# Wedding idea's



## dakota (Feb 6, 2007)

Im getting married in 2010, and im starting to plan things now

did you do anything different for your wedding?

What colour schemes did you have?

Where did you go on your honeymoon?

Any tips on keeping the cost down? (I am having wedding at 3.30pm so i only have to feed people once   )

Or does anyone know any useful websites?

Nikki xx


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## beachgirl (Jun 7, 2007)

Nikki-

Congratulations on your forthcoming wedding 

I used to use Confetti and it also has a forum too....


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## Libeth (Jul 17, 2007)

Oooh - congratulations!
I got married in December 2005 - and did it all on a good budget.  Got a dress in the sale.  DH and groomsmen all wore normal suits (DH hired the cravat and stuff though).  Bridesmaids got dresses from Debenhams.  Got my cake made by my aunt (she does it semi professional though) although my cousin got hers and bought loads of those tiny cup cakes from Tescos and added a dob of icing on the top and had a really big tier of those - looked fantastic and tasted great!  I also got a florist friend to do my flowers and had silks (which are nice to keep), another friend did my video (but he does that for a hobby).  And we had a tractor to take us from the church to the venue which my DH drove (farming background!!).  Oh and sister did all my stationery.  

Best piece of advice is dont invite people you feel you have to!!! Wish I had not bothered wiht some folk!

There is a wedding magazine - cant remember what its called - but its A5 sized - think it could be wedding ideas adn that always had some brilliant cheaper ideas in it.

My bridesmaids carried lanterns wiht candles in instead of flowers - lanterns from Ikea!!

(Hope my wedding doesnt sound too cheap now!!!)  But think the important thing to do is spend the money where it matters.  We didnt scrimp on the photos and so pleased we didnt as they are a good reminder as is the video.  

I had a silver and lilac theme and butterflies in the midle of winter.  Also, because I got married at Christmas, the church and venue were already decorated which again saved a lot of money.  And I had lovely big candles on the tables as centre pieces.  

let us know your ideas - weddings are so exciting!! Would love to do it again!! (to the same DH though!)

Oh and went to America on honeymoon - saved long and hard for it and went all over the place! Worth every penny!

xx


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## ♥sparklequeen♥ (Feb 6, 2007)

*Hi Nikki hun 

We also got married at christmas so saved on lots of decorations 

We went to the Maldives and Dubai for our honeymoon, or moneyhoon as my dad called it  As we'd been together for so long we had everything pressie wise so in our invites we asked people to make a donation towards the honeymoon if they wanted to and we ended up more than covering the cost - so thats a way to save quite a few pennies! Alternatively you could ask for vouchers for the company you booked your honeymoon through such as first choice.

Also, we had the wedding in a luxury hotel so it meant that we didnt need to worry about the costs of fancy cars or hiring a bus to take people between the wedding and reception.

There is a brill mag for blokes called stag&groom that im sure your DP will find great - its written by men for men so its very helpful for them i found.

Our theme was silver, champagne and deep burgundy flowers as its christmassy - weve got some pics on my ******** if you want to see 

Id love to be a wedding planner - i love everything about weddings! Let us know your ideas - oooh, its so exciting! *


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## em3978 (May 24, 2007)

Congratulations from me too 

I got married 18 months ago for less than £3k!

I had a dress that was technically a bridesmaid dress, but I wanted something fairly simple, and trad wedding dresses just looked wrong on me. 
All the men wore their own suits, DH and best man hired waistcoats and we bought ties from Debenhams to match my dress and all the men kept those after.
Bridesmaid dresses were from monsoon
I arranged my own bouquets and table decs the night before and had even gone out to collect ivy for the greenery two days before
I did my own hair
MIL made the cake
We had numbers limited by the venue to 50, a good excuse to only invite the closest people  and stayed at wedding venue for meal then everyone got thrown out at 5pm 
We had two (excellent) friends as photographers

__
https://flic.kr/p/288853521

Oh and it was held at a Youth Hostel!!!! 

Honeymoon was a week in Devon/Dartmoor (in November!) Sounds mad but it was spectacular 

In the end we had exactly the day we wanted, we didnt scrimp for tightness sake, just because we didnt need to spend loads of money to have a nice celebration with family and close friends.
The venue was perfect, the meal was lovely (carvery with three choices - and they catered for gluten free fabulously!) and the ceremony was short and understated which is as we wanted it!

Em
xx

Apologies for the lack of punctuation, 12lb wriggly screamer on one arm 

/links


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## kitten1 (Jan 1, 2007)

Hi Nikki,

DH and I got married last May at Aintree Racecourse!!   

We had gone there for a Wedding Fayre, and decided to have a look at the rooms there, more for some ideas really. We saw the room set up in the Queen Mother Stand, and it was perfect!! Red and cream tables etc. 

I bought my dress - £560 from a local shop. No veil or tiara as the dress had so much going on on the back. My sister made me and the bridesmaids little bags to carry money etc in; I made our wedding invites myself; Aintree provided the other stationary; our wedding cake was bought from Tesco's and decorated by a friend in work; the bridesmaids paid to hire their own dresses; the wee ones I bought their dresses from Mothercare!!    We only invited people to the day do who we knew would appreciate being invited and so will come (friends and very close family). Everyone else was invited to the night do. DH and his ushers and best man etc again paid to hire their own suits etc. 

Mum and dad paid for our honeymoon and for the cars. DH's parent's paid for the drinks package for the meal and some money towards the disco.

Mine and the bridesmaids flowers were done by me and my maid of honour!!    I raided the supermarkets for bunches of red roses and we demolished her hydrangea bush!!   All held together with sellotape and ribbon!!    We shopped around for our photorapher and ended up paying £300 for a load of photos and a cd which we have the rights to print off as many pics as we want from. This also included an album.

In total, DH and I paid about £3k (at the most!!) for our wedding. But, as we paid off bits here and there, it wasn't too bad. Some photo's are on ******** 

We were planning on having a wedding at Ruthin Castle at one point.... complete with a medieval banquet!! Just had problems sorting out getting everyone there...... 

A civil ceremony tends to be cheaper, I think too.

Good luck and have lots of fun!! It's over all too soon.........


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## Greeneyed (Apr 12, 2006)

Hi Nikki, 

Have you found a venue? If not I would say that is first on your agenda. We found that the most popular ones insited we have an evening do (with food again) so we ended up feeding people twice - you may find more flexibility if you get married on a weekday as opposed to a Saturday. 

tips for saving money are: 

Make your own invitations, order of service, menus, table setting etc. There are lots of craft websites where you can order everything you need - you can download sample wordings for invites etc from the internet. We ordered lots of sample invitations from printers to get ideas - then based ours on those. 

Don't bother with favours (they mostly end up left on the table anyway!) or make your own. Our wedding was on the first day of the world cup so we gave all the boys england badges (I got a job lot on ebay) and put them in small boxes with a ribbon round them and they went down a storm 

If possible only have one wedding car. My car took my mum & bridesmaid to the church first then came back for me and my Dad, it then took me and my husband to the reception whilst my bridemaid got a lift with my parents. I don't think it is really essential for the bridesmaids to have their own car and I saved at least £300 by just having one. 

Order your cake from M & S - I got three tier cake (two tears fruit and one sponge) for about £90 it is plain iced in white or ivory then you can have your florist dress it with flowers which match your table decorations. (mine looked fab) 

Find out which flowers are in season and more cost effective - I chose peonies and they cost a fortune! 

You have lots of time for dress shopping and most of the shops have sales - find out when their sales are and see if you can grab a bargain. 

Buy your shoes from a shoe shop as opposed to a wedding shop - I spent £70 on mine and you didn't get a glimps pf them under my dress. Next have some nice ones for about £30 usually. the same goes for your jewelly and tiarra ?I spent about £130 on my tiarra bt I could have got one from debenhams jewelry counter for much less. 

Find out if the venue you choose allows corkage and if so how much - it may work out cheaper to go to France and buy all your wine. - Have sparkling wine, rather than champagne for the toast etc. 

Shop about on the web for table decorations etc - personally I thought Confetti was very expensive. 

Don't waste loads of money on wedding magazines. One or two are helpful as they usually include checklists and timelines etc, but they are mostly full of advertisements and I didn't really find any inspiration from them. Remember that the magazines have their advertisers interests at heart and so will encourage you to have absolutely everything on your big day as opposed to saving funds. 

Don't get too hung up on tradition and having every little thing - it doesn't matter if you don't have favours or a cake if you don't want one. 

Don't bother with disposable cameras on the tables - we had them and the cameras and developing cost a fortune. All of the pictures were poor quality. These days everyone has digi cameras and you will get so many discs from your friends - perhaps ask someone at each table to take a few snaps of the guests. 

Re the honeymoon - my cousin got married last year and their gift list was for trailfinders to contribue to their honeymoon. They went to india a few months later. 

Things I wouldn't skimp on: 

The photos - we spent a lot on ours but they are stunning and we will have them for ever. 
The rings (well yours anyway!) You have to wear this for ever so worth a bit extra. 

Best of luck with everything - it is such an exciting time xx


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## ♥emmyloupink♥ (Mar 21, 2005)

congrats !!  
i am selling my wed dress,worn once Obviously   cost £900 last year want £200 bargain lol and its gorgeous size 10  xx


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## ~ S ~ (Oct 27, 2003)

Hi Nikki,

Despite my best intentions our budget went way out of control  

A couple of things we did which did save some money were:

(1) Bought the wedding cake from M&S (3 different sizes), hired a cake stand from a local shop for a couple of quid, then asked the florist (dh's aunt) to decorate with some spare flowers from the bouquet - looked beautiful and was a fraction of the cost of having a wedding cake made  

(2) In the evening we didn't have a buffet, we had cheese boards later on and asked that the lights be kept down and the band/disco continued with no break. Each board cost about £10 per table rather than about £10 per head for the buffet  

I wore ivory and the grown up bridesmaids wore dark red, with the young ones wearing dresses with dark red pinafore tops with big ivory skirts. Flowers were dark red grand prix roses with lots of greenery and berries.

We took a two week skiing honeymoon in Canada - snow & mountains are very romantic  

Another thing we did was to put a disposable camera on each table for the day and the evening and we really do have a fantastic album of wedding snap shots to compliment the official album  

I'll post again if I can think of anything else

S xxx


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## professor waffle (Apr 23, 2005)

We had our reception on a canal boat! That way we had to restrict our numbers (I have a huge family & DH has a small elderly one). It was a cold buffet with hot baked potatoes. We didn't scrimp on the cake although it was only 2 tiers instead of 3. My wedding dress was blue velvet from Laura Ashely sale & I had a jacket made by a dressmaker (got married in the Peak District in Feb!). We didn't have any invites printed, no favours, no wine only champagne for the toast.

My friends ex step children still mention the wedding on the boat!


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## NuttyJo (Jun 29, 2007)

hi

go abroad! lol. me and dh couldnt afford a lot and our families didnt get on so i was worrying about the day being ruined by argueing etc so we decided to go and get married abroad. we had a party when we got home and i got my dress from BHS, £200. in total the honeymoon, wedding and all the extras only cost about £3500.

one piece of advice, *do not * scrimp on the photographer. they are your memories and will last forever so you want them to be perfect.

heres some of mine (lol any excuse to show them off hey!  )


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## angelus (May 17, 2007)

Hi Dakota...congratulations xxx

We got married in July 2006 and whilst we had what appeared to be a " big " wedding...it cost us less than £2500!! And we had the reception in a brighton seafront hotel!!! If you are on ******** then let me know as i have got loads of photos of the wedding on there.

Like Shelly, i got our cake from m and s, three tiers and then i put fresh flowers on each layer and it looked fab.

Our colours were gold and cream.....really elegant and easy to match everything.

Bridesmaids held little drawstring bags instead of flowers...really handy for the lippy!!

We made our invitations and order of service...handmade just adds a certain something to making it really personal.

We only did favours for the women and i had little organza gold bags with 2 gold wrapped chocolate hearts and 2 pieces of rose quartz in.

I got all the tiara from BHS and the shoes too.

Having saved in sooo many areas, we were able to afford a vintage car which was great!

Our honeymoon was 3 night in a castle in dublin....what can i say...it was pure luxury!!! 

Have to agree with Jo....dont scrimp on a good photographer...ours was a family friend who ended up doing the dirty on us so our photos are not what they should have been or as many as ther should. 

I think the best piece of advice i was given was that less is more...the simplist touches look the most stunning.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


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## dakota (Feb 6, 2007)

HI ladies,

Thank you for your replys, The pictures are gorgeous and they make me want to get married next year  

We have found a venue we like (golf club) they dont charge room hire   so we are just going to have a buffet for everyone.

Im wearing my nan's tiara, which my cousin uis also wearing next year for her wedding.

My mum works for m&s so had suggested getting the cake from there, i didnt realise you could order them and have them personalised.

Im having artificial flowers bouquets so they can be kept after.

The groom/best man, my dad and fil will wear there own suits.

Ive chosen to get married in may, as hopefully it wont cost as much for the honeymoon  

I definately wont be scrimping on a photographer and my lovely nan has offered to pay for this   

My colour scheme i want dark red and white and ive already seen a dress i like   

I think a visit to a few wedding fayres are in order  

Nikki xx


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## kitten1 (Jan 1, 2007)

I had ivory and red for mine too!!   

I got my shoes off fleabay too!! Cost me, I think, about £15. Same ones in a proper bridal shoe shop were about £70!!   

Defo worth looking on fleabay as some good bargains on there!!


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## Catb33 (Aug 1, 2006)

I got my shoes from a shop that did ballet and dance stuff. They were reallynice, and comfortable, and cost about £30 instead of the £80 I'd seen for something similar in Jones. 

Confetti.co.uk is really good for ideas for things, and then you can shop around elsewhere. I do wedding favours as part of my business and the prices they charge just for the boxes have a pretty decent mark up. Tesco have a range of cheap table decorations and things for weddings that are similar to some of confettis but a fraction of the price. We liked the idea of bubbles instead of confetti at the church but the little bottles shaped like a champagne bottle were really expensive so we went to Woolworths and got the normal kiddy bits and just tied a ribbon around the middle - even the older guests had a whale of a time blowing bubbles all over the place.

Do you have a good florist wholesaler near you? They usually take non-trade orders as well as trade and have the artificial flowers cheaper if you're buying in bulk. they also have the other bits you can use to decorate the hall as well. 

We saved money on wedding cars by sweet talking relatives with nice cars into taking us. We also printed off our orders of service and other bits rather than pay for a printers.

Have fun planning the wedding. It can be so much fun.


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## wouldloveababycat (Mar 21, 2004)

Dakota ..Ooh it all sounds so exciting .. I have never been married so can't offer any advice but would definately recommend making your own invites etc.. I do a lot of crafty stuff and often the simplest ideas are the most effective and they will be treasured as they are so personal.. if your Mum works for M&S that will be great for your cake,  all M&S food is yuummy and e-bay or fleabay as someone called it   is great for getting a bargain for accessories and even bridesmaids dresses etc if you are having bridesmaids.. I got a beautiful italian christening dress off there for a friend of mine ..brand new and truly beautiful at a fraction of the cost of buying it from a shop. 

Cat x


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## bib (Apr 17, 2007)

Hun, I am a florist, so if you need any help or advice....I will do what I can  

xxx


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## dakota (Feb 6, 2007)

Just found a great idea for favours, its through oxfam and its a puzzle for each table and each person has a piece of the puzzle that they have to put together.

Its a great idea


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## Mackie (May 18, 2005)

Congratulations Dakota, planning a wedding is so exciting.

I got married in October 2007, best day of my life  Our colour scheme was ivory & coffees, from latte through to expresso, with some autumnal colours in the flowers as a twist.  My dress was called Coco Latte and the colour 'theme' went from there. I wanted an autumn setting and our church and venue were right out in the country and very pretty.  Sorry I can't help with budget ours went through the roof    

One thing I did find helpful was the national wedding show ( I went to NEC Birmingham) and got some great ideas from there and then sourced them locally and cheaper, also we did lots of local wedding fayres, where we found a fantastic jeweller who made our wedding rings at the fraction of the price we would have paid.

Enjoy your planning, I wish I lived close to you and could help  

Good Luck

Mac xx


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## Mackie (May 18, 2005)

Dakota ~ just realised you are just down the road from me, which venue are you looking at?


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## Stars* (Sep 27, 2007)

Hi, 

Congrats on the wedding!!!

Oh ideas, well budget wise i cant really help, we went a bit daft , but we did save money on the bridesmaid and flower girls outfit as my gran made them, so only had to pay for the material and pattern, if you know someone who could do that, it could perhaps be a wedding gift for you, it saved me so much money!! Think for everything it was 100pound. 

My gran also done the church flowers cos she grew cala lillies esp for it, although my bouqet was from a florists after the wedding i put it on my grandads grave.

We also saved a bit of money by choosing the meals based on their prices ie they had seperate prices so it worked out cheaper as places tend to say so much per head.

I had Virgin vie do my make up, had a party so got loads of goodies too.

My step brother done the dvd and it turned out really good.

We also had home made wine on the tables, rather than giving everypne so many drinks.

Think that is it.

Lisa x


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## dakota (Feb 6, 2007)

Keep the idea's coming girls  

Mackie ~ After looking at lots of places i think ive (i mean we   ) deceided to have the venue at ombersly golf club. Prices are reasonable compared to some, and the grounds were lovely.

Which reminds me i must phone the nice man 2moro with my list of questions


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## Catb33 (Aug 1, 2006)

If you want some other fun ideas for tables and bits try this site

http://www.talkingtables.co.uk/all_new_wedding_range

They have some really funny little bits which can be good for ideas if nothing else.

This post contains an unconfirmed link/information and readers are reminded that FertilityFriends.co.uk or its owners are not responsible for the content of external internet sites


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