Wedding on a budget (Members Guide to Planning your Wedding)

Member Name: superstar1212

Product:	Members Guide to Planning your Wedding
Date:	04/07/07 (158 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: You don't have to take out a loan to pay for it

Disadvantages: You will have to down scale - do you really need 11 bridesmaids??

As a few of you may be aware I am due to get married on the 1st September. So I thought I would be nice to write a review on how to plan a wedding on a budget! We are paying for the wedding ourselves as parents aren’t able to help. We decided to keep it small and personal due to costs. I have tried to include everything in my review and hope that it helps other couples to see you can have a wonderful day without it costing an arm and a leg. Throughout the review I will be quoting prices and at the end I will give a total of the wedding costs so far.
Once I have actually got married I shall do a follow up review on how much everything cost and how our big day went.

© Registry Office ©

As we are working a budget and are only having about 25 guests we decided that our local registry office would be ideal. At a registry office you can get married any day of the week, times vary between offices but they usually work from about 10am - 4pm. They are very helpful and will try their best to cater to your needs. Each office has different maximum people per service make sure you check with the office that your wedding party will fit in the room. When you go to your local office to book your date you will have to take two forms of ID and £60 cash or cheque, they will be taking all your details including your fathers occupation I haven’t a clue why! On the day you have to have a 5 minute interview to make sure all your details are all correct. You can choose whether you wish to be interviewed together or separate. Some offices will allow you to provide your own music as long as it on religious but others will provide music for you. Photos and video cameras are allowed in some offices too. The service will last about ½ hour.

*If you get married at a register office, it will cost £30 per notice and £43.50 on the day of the wedding.

© Reception ©

We are having our reception at a lovely country hotel. We have decided to have a wedding breakfast which will consist of 3 courses and coffee to follow. There will be an additional 50 people arriving for the evening reception and we have booked a disco and buffet for the evening. In many hotels they will have a wedding co-ordinator mine has been a god send and she is very helpful with answering all my silly questions. Once you have looked around the hotel you wish to use and have met your wedding co-ordinator there are quite a few things you will have to decide:

Arrival time
Menu and drinks package required
Evening buffet menu and timings
Special dietary and vegetarians requirements
Children’s meals and high-chairs required
Entertainment arrangements
Table plan and napkins
Details of delivery of your cake, place cards, table plan, flowers, favours ect.
Any other special requests

This may sound like a lot of things to organise but your wedding co-ordinator will help with a lot of it.

We have decided to have the menu below:

*WEDDING BREAKFAST*

Trio of melon / Prawn & Apple cocktail
Traditional roast turkey/ beef
Chocolate fudge cake/ Profitter rolls with chocolate sauce

Glass of red wine or sherry for reception toast
Glass of red or white wine with meal
Glass of sparkling wine for toast

*CHILDREN‘S MENU*
Melon starter
Traditional beef or turkey
Ice cream

*EVENING BUFFET*

Open rolls with various fillings
Roasted vegetable quiches
Gala pork pie
Cocktail sausages & cheese and pineapple
Sausage rolls
Marinated chicken
Selection of vol au vents
Chicken satay
Puff pastry case assortment
Crisps, nuts and pickles

*The total cost for both will be : £1’141*

The disco will cost about £170 for the evening and there will be a bar serving drinks all night.

In total the wedding reception will cost around £1’311.00 We do not have to pay a charge for the hotel function room as that is included in the cost of the catering.

Most hotels will also offer a package on bed & breakfast for yourself and your guests.

© Transport ©

Transport to and from the wedding venue can be very costly and we are very lucky to have a good friend that drives a lovely Mercedes so he will be taking us to our wedding. There are many car hire places across the country some offer amazing head turning vehicles. But the prices start from about £500 which is a huge amount of money so if you know someone that has a nice car just ask them to take you and decorate the car with ribbons and have a bottle of champagne in the back!

© Formal wear ©

We looked at hiring a suit with all the bits from BHS and it would have cost around £70 for the groom and £60 for my son who is 19 months old. Before we made a final decision we went to the burtons sale and got a fantastic suit which had been reduced in the sale it should have been £260 and had been marked down to £110. My partner is a sales manager so he wears a suit everyday and will be able to wear this suit for work after the wedding. Many men buy a suit for a wedding which costs a lot of money then only wears it for weddings and funerals and the rest of the time it is left in the wardrobe!

We finally brought my son a Shirt, waistcoat and cravat from Ebay which was brand new with tags originally from BHS which costs a tiny £5.00 and I will just buy a pair of black trousers to go with them closer to the time as he is forever growing.


© Bride and bridesmaid ©

I brought my daughters bridesmaid dress from sainsburys and it is beautiful with lots of little sparkly stones on the skirt and it only cost £15.00

My dress on the other hand was a lot more money!
I had my eye on a dress in a wedding shop just after having my son. 6 months later I went back and asked to try it on, it fitted nicely and the owner told me that it was due to be reduced from £600 to £410 so I snapped her hand off and brought it there and then.
I have borrowed a veil from my friend as she had two when she got married and never wore the one she gave to me. I brought two tiaras for myself and my daughter from ebay costing about £15 for the pair.

© Stationary ©

Instead of paying shop prices why not use Ebay!

I was able to buy favours, place cards, invites, save the date cards, table accessories all from ebay at the fraction of the price in shops. In total I have spent around £40 on all of the above. Many seller offer postage discount on multi orders.


© Cake ©

I don’t like cake so I wasn’t happy on paying £300 for a cake that I wouldn’t be eating!!

I shopped around and brought a cake from M & S and Tesco then got my partner and children to try both. The result being that the Tesco cake was the better of the two. We are going to buy a large & medium white occasion cake which will cost around £20 and to decorate it I will put a ribbon around the base and I brought 2 personalised cake toppers from ebay which will be placed on the top. Cake topper cost around £15 each from ebay.

~~Summary~~

I have included everything that I have either booked or bought for my magical wedding.
So far we have spent ……….

£2’055.50

We have still got to book our honeymoon but we will be staying in the uk as the children are only young and they will be coming with us.

I will update the review as I go along but I hope that the information included so far will help you or someone you know that is getting married soon.

Summary: How low can you go?