New Bride Help!

Hi Stephanie! Welcome to hitched! From what you've said, you are further along in the process than you think! As you have your budget and guests decided, you need to get the venue & decide what type of wedding you want - civil or religious. Once you have your venue organised, I'd start on the save the dates for your guests & look into a TOG (photographer); after that, it's dress shopping time! Hitched has a lot of articles, suppliers and other planning help tools so make the most of it! This guide will help get you started: https://www.hitched.co.uk/planning/13steps.aspx. If you have any questions along the way, post on here & we'll help as much as we can!

Just to add, the hitched forum has a 'For Sale' section which I used to pick up some really good bargains - if you want to keep your costs down.

Welcome to hitched and congrats on the planning so far there are plenty of people on here to give you heaps of help and advice

Ahha!! Someone from my neck of the woods!!! I'm marrying at the Hundred House! I know they do discounted week weddings. Other places I would suggest you look at if you haven't done already are The Shropshire - they do some really good deals, probably even more so if you are looking at out of season/mid week, and the Hadley Park House - it's lovely and simple there, the conservatory is lush and they do some good packages too. I had the same thoughts as you though, did want people local people to have to travel far so that knocked out a lot of places.

I also found...

Cars - Shropshire Lady Cars were the cheapest

Dresses - K T Bridal have super sales perhaps 3 times a year where they sell stock sample dress from £80, never went but I would say its worth a gander as you've got plenty of time. Shropshire Country Brides have the biggest selection but some pricey ones too, Ouh! There is a Barnardos dress shop in Wellington! Sample/donated dresses but a good price and they have changing stock.

Flowers - will let you know if I recommend my florist when she does my flowers but all seems good so far, reasonably prices too!

Anything else I can help with, let me know!

https://rowtoncastle.com/weddings/

Hi Stephanie

You are from my neck of the woods too! I have attached a link for you but have never been there personally. A friend of mine was MOH for a wedding that was held there and I just remember the name of the venue as it is a castle!

I have been to a wedding at Blists Hill Museum in Ironbridge and that was really lovely too.

Hope I have offered a bit of inspiration!

Dawn

Hello there Stephanie,

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Nice colour scheme - sames as ours. Big congrats!

We're getting married at hadley park house hotel in Telford, they have really good packages, we're paying £2750 for 50 people which includes the ceremony, 3 course meal with 2 options per course, photographer and cake (and few other bits and bobs), bargain if u ask me though! They're prices do go up each year though so would cost you slightly more for 2014/2015

Hey Stephanie, welcome to Hitched :-)

You're actually a little way into the planning process so far, and it's good that you've decided on a colour scheme - next step I would say is to start looking at venues around your budget, or create a list of things that you'd like at the wedding and write down how much you're willing to pay for each item or supplier etc.

The fact that you're planning for a 2015 wedding is good because if you start looking around for venues and suppliers, they may honour their 2014 prices and you may get it cheaper than if you was to book in a years time for example - same goes with a lot of other suppliers, they may honour their prices if you book early.

I would say to definitely create a little list (whenever I'm in a tizzy, a list is always the first thing I go to!) and just write down everything you feel like you want or need at your wedding and go from there, start viewing venues so you can get an idea of prices and what sort of venue you like. Everything is always so much simpler when it's written out in front of you

Hiya ?

For last minute package deals, check out groupon they do loads! I think there's actually a page on here with them as well - the fact that you have quite a small guest list will work in your favour too ?

Ours is a £1000 package for 50 people (if I remember correctly) and we have just paid for extra guests (80 in total) - there are quite a few franchises of hotels that do this kind of thing, but it depends what you've after (church or civil ceremony)

First thing I did when planning was check out the venue directory on here and then all the websites of the venues from there.

Thank you guys so much for all your help and advice! We know that we want a civil ceremony (neither of us are particularly religious) and would like to stay in the same place for the whole day, as we don't want guests to have to make their way from venue to venue.

We have looked at Rowton Castle on their website and we really really like it, but we aren't too sure if it it just too far away from home, especially for the people just invited to the evening reception.. Will have to book an appt to have a look around though. Their prices aren't too high either for what you are getting, and I imagine that it's really beautiful - just like a fairytale getting married in a castle! We have sent off for a few wedding brochures, but it's so confusing with what you get for each package! We have also looked at Lilleshall Hall which is really close to home, but again we need to book an appt to go and have a look around.

Have you ladies got any tips on bargaining with a venue? For example with the packages, can you say that you will find your own photographer etc? Anything to help keep the costs down, but still with a beautiful wedding!

Will have a look on groupon too, and loads of people have told me that eBay is a great place to find some bargains! We are more than happy to make our own favours etc, really want to get stuck in

Again, I appreciate ANY help or advice that you've got, my mom got married nearly 30 years ago, and so its all pretty new to her too! xxxx

How far away is Rowton Castle from your home? It sounds like you really like it, and I would say definitely go for the venue that you love, even if it is a little further away. I'm sure people will make the extra effort to come (my cousin is getting married about 2 hours away from his home next year, and we are all still going. Thinking of staying overnight though) but bottom line is you should go with what you want at the end of the day. I'm sure once you go round and start visiting the venues, you will get a feeling of which one is 'the one'!

Rowton castle is about 28 miles from where we are.. I am sure that all the family would travel, in fact I would be mortified if someone said they wouldn't, but i'm not sure about the evening guests?! I guess its a matter of, if they aren't willing to travel, are they really important enough to come to my wedding anyway?

We haven't looked around anything yet, but h2b has already fallen in love with it! He is comparing everything else to Rowton Castle, and I suppose I have to let him help decide on something! (he isn't gonna get much input into anything else! haha)

How far away from home are all your venues?

Looking at Rowton castle, I'm not sure that would be within your budget, the cheapest option would be the non-exclusive option (providing you don't mind a mon-wed wedding, which is £3900, up to feb 2014, presumably it would increase after that point, leave £3000 for photographer, cake, dress, suits, rings, entertainment, any additional guests on top of the 40 day guests in the package, bridesmaids stuff, hair and make up...of course it depends on if you can get deals on the other stuff and if Rowton castle will do you a deal, I think if its in a package though, generally they won't lower the price because it is a good deal anyway...Rowton castle is beautiful though, but when we looked we couldn't fit it in our budget (which started out at £6k, has gone up now due to some more help from my dad which we didn't know about until after we booked our venue)

Ps our venue is about 45 mins from where we live, I think most guests are willing to travel even for the evening, up to an hour, weekday weddings might make them less inclined to travel for the evening if its far with work the next day though

Hi Stephanie!

I could have written almost the same post as you! I am from Newport so not far at all from Telford. We got engaged May 2012 and did start planning for an overseas wedding last year but slowly it slipped off the agenda and was eventually forgotten about.

We have literally only just started re-planning for a 2014 wedding but staying "local" instead. I had a look around Rowton Castle a little while ago...it's absolutely stunning, but as another poster mentioned, you might struggle with you budget. When I calculated everything else + their cheapest package it was still pushing £10k.

Haughton Hall in shifnal has a package for £2014 up to March 31st 2014 which looks pretty good! There's the Park House in shifnal too...and as previously mentioned, at he Hundred House in Norton (my sis was restaurant manager there...has just left to work at Park House)

We found a brilliant package on groupon last week for Wroxeter Hotel which isn't very far from Ironbridge, for £1999!! (saving over 3.5k!!)This includes wedding breakfast for 50 day guests, hog roast for 100 evening guests, Buck's Fizz on arrival, 3 canapés per person, wine for tables, bubbly for toast, mc, linens & chair covers amd bridal suite for the night!! It's good too because the wedding breakfast & evening party are in separate suites so no being kicked out for them to turn the room around! They're happy to keep the bar open as long as there's people wanting drinks...even if that's all night! The package also includes the use of room for the civil ceremony if we want but we are having a church ceremony. All in all it's a fantastic price!! We are going back next week to pay our deposit for a wedding next spring!!

Keep your eyes peeled, esp for "out of season" offers...you can save thousands!!

Good luck & happy wedding planning!!