What si the best way to word... if any!!

Karen, you cant expect other people to fund your day. If you have set your expectations too high, then thats your problem. Either wait a few more years before you get married, or cut back on things, its really quite simple.

I can understand expecting a thank you card, but really, if you're okay with giving money as a wedding present I find it a bit odd that you are almost putting a condition on the money and what they spend it on. Surely it's better just to get vouchers or something? Personally if I was giving money as a present I would want the couple to use it in whatever way they wanted and what is most helpful for them - it's a gift.

I completely understand where you're coming from with regard to not asking guests for money or a contribution to the cost of the wedding (we're not having a gift list or even mentioning gifts/money for ours), and I also completely agree with your point that if you can't afford it you should work within your means and do things differently. But surely if you do give money, and you're okay with that, surely that is supposed to be a present for the couple, and if it helps them out a little bit in paying something off the day I really can't understand why you'd begrudge that? And I also can't understand why you'd feel the need to check up on the couple to see how they spent your money. For, me it kind of defeats the object of giving them money as a gift. That is just my opinion though obviously.

FWIW my OH and I can afford our wedding, we wouldn't be planning it the way we are if we couldn't. But any money we get as presents may be used to pay a bit of it off, just to help us out a bit, and I honestly would be very surprised if any of my guests were put out by this.

Going back to the original post point though...I don't agree with asking guests to pay for their own meals and I do agree with others who have said you're better off cutting the guest list down.

I can appreciate everyone saying cut back but when your already at the min how do you do that?

My favours are cookies and the car, and cake are low cost sourced. Bridesmaid is 1 and a shock for your girls but she doesn’t mind me selling her dress after.

Suits are hired too and the dress was the cheapest I could find that was nice and my parents are already buying me that which is more than they should be doing already.

My other option is to cut out the church in which case my parents will feel bad and offer to pay which brings back to other people paying so either way im damned if I do and im damned if I don’t… cant really see a good solution.

But I do appreciate your opinions and the way they have made me feel.

Thanks

Ok so you're at one of the cheapest options for nearly everything. Can your bridesmaid buy her own dress and if she wants to sell it thats her choice? can your best man and ushers hire their own suits or if its ok with you wear something they already own and just wear matching ties? are there no other favours you can call in? a friend who does photography? as k_jackson_in_ waiting said, we've asked my uncle to be our official photographer as our gift to us. have you got the materials for making invites etc already? if not shop around get it as cheap as you can, same with everything else. and failing that you really might have to re-evaluate your guest list. I've already suggested a meal out at a later date for those who can't attend. I even heard Davina McCall say in an interview that she did this! and failing that seriously the piece of cake and a thank you for your kind wishes note is traditional and never goes amiss.

We don't want you to feel bad about your choices, we're here to help.

Isnt getting your bridesmaid to pay for her dress and the BM suit hire rude? my invites are literally printed from the pc on card with a normal paper insert .

My na is doing my flowers at least i hope. failing that hobby shop do a good pre made boruet at least for the bridesmaid..

a meal out at a later date is going to cost about the same per head. maybe i'll try and do a bbq at home after for those that couldnt come.

My garden is too small or i would have had the reception at home (

Karen,

Just invite imediate family and no kids to the wedding and then invite whoever the hell you want to the reception - you dont HAVE to cater for people at the reception

So it sounds like everything you are doing is as cheap as possible, but the only struggle is with the venue and the food.

Have you contacted the venue to see if there is anything they can do?

No one wants to loose business with the way things are at the moment and so maybe you could negotiate, or come up with a slightly revised menu etc.

Im sure the venue will have experience of others in a similar situation and have ideas to help.

You havent said if your meal is 3 course - im assuming it is - how about using the cake as apudding, and see if the venue would take some money off the per head price?

You said drinks are included - could you provide your own?

Its a bit different to asking half your guests to pay for their own dinner. And if you'd read my previous post about going out to dinner, you're under no obligation to pay as its not your wedding, make it about just going out with mates. Different thing all together.

I've agreed with my bridesmaids that they'll pay for dress and shoes, we'll do flowers and jewellery as their thanks for being our bridesmaids gifts. Then they can do what they want with the dresses. similarly i'm paying for my dress for k-jackson's wedding.

i think the way people look at it is, if you are dictating what they must wear then you pay, but if they have free reign then its ok for them to pay. At least thats how i see it. I had the upper hand on bm dresses so i have paid. However i explained that i went over budget on them (because i got the ones they prefered) so asked if they would buy their shoes.

My cbm asked if she could pay for something for the wedding instead of a gift, so ive kind of counted that.

You are right, this is kind of a moot point because I really would rather give a present or voucher than money, even if they did want to buy a table or a sofa or whatever. I wouldn't give them the Spanish Inquisition on what they were spending money on, I would just ask out of curiosity if they were wanting to put it towards something big. Just in conversation, I certainly wouldn't be quizzing them about what they planned to do with my contribution or checking up on them afterwards. But if it did come out that they would be spending it on paying for their wedding then I wouldn't give it because yes, I would begrudge that as I think it's a pretty poor show. Maybe I am putting conditions on my money but hey, my money, my way ?
Like you say, it's just my opinion and I know not everyone will agree with me. I wouldn't invite someone round to dinner and expect them to bring their own food or make a contribution. If I couldn't afford to feed them then I wouldn't invite them and I don't see that as any different for a wedding.

I have just created a post concerning this, to email to my cousin

The wedding plans are coming together nicely now, everything is booked and I am nearly into my dress! A few issues with my dad but dealing with them as they happen. But other that everything is fine. I am writing this email to apologise, we are unable to afford to have any of our cousins at the day do for our wedding. Due to finances and numbers we are trying to keep it to a small wedding in the day. All the anuts and uncles have been invited, and everyone will be invited to join us in the evening so I hope you will be able to join us then.

I hope you are not offended, and just wanted to write to you to let you know. Again I hope you will be able to join us in the evening. I am going to start doing these invites in the next week or so, will post out once done.

If you could cut down on numbers Fiona's above suggestion sounds like a good one that people would appreciate ? Some other suggestions for cutting down on things are:

1. Music - see if the venue has a sound system then you can put together some mixed cd's and just press play or if they don't and you have a laptop you can do the same thing as an i-tunes playlist and just hire some speakers (probably about £60-£70 instead of £600-£700 for a band/dj) - quite a few people I know have done this and the dancing and music has been great

2. Honeymoon - you may already be doing this but instead of having a big honeymoon go on a mini-moon for a couple of days somewhere nice and then in a few months or for your first anniversary go on your dream honeymoon

3. Favours - this isn't a tradition in Australia so we're not doing them, I've also found at the weddings I've been too that unless you can spend a fortune on really great favours the majority of them get left behind

4. Bridemaid Dress/ Groomsmen Hire - as some of the others have already said you can ask them to pay for these themselves - I think if you explain the situation and provide them with a small gift of appreciation on the day then most people won't mind being asked this - I've been a bridesmaid 3 times and paid for my dress twice (I'm paying for my own bridesmaids but that's because I wanted to have the biggest say ?)

5. Ask for money as a gift - As suggested by some of the other girls this is an option we are also doing ourselves. Though as some people will be travelling quite a distance we didn't want them to feel obligated to buy a present on the other hand you get others that enjoy giving you something. We worded it basically as saying something like gifts weren't expected but if they wanted to contribute something a wishing well/post box would be available on tyhe day to make contributions towards the honeymoon (can't remember the exact wording but it was like that). We've also been to a few weddings where this has been the case and no one has been offended, especially in this day and age where most people don't need scores of tea towels and toasters ? I'm also going to make the well/post box myself so won't cost me a fortune :-)

6. Another great suggestion by one of the other girls was to speak to the venue about the food options - remember that they are a business and would rather lose a little bit than lose you for the whole day (how about having a big bowl of punch for those who want alcohol and providing soft drinks for those who don't? this normally works out a lot cheaper than 'by the glass' for wine)

7. If you're having the wedding on a Saturday maybe look into changing it into mid week as prices will go right down (although you might already be doing this)

8. Videographer - see if you can find someone you know who has a video camera and ask them to capture the day for you (you could also provide them will a small thank you gift), then once you have some extra cash you can take the DVD and get it edited and have music applied to it which even though it won't be as great as a professional videographer at least you will still have moments of the day captured :-)

Hope some of these suggestions are helpful and don't be shy to ask people for help as most of them would feel great to be asked. All the best with your planning ? xxx

Fiona - I come from a large family and the cousins have never been invited to weddings. I have twenty aunts and uncles on my mums side, so they are invited but not my cousins as how could I chose from the (nearly) hundred I have?

Karen - Your venue sounds way too expensive. I am getting married in August (I know we don't like to talk budgets) and my wedding will cost £4000. I would love a country house but I can't afford it so I'm using a local hotel which has just been done up so looks lovely on the inside (bit nasty on the outside) £1700 for meal for 100, room for the ceremony, drink on arrival and the honeymoon suite on the night. If you desperatly want that venue you just have to cut down your numbers, if you want more guests change the venue. There are cheap and cheerful venues out there.

Agreed with fiona and diane. Between us me and mr delicious have 40 ish cousins and probably will have a few more by the wedding, it could be an idea to cull them from the list and offer to see them at some point after the wedding. Aussie bride also had a lot of fantastic ideas.

Diane - you are getting the deal of the century!!

that is brilliant value!!!!

Karen i dont know where in the country you are but i think per head for a 3 corse meal (where we live anyway) is around £40 minimum so i think your deal is good, you just need to have less people there!

Like a few on here i have loads of cousins so i'm just not inviting them, it'd make my list go up by about 40 and thats just my side! My OH also doesn't have many cousins but if i did invite cousins then my family would far out way his. i like deliciouswitchchild's idea about an informal meal out with people after the wedding so they pay for that as its not a wedding thing, just a chance to catch up and see them and you could take photos along for them to see.

also i don't think it's rude at all for bridesmaids and ushers/best man to pay for what they wear at all. they keep it at the end of the day. if you ask them nicely i bet they wouldn't mind. in this day and age its quite common.

Hi Karen!

It seems to me that its your venue thats eating up most of your budget.

When mr hillier & i got engaged i was so excited i wanted to invite EVERYONE! We sat down & wrote out a list and it was over 200ppl ? now mr hillier has only a small family (15ppl) and the rest was my family & our friends. After a reality check from my lovely gran lol, we narrowed it down to 50ppl, now this was immediate family incl aunties/uncles. No children or cousins. I am VERY close to all my cousins but they understood that we are not exactly the richest couple in the world but were all very happy to attend at night. The only children who will be there are master hillier & miss hillier (our kids lol) but all my guests are happy to leave the kids at home as they can relax.

We (as well as many of the other girls on here) just had to be realistic. Did we want the wedding of the year? With the designer dress, expensive rings, top class food & free flowing wine??? Of course we did, but we willl still have the day we dreamed of as we will be surrounded by the ppl we love and we made the most of what we had........................on our budget

there are ladies on here doing their wedding for £1000!!! Now if they can do it - anyone can! x

Who?

I wish it was me....but its definately not! Xx

I know, those people really are on a budget! I need to talk to those people!

I got pals who got married for 500 bucks.

I have friends who HAVE bought their own BM frocks and they werent in the slightest bit offended coz guwss what? they can wear them againnnnnnnnnn... Our best man IS HIRING his own outfit and paying for it himself - no big deal there.....

I dont know what else to suugest as the ladies here have given you fabby advice.

all I will say is money cannot buy you the memories that a wedding can give you. Money cannot buy you the moment when you exchange your vows. Money has, when getting to the nitty gritty of it all, f*k all to do with committing yourself to the one you love.

its useful, its handy but the minimum is only required

all the best.

too true!

?...........teehee that's lovely!

Thank you oohla, and believe me, I was trying soooooooooo hard not to break out in to the Beatles number!

but it is true, innit?

{ stands and aplauds }

OF COURSE!

A wedding is not for show........dare I say it, these are the marriages that don't last.

It should, as you succinctly put it, be about your love that you have for each other....NOTHING ELSE!

Hi Karen and all!

It does sound like you're cutting back on as much as you can, in most of the same places as I am planning to. As someone else asked, are you having a honeymoon? It seems like the food is the problem. I have only just started planning my own wedding, have just got church and venue booked so far. The main expense seems to pretty much always be the food and drink and we knew when we were looking at venues that it would come down to a balancing act betweem food prices and numbers. We knew if we wanted to spend £40+ a head on a 3-course sit-down meal with drinks we would only be able to afford to have a small guest list. But we realised we wanted a lot of our friends there, so the sacrifice we made was to make it an afternoon ceremony and just have a buffet in the evening. Our venue is doing us a nice 'hot fork buffet' so we'll still have the nice tables, place settings etc, but they'll go up table at a time and help themselves. This has allowed us to feed everyone for £15 a head. Fortunately we've decided we can afford to pay for a drinks package as well. It means its a less 'formal' meal, but to be honest that's much more 'us'. If we wanted the big formal meal we would have HAD to cut down the guestlist, which we weren't prepared to do.

All of our weddings should be the day of our dreams, but like someone else has said that will be because of the meaning of it, the memories etc. Compromises have to be made on all of the other things and it's each persons choice where they make their compromises.

Ally

PS I definitely know where to come for brutally honest advice!

I honestly don't think it's such a bad thing. If it was a choice between going to my friends wedding and not going, I'd rather pitch in my £20 or whatever.

Another way I have seen this done is that the couple hired a hall and had a faith supper i.e. everyone was asked to bring a dish with them and they had a massive buffet. That way there's no 'i'll pay for you but not for you'....

We've got a venue which doesn't have a bar and are asking everyone to bring their own drink for the evening, if they were at a hotel they'd have to pay Hotel bar prices so it works out a lot cheeper for them.

I guess it just depends on your friends. Most of mine would happily go along with it x

I think perhaps the issue is the numbers. I have 43 at the moment and I could cut back to 40.

If I invite my cousins for the full day (like im pretty sure im expected to) even though I only see them at weddings and funerals then thats what makes it unaffordable.

My mum wants to have all the family there but its not possible.

Some of my cousins when they got married invtied me to the whole day so I feel obliged to buy back, the other didnt invite me to the day at all and the other 2 arent married yet.

If I think about the bets bit of the day its saying my vows to the one I love but the rest of the hassle that goes with this is horrid.

Hi Karen,

I agree with everyone else - I think you need to look into cutting back your numbers. Explain the figures to your mum and say look, I only see cousins at big events so we'll invite them for the evening only.

As others have said, have a smaller ceremony and lunch and then a big evening do with buffet, do the cake cutting and speeches/toasts then? This might stop people feeling left out of the do itself. Could you also maybe invite people to the ceremony and then to the evening do but not lunch? Several of my parent's friends were only invited to the evening do but as they lived locally they came along to the church anyway which was really sweet of them.

I had a friend who got married in a nice hotel in Herts, so not a cheap area of the country, for about £5k (not including her dress which her mum paid for), which included a drinks package, 3 course meal and evening buffet for about 40 people. It is do-able.

My cost is currently 5.5 excluding the dress so maybe its not so bad. I think the cost is going up because I have a church (circa 700 quid) whereas the civil cermonies are a little cheaper (usually) and you fdont need to worry about transport.. Im based london / kent boarders so perhaps it’s a little more due to that as well. For example wedding cars at £400 so im borrowing a work colleagues car and paying him a smaller amount.

Karen - I may have got this completely wrong but I'm sure you will be able to have the people you would like at the wedding based on what you have said;

Total invites to day 43 @ £37.70 = £1612.50

You said your budget was £6000 so allowing ball park figures for other items;

Flowers - £500

Suit hire - £400

Bridesmaid dress - £100

Drinks - £1000

Photographer - £800

Dress - £800

Invites - £150

= £5212.50 - and you still have £800 to play with.

Obviously these are ball park figures and you can save a huge amount (or go without completely) on a lot of them but I'm sure its doable on your budget.

Or is 43 what you need to get it down to to make it work and you really want to invite 200 or something? ?

I hope this is helpful - I may have got it all wrong though as I've said (or forgotten a huge cost somewhere...)

There is so much stuff which is lovely but you don't need to have, honestly. Favours can be scrapped, no one will notice. Suit hire - ask the men to wear their own, maybe you can buy them a tie each which matches your colours - would be much less than a suit.

we didn't want pew ends in the church because I never notice them at weddings and I didn't want the extra cost, but my mum did. As a compromise we asked our florist to make pew ends that could be unhooked and taken to the reception to be used as table centres, which she did!

Laura Lee has put invites at £150 - I had a budget of £200 for all my stationery including postage, but I think we ended up spending about £50 on all of it, by making it ourselves. Deliver invites by hand if you can or use 2nd class post.

The church was just under 700 but admittidly I could go for a cheaper one.

I hadnt allocated that much to flowers not nearly that much.

The cake I have provisions M&S but im hoping between us Mum and I can Ice one (with plenty of practice)

I included our rings in the budget too ...

Im going to a discount wedding dress shop next Thursday to see what I find - maybe get the price down a bit.