Here We Go...Debt, Diet, DIY & Wedding!!

Sammy_Girl

I am a newbie to this forum and absolutely love it!! I have read probably thousands of posts over the last few weeks, and now feel it's time to write my own debt free diary.

As my life is so complicated, there will no doubt be ramblings of dieting, DIY & wedding. I'm trying to incorporate these into my DFW lifestyle!

I'm so concentrated on being debt free that i have hardly thought about wedding preps. Fortunately the big day is not until August 2009 so I have some breathing room! I've read all kinds of horror stories about the average cost of a wedding, so it would be nice to keep it in the DFW spirirt

So I'm here for the longhaul, or at least August 2009 Any comments always appreciated, and when I'm flagging please feel free to kick me into touch

Sammy x

count_rostov

Hi Sammy,

I am also going for similar goals! We're getting married earlier (this september) and have slightly less debt (just under £12000) but are also aiming to be debt free in April 2009 and finish our DIY...er...sometime soon.

Good luck!

Sammy_Girl

Thank you CR :beer:

I know it's going to be tough, and I try to save money on everything I do, but it is hard! I think I need to start writing down all of the DFW things that I do on a daily basis and I'm sure that will motivate me. Am having a glass of £2.99 wine right now!! It's actually quite good

Sammy x

newyorkcitybride

Evening Sammy

Just wanted to say welcome, and congrats on the amount you've shaved off already!
Good luck with the wedding planning too. I recently got married (well March 18th) and now we've made a start on clearing the debts, luckily they weren't increased by our wedding as we eloped and went on a glorified holiday and got hitched there! But thats a whole other story....

Have you been on the snowball calculator yet? I love that thing!
Also have you been through all your budgets? What about a spending diary etc?
Just a few thoughts that came into my head...

First and foremost tho, welcome xx

Sammy_Girl

Hi NYCB!

Thank you, and congratulations on your nuptuals! I wish we had the guts to elope but that is definitely not happening. Too many people involved in our wedding! Found out today that my future parents in law have booked annual leave for when we get married. I haven't even booked my leave off work yet!! I should do really as we've already paid the deposit on the church and venue, an dknowing my luck my request will be turned down

So I;m guessing by your name that you got married in NYC?? I love NY. We went there in January and had a great time.

Sammy x

Jacobs_Bunny

Hi Sammy,

I too am new to this site, so here goes :j

I got married a few years ago and we kept the cost down by asking people to contribute something they were good at, rather than buying a gift (it saved them money too). Here comes the list:

One friend made the wedding cake, which was based on her Mums Christmas cake recipe. It was an absolutely amazing two tier cake, which everyone commented on how wonderful it looked. Cost £16 for ingredients, quoted cost for a similar cake was approx £350.

A friend who was a hair dresser did my hair and the hair of my bridesmaid. Cost £2 for pins, quoted cost for hairdresser £70.

Another friend made the wedding invites and table place cards. Cost £20 for materials and postage costs, quoted cost for similar £60 (cards only).

A friend acted as the photographer for the day. Cost £40 for film and development, cost for photographer quoted at £800.

I took a 10 week florestry course at a local school and spoke to a local wholesaler and made not only the bouquets for myself and my bridesmaid, but all the button holes to. Cost £60 for flowers (lillies and roses), cost for similar from florist quoted at £450.

Borrowed cars for wedding, care of Mum (SLK), Brother (Audi) and Best Man (BMW), cost was free, plus £8 for white ribbon to go on the cars, quoted cost for 2 cars was £600.

I made all the table favours by buying chocolate minin eggs wholesale, netting and bags from the market and making it all for £30. Quoted cost was £120.

If you have your wedding out of the 'high' season of April to Sept most hotels do not require you to have a minimum number of people or spend a minimum amount on your meal, etc. Plus they usually have some deals on where you will get your room for the night free or a meal upgrade at half the cost.

Even after spending nearly £1k on alcohol at my wedding, the entire cost was still just over £3k. If you're willing to do some of the hard work instead of paying others to do it and have some lovely friends willing to help you out, you can have an amazing wedding for much less than the standard quoted £12k.

PS. If you're wondering if I cut anything from the wedding the answer is no....I had the bell ringers, the chior, the whole lot

Now, I just need to work on paying off my evil car loan!!

newyorkcitybride

Hiya!

Yes we got married in NYC, at City Hall, which isn't everyone cup of tea, but hey it was something different.
The actual license and wedding cost us $65!
But our holiday, 7 days in a 4* boutique hotel was £1k each... so even considering that we got married for less than £3k!!
We're going back in July as well!

It all depends on the person really. I dont like lots of attention on me, or stress LOL plus we both have very "distended" (polite way of saying it!) families, so this cut down on the arguments, stress and worry for us...so it served us to do it that way, but I love the idea of big white weddings, (being a guest!)

Do you have an idea of budget for the wedding and what kind of wedding you're going for? And have you organised much else besides church and venue?
Like JB said, ask around, people are always willing and want to help, if you dont want to put too much onto other people, just ask them to do the smaller things, like wedding favours, invites etc.

Jacobs_Bunny

Hi Newyorkcitybride - good for you for eloping!
I would have loved to have eloped and got hitched, but my OH wouldn't hear of it. We actually got engaged at the top of the Empire State Building. It's an absolutely amazing place.

Sammy - another thing we did to keep costs down was to decide that if we hadn't physically seen someone in the last 12 months or at least spoke/e-mailed them regularly, then they weren't coming, irrespective of if they were family or not! It stopped a lot of argument about whose 5th cousin, eight times removed should be there or not!

JB x

count_rostov

Back again, ways that we have cut costs on our wedding (which actually my lovely parents are paying for):
we're hiring a hostel for the venue, it's a really beautiful building and we can put up all our guests for free - to save even more we could charge them £15/each but decided against it
I'm wearing my mother's wedding dress which luckily is really elegant
My mother is growing the flowers
and she's baking the cake
at least I'm helping her with the cooking
we're getting kegs of beer and cider and not serving spirits, this way we avoid a cash bar and our guests can be MSE too

There's a wedding's forum sub-board in the Celebrations board, everyone's very helpful there.

roo970

Congratulations Sammy!

When we got married we tried to spend as little as poss, but still have the things we wanted. Here's some tips from we learnt. Hope you find them helpful

RECEPTION
- look at your venues conferencing dinner menus as they are usually cheaper. We had a three course from the 'conference choices' that was £15 cheaper per person than the cheapest 'wedding menu'.

- check corkage charges. It was cheaper for us to buy our own booze and have them open it than it was to buy their cheapest.

- use fizzy wine for the reception / toast. We used Prosecco (italian sparkling wine). They come in a nice bottle like champagne so look the part but are around £5 a bottle (less if you get a bulk deal), so unless you are a champagne expert then go for this! Loads of our guests said, 'oh I don't usually like champagne much but this is lovely' as they guzzled it back. We then told them that was because it was the italian version and they were all impressed with our drinks knowledge!:rotfl:

- skip the full evening buffet and do chips and / or bacon butties. Usually much cheaper. Everyone loves chips, particularly after a drink and a dance...

FLOWERS
- if you use a florist look one from your local market or flower market as they are much cheaper than those with shops and swanky brochures of wedding flowers. Ours was also really excited to be doing a wedding and did a lovely job within our small budget.

- wanting specific flowers can be expensive. I agreed a colour scheme with our florist and she used what was more available to fit this on the day for the best price. Also it was nice to get a surprise with the flowers as I'd organised everything else.

- if you have table centres then ask for lots of green foliage as this pads out and is cheaper than more blooms.

CAKES
- cakes from the supermarkets are fab. Waitrose will even order you samples to try and M&S use the same recipe as for their luxury fruit cake for their wedding cakes so you can buy one to try out.

- M&S also do cake bars so we bought a small cake for the pictures and then bought a few sponge and fruit bars for the kitchen to slice as this was cheaper than buying a cake big enough to give everyone a slice. Does that make sense?

LAST OF ALL.. money
- With time to plan we got a credit card from John Lewis and used this to pay for as much as possible (paying off each month - well we did try to ). They then send you vouchers which we used to buy other stuff we needed so my wedding shoes, the cake and the ribbon and envelopes for making our invites were all paid for with vouchers from other stuff we'd bought:D.

- ask for vouchers for birthday and christmas from stores you want to buy wedding stuff from and save them for buying wedding bits. It all helps...

Happy planning!

Lemon_Tree

hi, i'm getting married in Sept, 2008, and am in for the long haul with my debt, i'm aiming to clear the debt by the end of 2011.
We've tried to keep to a budget, and are trying to get what we want for as little as possible eg, i've made the stationery saving us at least £400! We've often had to say NO to things, just because you are being shoved in the direction of things at wedding fayres doesn't mean you must have them, and just because it's traditional doesn't mean it's necessary.
The best thing is to know what YOU both want, and set your budgets based on the minimum that you want and then if you've saved extra you can get some off the added bits that make things special
Good luck and enjoy your wedding preparations, and keep coming back, and take a look at the weddings and anniversary boards here they're full of loads of good ideas