What you dreamed of?

I have envy over people not wasting money on a wedding .....all those other things I can spend it on ( my partner agrees with me too!)

I'm not having the wedding of my dreams either We kept putting it of until we could have what we wanted7 years later and we still can't afford it so were settling but I'm really excited about it just nervous it will look crap x

I never had the kind of wedding I expected.

Having been engaged for seventeen years, the hope of having an actual wedding was fading fast. I had become assigned to the fact that I would forever be a fiancee, never a wife. I was OK with that, I figured we already had the marriage.

OH had other ideas, and sorted out the wedding in secret without me knowing, as I was going to be 40 on April 5th and he wanted to marry (excuse the pun) the two occasions.

I had the all singing, all dancing wedding in the hotel with all the trimmings, flowers, a gorgeous dress, with 60 of my dearest friends and family to share the day. It was awesome, better than I could ever have imagined.

And it only cost £3K (or thereabouts).

So far mine is pretty much as I dreamed, only a few minor tweaks here and there but we've been incredibly lucky and both sets of parents are contributing a lot to the day.

I never really had that big wedding dream. I always 'assumed' that when I did marry we would have the ceremony, followed by a reception and then an evening do where all our family and friends would come. I had no idea where I would want to marry or the sort of dress I wanted.

Then when we got engaged my Husband said he didn't want the big evening do with lots of people and a disco. My first thought was 'Oh. What will our family/friends think about not being invited'. Then I realised it didn't matter - as long as we had our close family and us two that was all we needed.

I had to find something to keep our 22 guest entertained, which is how we ended up riding on a steam train, getting married at a train station and then spending the evening cruising up the river Dart. I would never have dreamt that we'd have such an unusual, lovely and really relaxing wedding day.

We have a good savings account but we kept the budget low (low in my opinion - high in his opinion) because we both didn't see the point in spending lots of money on just one day. I didn't worry about tradition, or what everyone else does or what people kept telling me you should and shouldn't do! It was our day and it was perfect

I never thought i'd have loads of people at my wedding, and I never thought i'd wear a white or ivory dress, I always pictured silver or burgundy as i'm so pale.

It has worked out that we have 90 day guests up to around 160 in the evening, and my dress is very much ivory!

But apart from a slight 'i really hate large groups of people' fear, everything is just as I want it. I hadn't gone into too much detail as to what else i wanted though so i guess by not knowing, i've ended up with it how i want it.

We decided late last september that we wanted to get married but had no money and no real chance of saving anything even remotely substantial so figured it was a toss-up between extremely low key this year or something less so in a few years time. I just wanted to get married so was immediately conjuring up ideas, perhaps registry office followed by a bbq at my sisters place. The style of wedding really didn't matter at all once we knew we wanted to do it...

As it happens, I was so excited about getting married at all that I called Mum who, bless her, was so keen to see either my sister or I get we'd that she offered us 5k to pay for it. This opened up a whole new level of options.

Yes, I did alot of bargain hunting, made things myself and was constantly budgeting but in the end we DID get the full on white wedding and 2-feed reception... It just took lots of careful planning, calling on talented friends and family and a bit of imagination.

The crux of it is, on 22nd of June I became Mrs Sutton and we ALL had a day far more amazing than we could have imagined!

Don't get me wrong, having organised the last details myself, I had a clear picture of how everything would come together, but at no point could I have anticipated the sheer joy of it all. I have conditions which limit my mobility and cause constant pain and fatigue, but at no point during the entire day and evening did I notice my health issues.... Pure adrenaline coursed through me every minute and I and my husband, like all our guests, had the BEST day EVER!!

Yes, we ended up with far grander celebrations than we had thought possible, but I know for a fact that had we gone down the lowest budget route, we would still, without a shadow of a doubt, have felt the same elation.

So I agree with other posters, it's not about what money you throw at the wedding, but the love you feel and the joy that knowing you are marrying.

Simple.

Enjoy the planning ride.... Trust me, you may not get the day you THOUGHT you dreamed of but you'll certainly get one you can happily dream of forever more xxx

I don't think I'm having the wedding of my dreams - but mainly because my dreams were massively unrealistic. The position me and OH are in financially meant that we had to choose between a big, fancy wedding or owning our own home, being 30 and wanting children soonish, the sensible part of us won and we are marrying on a budget. Having said that, I'm soooo excited about the wedding and don't 'feel' like it's a budget wedding, and having planned most of it now, I can honestly say that if money was no object, I wouldn't change a single thing.

I've never really dreamt of my wedding day so when my OH proposed we had to start from scratch. We made a list of what was really important for the both of us and that's where our money is going. Car, cake, 3 course sit down meal isnt that important to me or him so we're having a hot buffet, will maybe double up our dessert as our cake and I'm happy to take a cab to my wedding! We're spending money on what matters - inviting who we want and having an amazing ceremony venue (our reception is still lovely but in a cafe/bar). Sit down and take sometime talking to each other and decide on the things that each of you really really want and compromise. After all, it's a wedding for the two of you. I'm sure when the day comes - it'll be perfect whatever happens :-D

I never had any ideas about a "dream wedding". It's just one day. The aim of which is to get married, so I never put a lot of thought into it.

I got married in a register office. Everything came to under £500, and yet I am as married as those who spend thousands...

I've realised that I actually had two dream weddings in my head! OH and I are a bit hippy-ish; we love nature and festivals and 60s music, so we'd envisaged a tipi/farm wedding in a field in Somerset, with lanterns, fire pits...I could go on! But when we looked into it, we found that it was just way out of our budget. We don't have our own home and felt bad about ploughing potentially 10k+ into our dream wedding. So....

I started thinking about alternatives and realised that I loved my mum and dads wedding from the 60s - town hall, buffets, simple decor but really cool! So that is what I based ours on - church wedding, town hall reception, bring your own drink, simple flowers and I've got my hippy 60s dress :-) OH and I love it - it really suits us. Sometimes we do feel a bit sad that we didn't have our outdoor wedding and bless OH, he still says that if I want the whole tipi thing, we can still do it (not quite sure how, but bless him anyway!) but I love my wedding, I'm so excited for it! My only regret is that we didn't do it this year and I have to wait til next year. I guess what I'm trying to say is that if you aren't having the "wedding of your dreams" try and get some elements of your "dream" into the day you are having, that's what I've managed, and I don't feel as though I'm missing out.

Ooh interesting thread! First time round, 11 yrs ago now, I had the perfect dream wedding: huge dress, coach and horses, stately home, flowers everywhere, live band evening do, silver service food. Dream wedding, that is, except we couldn't marry in church since ex H had been previously married.

This time round, I suppose the dream was country church with local pub (nice rural gastropub, not a suburban boozer!) reception. However, my church at the time we were planning (we've since moved house) also doesn't marry divorcees, I wasn't prepared to compromise by touting round non C of E churches for business - that's not how I see my faith, and I was a little embarrassed by the fact that this dream would mean saying the same vows in front of the same family and a lot of the same friends, as they had seen me say previously to a different man. So bang went that dream too!

What we did, in hindsight, was perfect for us. We eloped, but to Zanzibar, where we could have the full C of E service by an Anglican minister, on the beach. Friends and family issue was resolved by just not taking anyone with us. So it was a world away from my initial dreams of 11 and 1 years ago, and never the type of wedding I imagined having. However, the one dream that had always been SO important to me, the Church service, was finally achieved!

I'm more interested in getting married rather than having a 'dream wedding'. OH has more of an idea of a 'dream wedding' than I do. ? I'm just going along with it and enjoying every day of the planning. Whatever my wedding is like at the end of it - I don't care because at least I will be married to the man I love.

I don't think I really had a dream wedding in mind before I got married. As far as I was concerned my wedding was perfect for what I wanted at the time.

All I really wanted was to spend my life with the man I love, but never mind. Onwards and upwards.

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The only materialistic part of a dream wedding I had when younger is that I wanted to travel in a horse and cart. I'm not having that now due to our budget but I'm fine when it.

The rest of my wedding dreams were always about just getting married to the love of my life, seeing my husband to be at the altar, I get swept up in the romance of it all rather than the materialistic stuff. Up till we got engaged we were just going to go abroad to marry but then we realised not everyone we wanted would be there for a wedding abroad, so decided to go more local.

I always wanted to get married in a castle in the middle of summer... well budget would never stretch that far.

However a smaller venue means that I can still get my summer wedding (same price all year round) and the number of guests we want.

As long as everyone is laughing, drinking and having a good time we could get getting married in a public toilet for all that it matters