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

Member Name: truffellady

Product:	Members Guide to Planning your Wedding
Date:	28/09/09 (19 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A much more affordable wedding

Disadvantages: you need a lot of free time

Me and my partner got engaged about 6 months ago and decided that a long engagement wasn't for us and that we wanted to get married this year so about 2 months ago I booked the local registry office and my wedding is now just 5 weeks off.

Giving ourselves so little time to plan and with very little savings in the bank I knew that this had to be a wedding on a budget and in total so far my wedding looks as if it will cost about £1,300.

I decided that I wasn't going to let a very small budget make my day any less extravagant. I might not have lots of cash to throw at it but I have time.

First things first, the dress. I bought my dress online for £70 delivered and it is beautiful and fits like a glove (I followed the sizing guide). It was new and got delivered the day after ordering. The shop was bridal wear plus.

My partner has a nice suit and so does his best man so for them I got a waistcoat, cravat and winged shirt set from ebay costing less than £50 for both.

The flowers I got just button holes for the groom and best man for £5 each and my bouquet was my biggest extravagance costing £80.

For the venue I opted for a local inn that has a beautiful reception room with big round tables, and the option to take your own music on CD that they transfer onto there MP3 player so no need for a DJ and this option allows us to choose what we like, we are going to take our laptop around to some of the guests houses prior to the wedding so we get a great selection.

For the food we are doing a warm and cold mixed buffet but with a more formal setting, with place cards and favours. This option as allowed us to have a more formal and traditional wedding party but with the lower cost of just £10 per head.

To decorate the tables we have a set of 3 balloons for the center of each table, £3.50 each and cheap as we only have 6 tables. We also got some bubbles from ebay.

The wedding favours are very nice, we got little silver love heart boxes that I filled with Jelly Belly beans for the ladies and Little silver hip flasks that I filled with a single malt for the man, both decorated with bows so they match, for the children I spent ages looking for something just right. We have 6 very young children coming ages between 6 months and 2 years, for them I managed to search on job lots on ebay under children and found a set of 6 boydes bears with squeaky bellies. Being boydes they are beautiful and suitable from birth, I managed to get them for £12 with postage so just £2 each I felt was well worth it. Shopping around and constant checking of new items available is well worth it.

The place cards I did myself with matching seating plan and I also did my own invites and thank you cards, all matching, the total cost of the wedding stationary came to under £40 and they looked very expensive, as I did the stationary myself I managed to print off the middle of each invite separately changing the names as I went, I had a few people asking where I had got them. A good tip for doing your own invites is to look at handmade invites online then search for the separate components to make up the ones you like, a good site for buying these is Mad about cards.

The cake is the final expense, I really like the cupcake style wedding cakes so I have bought the things to make my own, I did a trial run yesterday and they are great, I watched a couple of youtube videos and realised I needed a butterfly plunge cutter, a large star nozzel, a piping bag and a cake stand. for all these I spent less than £35. The rest is just the cupcakes and the icing and flower paste. If you are not a good baker or want less hassle you could always buy the buns from a supermarket and then decorate them yourself. I plan to make them the day before.

My sister is doing my make up and I am having my hair done at a small hairdressers costing £25 including a trial the week before and my nails are being done too costing £20 for a full set of acrylics.

My friends dad is driving me to the wedding in his very nice, very new Jaguar.

The photos are going to be taken by our guests, these days nearly everyone has got a digital camera and so we decided to ask everyone if they wouldn't mind bringing theres to the wedding, we are going to then choose the best and put them into an album, nowadays you can get the most wonderful albums online and the great thing about them is you can design them just like you want, for the best sort your looking at around £45.

Summary: its not too expensive and it will still be a day to remember.