Top Tips.....Should have's.....I wish I'd....

Wish I'd done differently: Don't use Veet (see my other post). Stick to a close underarm shave. Despite doing a patch test, my armpits reacted violently on the wedding morning and I was in pain all day!

Money savers: I ordered lots of Champneys goodies from Ebay and did my own facials for 3 months before the wedding.

Treats: One of my guests treated me to a pedicure the day before the wedding which helped me stop dashing around and relax for a bit. You really need this time.

Money saver: Buy ribbons to decorate your venue from Ebay and, if marrying in church, ask the church flower ladies to do the flowers in the church. They often have contacts who can also do your table decorations and bouquets. We saved a fortune doing this.

Money saver: We designed our wedding invitaiton and had them printed by Salisbury Printing in Wiltshire. They can advise on fonts etc. and take your order by email. They then post them to you. Very professional, very quick and much cheaper than other "wedding stationery specialists". We also personalised our invitations and menu cards on the table using pretty little chiffon bows which we stuck on the top (bought off Ebay). Everyone commented that they looked really individual and pretty.

Avoid Dessy dresses like the plague. They sent the wrong colour bridesmaid dress and then refused to let the supplier (Kingston, London) obtain their address so that we could complain. Shocking service. We didn't ever get the right dress. They messed us around until 2 days before the wedding before admitting they couldn't get the dress to us in time.?

Top tip: make sure your bridesmaids walk about 6 feet behind you up the aisle so that they don't stand on your veil!

Treats: I couldn't get my natural nails in good enough shape before the wedding but was keen to avoid artifical looking ones. I went for the UV Gel nails and love them so much (they look like real nails) that I have kept having them topped up all summer! Shop around - I was quoted £40-£95 for this. I went to a little salon and spent £40 and they looked perfect.

Advice: Make sure you have at least 2 hair trials and if you don't like it, don't be afraid to say so. I nearly ended up looking like little Bo-Peep with a style that, although pretty on a younger bride, simply wasn't me. I took photos of each style I tried and emailed it to 8 of my best friends for their opinions. It was a huge help and I loved my hair on the day - more importanly, so did my husband!

Money saver: I went for a Benjamin Roberts strapless dress and had a chantilly lace bolero made to cover my arms/shoulders in a very pretty way (church wedding). The dress was laced up at the back so, even though I lost 1.5 stone between buying the dress and the final fitting, I only had to pay to have the hem taken up! Alterations can add £100s to the cost of the dress if you go for buttons.

Money saver: I used the church flower group to decorate the church - much cheaper and they were so cheerful and it looked gorgeous. They often have resources to help decorate tables too. We used cousin of our church flower lady to do our bouquets and hair flowers and saved a fortune!

Money saver: Find someone who loves making cakes and see if you can ask her to copy a design you have seen. Alternatively, you can buy plain cakes in 3 different sizes from M&S or Waitrose and put small chunky square glass vases in between the tiers filled with the flower petals of your colour scheme and decorate it simply with a few of the theme flowers.

Food tips: Try to avoid dishes that normally are complicated like salmon en croute or chicken breasts - they invariably end up being stalled and then are luke arm and dried out, as people NEVER sit down on time and then the food is remembered for the wrong reasons. We went for a little medley of three mini starters, a meat and a veggie main, and a medley of three mini deserts. It looked so pretty. Don't give yourself work by trying to take individual orders - just print off a little A5 sheet requesting "Meat or Veg" main course choice when you send out the invitations and make sure guests notify you of any allergies.

Money saver: Don't waste money on sending out "RSVP" cards with your invitaitons. Polite people will always respond anyway and some people tend to forget or not bother sending them at all, then you still have to call everyone to find out if they are coming for numbers.

We made our little table decorations (multi coloured origami canoes with little jelly baby passengers holding a mint stick (paddle) with a foil wrapped chocolate sweetie as luggage, and made little flags on poles on the front of each canoe with people's names on them for place settings!) In case you are wondering - I was proposed to in a canoe on the Ardeche in France! All our guests took their little canoes home with them as a keepsake!

Top tip: Ask the vicar or whoever presides over your marriage ceremony, to make a polite request for any screaming infants to be discreetly emoved from the ceremony. Whilst doting grandparents/parents might think it's all "part of the day", it does ruin the servce for those guests who would prefer to listen to the vows, not to mention the irritation of the bride and groom. Provide goody bags/colouring books for older children to keep them occupied during the service.?

Avoid reading those "countdown to your wedding" planners - they pile on the pressure and I found they influenced you to spend money on things you really don't need.

Instead of spending £5 on favours for each guest (which usually end up in the glove box of your car for 6 months!), why not make donations to a charity like Great Ormond Street or Cancer Research and put little notes on the tables to let people know that you have done this. 3 sugared almonds in a chiffon bag or £5 to a sick kiddie? Hmmmm.

Remember, people really appreciate it if you make your wedding personal and not simply about ideas from overpriced wedding planners.

Try to touch base with your new husband every half hour or so during the reception or the day passes without being able to have a quiet cuddle and enjoy just being together alone for a few minutes on your day.

If having a sit down meal, try to circulate to speak to your guests between courses. That way they can't move and you can move on to talk to others without being pinned down. It's very hard speaking to everyone and everyone wants to speak to you for half an hour! We asked the caterer to put aside a little tray of canapes so that we could sneak off every now and then and have a little hug and a snack. You may not feel like popping that tartlet into your mouth in front of guests, but you would behind closed doors and you WILL get hungry. Drink plenty of water throughout the day - with having your glass topped up, you can quite easily find yourself quite picked quite quickly! You want to rememeber your day!!

Get a good professional photographer who will give you a copyright free disk of all the photos. Do have a "pre wedding photoshoot" with them so that you can decide on the style of photos you want. We did this and loved every one of our pictures! The photographer should then be able to make the pictures available to view on line and then family and friends can order directly from the photographer, so you don't have to get them done yourself. The photographer will also make a much better print for you than Boots ever could!! ? We got to know our photographers better on the pre wedding shoot, and as a result, they was like having friends on the day and helped more than any of my 4 bridesmaids did when I needed fluffing up!

Avoid lots and lots of pictures of large groups of people - each shot will take up 5 minutes of your time and that time would be better spent with your guests. Discuss small group pictures (for granny to put in a frame type thing), and then ask the photographer to simply move about amongst the guest taking natural shots. People generally don't like being posed for pictures, and it is not really a true representaion of the day.

If you have been living with your fiance for a while before you get married, you probably have a fully equipped house. If guests want to buy you something perhaps ask them to put money towards a wedding car, some champers, or even some fireworks for after the reception. We were also given vouchers for a meal at a Gordon Ramsay restaurant sometime in the next year. As you may have guessed, I am a true believe in good food, this was a lovely gift and something to really look foward to.

We arranged to have our gift list presents delivered 3 weeks after our wedding. This gave us time to come down to earth a bit and meant that we didn't have all our treats at once, like spoiled children!

Find a local cash & carry (funnily enough, our local curry house pointed us in the right direction!) to buy in bulk soft drinks, mineral waters, nibbles for later on in the evening when people may get peckish again. I even asked some of my lovely girl friends to make a few mini quiches, sausage rolls and brownies to pass around in the evening rather than paying a caterer a fortune to do it.

Try to choose fresh, local seasonal food for your meal. Really, we have pretty good food here in the UK if your caterer knows what they are doing. Don't over-complicate things for yourself.

I could go on and on, but wont. Most importantly of all, remember that everyone will be on your side on the day and their main gift should be to support you and help you have the best day you can possibly have.

Enjoy your day and try to savour each moment. It goes by in a heartbeat!❤️

From the following site you can get lots of batter tips

http://weddings.about.com/od/weddingplanningtools/tp/Costcutters.htm

Good luck

Hi

As newlyweds are there any pearls of wisdom you can offer those of us still planning? Is there anything you would have done differently? Or anything you are really glad you did? Splashed out on? Or saved on? What REALLY matters on the day? Top tips/words of wisdom?

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Hi

As newlyweds are there any pearls of wisdom you can offer those of us still planning? Is there anything you would have done differently? Or anything you are really glad you did? Splashed out on? Or saved on? What REALLY matters on the day? Top tips/words of wisdom?

Definitely give the children a busy bag for the church service!

we gave the tinies a soft toy and board book (and a gruffalo chocolate) and the older ones got a chocolate, a segmented snake, colouring book and felt tips.

If you're having a church wedding, have lots of hymns and music - the kids at ours really loved the hymns, and it does add a lot of audience participation to the service, rather than the sadly usual 2 hymns, one at the beginning, one at the end. We had 4 - beginning, after the vows, after the prayers and after the signing of the register. We also had a choir, who sang an anthem during the service, and also sang during the signing of the register - that's a major top tip - much more exciting than a CD in the background!

My biggest annoyance of the day was getting peopl together for photos. we did photos while people ate and drank, and the best man disappeared to drink and eat, so noone was there to fetch people for photos! make sure your best man is clear that he has to do that, or get an MC/toastmaster to sort it out. my groom and best man both had a list of groups of people for photos, but i was the one who had to say who was due in what group! ?

My only regret is that the day rushed past so quickly that i didnt get a chance to see some of the people that I hadn't seen for ages!

If there are people that you want to see on the day, make an effort to find them (a lot of people don't want to "bother" you on your big day so don't approach you).

It is never going to be a chance for a good catch up as the day is such a whirl but don't wake up the next morning thinking I wish i had seen so and so!

Wow, thanks for the post .....

Great post.. thanks for the tips Hatster..

Its a nice post, but a bit lenghty. Worth following these tips. Great work and helps a lot.

Hi there

We got married abroad as I have a small family and we were lucky enough that everyone could come out. Really pleased we did. We saved heaps of stress, had a beautiful weather all throughout and family memories that last a lifetime. We haven't had to dip into any mortgage funds either.

I know it's not for everyone but I personally knew that I wouldn't want to be stressed out so i took a selfish decision to go overseas. Friends weren't there on the day and that was really sad, but we had a good old knees up when we got back, and a photo slideshow in one of the rooms with a video too.

My biggest tip/comment would be DO WHAT YOU WANT. Don't let others take over. It's YOUR day!!! xxx Enjoy it and have the time of your lives xx

Honey x

p.s.

also I must also say that i am a busy working lady and the hen night was starting to get a real problem, thinking of ideas for all the girls to do, and to please everyone was a nightmare!!! We came onto a really great little company that sorted it all out for us and really made it so easy. We actually became friends in the end and I invited them to my party! I did Life Drawing in a nice bar in London and it was really different. Not sure if i can mention their name so here goes...www.eventsinc.co.uk.

Nice list Hatster and thanks for opening up Emmamac. So you are planning with your wedding. Your own plan is good because it is the two of you are planning, something that is very exciting to do. However, I would suggest that you should have a plan that is very new to you. Something unique