New and confused!

Hi Vicky, welcome to Hitched. Your sister is right, this is the best place to come for help and advise.

My name is Vicki and I am also an August 2010 bride but in Cambridgeshire.

All prices vary depending on where you are and what you want. We are having a church wedding (£550) followed by a sit down meal for 70 at a posh restaurant that has a function room, and then an evening reception there for about another 70 (140ish in total) with evening buffet. This is going to work out at about £4500.

Did you want costs of other stuff too? Some places will honour 2009 prices if you book now.

If it helps our reception is broken down into:

£900 for exclusive hire of the whole restaurant and grounds for the whole day and evening

£23 per head for 3 course meal plus coffee and chocolates

£26 per jug of Pimms (serves 8) for drinks on arrival

£16 per bottle of champagne (toasts)

£8 per bottle of wine (for dinner)

Evening buffet £10 per head

Hi Vicky and welcome to our little community!

In answer to your question how long is a piece of string! Some girls on here have a budget of £3000 whilst some have £20k so it all depends on what kind of wedding you want.

Personally I don't want a wedding with all the frills and luxuries so our day is working out around £6k (excluding my dress, shoes, veil, jewellery, tiara and kilts and presents for the bridal party) but for that I've managed to get some great deals to keep costs down.

Our venue don't have a room hire charge and we get the bridal suite free for the night of our wedding. We have negoiated the drinks package so our guests get to have whatever drink they want on arrival, choice of sparkling wine with the speeches, and red of white wine for the meal for £10. Our meal has 2 choices of starter, 3 choices for the main course, and dessert for £25 and our buffet is £7 ph.

My pal is doing the dj'ing and singing at a reduced cost (also a Hitcher although she is missing in action at the moment from the forum).

We aren't having stuff like fancy favours, chocolate fountains, ballons on the tables etc. The venue also provide the table centre pieces as part of their package which is saving a bomb.

Weddings don't need to cost the earth if you don't want it to.

HTH

Lynsey x

Hiya and welcome! ?

Like Lynsey said, it totally depends on what kind of wedding you are looking for.

My H2B and I are having our ceremony for 40, then a sit-down meal for the 40 (3 courses, half bottle of wine, and glass of champagne for toasts), then a ceilidh and buffet for 100 in the evening. For room hire, the meal and drinks, ceremony charge, buffet and one drink for evening guests, and overnight accommodation for us and both sets of parents the cost is just under £8000.

Welcome to hitched! Ah, the wedding budget ... its surprising what can be achieved for a fraction of what is deemed to be the 'average' cost ...

Me and Mr SP got wed abroad, but had a full 'second' wedding when we got back. Things we paid for in the UK inc.

Venue (essentially an entire hotel), ceremony (handfasting by a humanist celebrant), welcome drinks and canapes, flowers/buttonholes for key guests, photographer, 3 tier cake, piper and drummer, magician, balloons, sit down meal for 60 plus 7 children (with choices, not fixed to one choice), DJ for the evening, hot buffet for 100 evening guests, free bar, flowergirl dress/flowers/tiara, bridal suite at the hotel - and that came to approx four and a half thousand pounds.

The holiday/wedding in Zanzibar and my dress and accessories cost about five thousand pounds all in (my dress was only 200 quid tho'!) but what we had back in the UK could easily have been a full legal ceremony and with all the bells and whistles. We just picked to get wed abroad on our own so its kinda irrelevant, that additional cost!

I wanted quite expensive stationery and refused to pay what stationers wanted to charge for that style (large pocketfolds with diamante buckles), so did my own stationery and all on the day stuff like menus, seating plans, table centres and loved it so much I've started up my own stationery company!

I got my shoes from ebay for twelve pounds and they look very similiar to 'wedding' shoes which most places want to charge a hideous amount of money for.

Opted for silk flowers because they can be cheaper but more importantly they last forever and key guests could keep them as a momento of the day and I am now left with a lasting reminder of my wedding(s!) - as my bouquet, hubbys buttonhole and cake flowers are on display at home, and I know my family and best friends kept their buttonholes. My flowergirl hangs her pompom of flowers in her bedroom.

Photos - I found a tog who would do me a disk of photos which I had absolute free rein to do with what I wanted - they are few and far between but shop around and you could get lucky. I then did my own wedding photo album on Truprint and honestly, people who've seen it are gobsmacked that I did it myself. Full price, for 100 odd double sided pages, full colour 12" x 12" and over 400 photos cost me about hundred pounds. Because I ordered identical albums for my mum, dad, brother and MIL I got those half price (just got lucky with the offers on at that time). The photographer actually cost 400 pounds so over all I got him, full editing of the photos, plus 5 albums for less than some togs charge just for their time.

M&S cake - chocolate, fruit and sponge. Was yummy and hassle free. Got my silk florist to do me a garland of flowers and I decorated it myself.

My dress was a bridesmaid dress, perfect for a wedding on a beach off the coast of Africa! So I did save a lot of money by not buying a 'bridal' dress but felt just as brilliant in it!

Gosh, thats a long post - hope it helps!

Mrs SP x

Hi Vicky - welcome to hitched.

I am also an August 2010 bride, although West Sussex!

Our wedding (civil ceremony) is costing 8K although that doesnt include the cost of honey moon/dress/rings etc

when did you get engaged? x x x

I can beat that, mine wants to spend the money on bits for his motorbike and mountain bike instead! He wonders what is wrong with going to Pizza hut for the reception. I was surprised he proposed to me and not one of the bikes!

Im not looking to spend too much, and im not too worried about having all the extras, just a few things to make the special day extra special.

Luckily my sister is a bit arty and made all her table bits like place cards, wine glass charms and favours herself so she will be enlisted to do that! Im sure she could do that as our wedding present so that saves a bit!

I feel guilty about going and looking round places to find out exactly what they offer and ending up wasting their time if it isnt right for us.

Vicky I think we are sharing the same h2b! Mine loves motorbikes and suggested last night we spend the honeymoon money on a new bike and tour Europe on it instead of going abroad! No chance! I love the bike and wouldn't mind touring on it but not for a honeymoon as I'm destined for a beach!

Hi and welcome ?

congratulations - your sister is obviously very clever as this is a great place to come for advice ?. first thing i would do is work out how much you can afford to spend on the entire wedding (there's a budget planner somewhere on this site, or you can get ideas from the back of most wedding mags). then i would start researching venues to find those you like - there is no harm in ringing them in advance to ask what their typical prices are. that way you are not visiting and falling in love with a venue you can't afford.

good luck!

Hi, welcome to Hitched! ?

Another 2010 bride here, but July for me. Me and my H2b both have big families, so our wedding is going to be pretty big. (110 for ceremony, which will increase to about 200 total in the evening) We obviously had to choose a venue that could cater for large numbers and obviously the more people you have, the more it's going to cost. So that's eating up the vast majority of our budget, and we're just looking to cut costs on all other areas, e.g:

• I'm not bothered about spending hundreds/thousands on my dress, so am looking for cheaper options
• My friend is making my jewellery
• We've found a really reasonable photographer and are having a 'photos-only' package so we'll buy and compile the album ourselves rather than paying a lot more for them to do it
• We're making our own invitations
• Probably won't bother with chair covers

There are lots more that we're hoping to do too, but obviously as it's still early days most of these are just plans/ideas. I think you can have the wedding you want without spending a silly amount, but for some things you might have to cut back on others - just as we've had to.

Good luck!

Hi ya vicky

And welcone to hitched, you'll find it super addictive and a great place for help and advice about everything from costings to what readings to have!

I'm a planner and the most important thing I do with my clients is work out their budgets. Now you can do this one or two ways

1) Work out your numbers for the day and evening, agree an average price per head and work out how much you think everything else is going to cost. There are some great budget planners online including on here. Put together your own excel spreadsheet too to keep track of varying prices and deposits paid. You then set your total be it £6k or £16k and work out how you are going to raise the money

2) You choose a date for the wedding, work out how much you are able to save each month, how much others will be contributing to the wedding fund and this will give you your budget. From this you can allocate amounts for each sector, so eg/ ceremony - £650 Venue £1500 Food and Drink £4500 Dress and accessories £1000 Bridesmaids, grooms, car, etc etc

The next thing you need to do is to prioritise. Sit down with your H2B and work out what is important to you so if having your dream dress is important to you make sure you allocate a proportion of the budget to get it. If having quality food and drink is important or good photography look at the areas you can spend less, like centrepieces, flowers, favours, stationery, even reduce the number of bridesmaids and ushers (this area can cost A LOT) if this isnt as important.

It is super important to set your budgets so that when you are looking at suppliers you will be able to negotiate with them to get them within your price and also it stops you getting into financial trouble later on, not a great way to spend your new married life, worrying about outstanding wedding debts. Worse case scenario, having planned for something and then finding at the last minute that you've overspent and simply can't afford it!

The magazines will tell you that the average wedding now costs £20k but in my experience there isn't such a thing as an average cost wedding. I deal with weddings from as little as £6k with my average for this year being about £12k.

HTH (Hope that helps)

Ruth

x

Hi Vicky

Many congratulations on getting engaged, welcome to the exciting journey..... It can be a bit overwhelming with the planning, but this is a great place to get loads of advice and get all the answers you are looking for. Theres a mixture of getting married and been married on this forum. But don't get addicted ;-)

Like the others suggest, everyones wedding spend is different from others as people want different things. My friend spent £3,000 and she thought that was loads of money, we are spending £8000 for venue hire and all catering (this is covering venue hire, toastmaster, dj, welcome drinks and 1/2 bottle of wine with wedding breakfast, 3 course wedding breakfast and eve buffet). This is for a venue in Rochester , Kent. I was looking at venues in London and they were crazy prices. I would recommend taking a look at the venues and the reviews on this website, that's a good place to start. Or put a post topic up asking people about good venues in sussex?

Your budget does of course depend on whether you are funding the whoole wedding yourself or have some help, xx Cat

Hello - that venue sounds like it could be mine, I'm getting married in Rochester too! Is it Cooling Castle Barn you're talking about??

Wow, what a lot of info! Its all so much to get my head round!

Thanks so much for all the advice. Not sure on budget yet, have to speak to my Dad about what he is thinking about contributing. Luckily h2b has got a rather expensive motorbike so if it comes to the worst we could always sell that to help fund the wedding!!

I hope im not leaving it too late with planning everything, beginning to worry that so many people have already booked so much and i havent done any of that yet, is there a recommended timeline for all these things? I know everyone is different and a wedding can be done super quick sometimes, but just a few pointers about what to do when would be great. Not sure what to prioritise!

If you are thinking about August 2010 then you do have plenty of time to organise everything. If you are thinking of a well known venue that is popular in your area then it might be an idea to think about getting that booked soon. After that think of all the things that only one person can have per supplier for that day like photographer and florist.

Some of the more popular venues/photographers/florists get booked up quite far in advance.

If you want to get a rough idea of how far along other 2010 brides are then come and join us on the 2010 list home and abroad thread.

Hello! Just wanted to say welcome! You'll find all the advice you could ever want on this forum! No question too big or too silly!

Have fun planning!

Ali x

Hi Stazzle from Dartford!

Yep you are a 100% correct we get marrid there 13th June 2009, how about your date? - isn't it just lovely?

Although we're a bit pissed they won't let us do a tester session for the wedding breakfast, we are spending loads of money after all !

xx Cat

Brilliant, a venue twin! ? We've got ages to wait yet though, ours isn't till 25th July 2010!

Couldn't agree more, the venue is gorgeous, we just fell in love with it! Although must say am surprised about the tester session, I was sure I'd read that they do allow that. Doesn't seem fair, especially considering how much we pay - as you rightly said! What reason have they given for not allowing it?

Bet yours will come round so quickly now!