us so that worked.

We booked a local village hall, bought our own wine from France and cooked most of the hot food (chilli and veg chilli) ourselves the day before and the paid some local ladies to come in, reheat,serve, clear wash up etc. We also had fish and chips delivered from the local chippy on trays!

We had scones made by someone else local and bought cream and jam from Costco and Makro as afternoon tea ahead of the hot buffet.

We were lucky that we didn't pay for a photographer, we have lots of friends who are motorsport photogs so we got great photos for nothing. If you ask around you may find you've got friends who are really competent snappers?

We also went for silk flowers but that was as much a logistical problem - I didn't like the only local florist so getting the flowers done ahead worked for us.

I bought my wedding dress on ebay, a beautiful new, Maggie Sottero corset style frock for £250, it came with a price tag of £900 :eek: My friend's mum shortened it for me as a wedding prezzie. Having started low key we ended up with three page boys and then three bridesmaids!!! I bought the boys suits from ebay from a cheap shop but the girls dresses were Hillary Morgan, I picked a colour I liked and spent ages looking at different styles and sizes of dresses in that colour - the girls were all different ages and styles so they had the same colour but styles that suited their shapes - I didn't pay more than £25 per dress and they all looked fantastic.

My aunt made a wedding cake for us as a prezzie - we had one tier that was "pretty" for us to cut and then a second cake in the kitchen for serving to bulk it out. We also used our friends and family, you know all those people who offer to help and you usually turn down? Well we took them up on their offers to help and they all loved it! They dressed the tables for us, set the hall up, made mulled wine and were generally fantastic - plus they loved the chance of being able to help.

We're very down to earth and entirely unpretentious so it suited us - it was very much "our kind of wedding" and we had a ball!!

metherer

Piglet - sounds like you had a fab time. Some good tips there too.

Pitlanepiglet

Sorry, second post..

I did stump up for someone to come to my Dad's house to do our hair and make up (me, my sister, three bridesmaids and me). It cost a fair bit but we all looked fab and it was well worth it.

I'm glad I cut corners elsewhere to know we all looked fantastic on the day...my bestest big sister has always been a bit concious of her looks and lives in jeans, baggy jumpers and no make up.....seeing her preen in her wedding outfit looking fantastic absolutely made my day and she has photo's all over her walls of her looking great.

The thing I hate about weddings is the "it's out day and that's what matters" of Bridezilla....our day was about our families as well as us and seeing them enjoying themselves and happy is something I will always treasure...

bargainbird

Congrats........

My budget wedding and thats budget with a capital B.

Cake = M & S
Flowers = I wouldn't pay min. £50.00 so my florist did a sort of spray for £20.00 (that'll do nicely)
Photos= just asked everyne to email them to me and i sorted printing them off, end up with all sorts of doubles but you pick the best.
Hubby suit = Burtons £70.00
My Dress = Debenhams £80.00
Hair Gear = CLaires accesories
Bridesmaid = Mothercare
Venue after = Local country pub separate room,asked guests to pre order food, done adeal with landlord.
Invites = WHSmiths

Cant think of anything else.....

All the best tho x

frivolous_fay

Went to my cousin's wedding a couple of summers ago - I don't know what was spent but I do know she was very anti spending a lot of money, so it was fairly no frills, other than a few 'essentials'. Here's what she had:

Church wedding, traditional dress, flowers, rickshaw to the church pedalled by family friend

Family friend doing photos, nothing very formal

Reception: at a local community hall/playgroup with a lawn.

Lunch was on covered trestle tables, set starters followed with a cold buffet
Wine laid on, basic bar available. Music provided from ipod jacked into speakers

There was a proper cake, I don't think it was massive though.

After lunch everyone sat out on the lawn on blankets in the July sun, chilling or going back inside for a dance to the disco (ipod again, and some flashing lights )

It was very relaxed and friendly

Pitlanepiglet

Sorry.....yet another post :D

We didn't bother with favours for the tables...I planned to but then got bored!

In the end we spent £200 in Hawkin's Bazaar and bought all sorts of toys, games and stuff to go on the tables....our guests had a field day We've got photo's of all sorts of people playing silly games, it encouraged people to mingle and the rocket balloons went down especially well!