Whole re-plan ...

Registry office is your cheapest bet.. About £100 I think?

Wouldn't go with the church as you're not religious.

Plus it will cost you about £500 ish, so registry office is definitely your cheapest bet.

HTH

xxx

Sorry to hear that ☹️

We are having a church wedding and it's costing £515.50 which incudes everything; the organist, bells, choir, copyright licence (as we are having it videoed). I think the basic cost was about £200. This can differ from parish to parish though.

Hi

I think the best thing would be to contact both and then decide.

Hope everything goes well and congrats on the second baby! ?

Claire

Also ment to add from the OP it wont be the same but as you say you will be married and have the same last name as your children - could you not save your dress and maybe consider re-newing your vows etc next year or in two years time with some of the other things you were going to have orginally?

Claire

Hi,

Thanks for that - I was thinking that registry office would be cheaper. Sounds like that's the way forward.

I never particularly wanted a religious service, my partner was married at a registry office before so I think he's trying to dig his heels in about that. I'm gutted that I've lost out on the Gretna wedding - my Mum had offered to pay the remaining balance but she just had a bit of a tantrum over some Christmas stuff so I definitely don't another one after the wedding! Plus, at least, if we pay for it, it's all about us and what we want. That's got to be better.

But thanks so much for an idea on prices

Just to add we had a M&S cake and it was lovely!!

Claire x

Claire - that vow renewal sounds like a great idea ... The girls would be older and able to join in a bit more too.

Thanks for congrats on the baby - she's 10 months old and a real handful compared to her sister - she's going to be 4 in March so loves the idea of a wedding and princess dresses ... I just think that to her, it wont be any different, she'll still see me wearing a beautiful dress and she'll be able to wear one herself. I can't wait to see the delight on her face That's worth more than a lavish wedding!

When I was looking before, Tesco did 3 different sized white iced fruit cakes which I could tier and decorate myself a few days in advance. Hmm .. wedding on a shoestring

My nephew is 4 in July and he is such a handfull (gorg though!) I take my hat off to any mom!

Yeah it should still be the same for her and like you say thats def worth more than a lavish wedding!

Claire ?

x

When I was looking for my wedding I think fruitcake lasted for upto 14 days so you could def get them and decorate them afew days before ? if you want any other help please feel free to email if I can help I will ?

It's hard work, that's for sure, my eldest has always been a really easy baby, she's a great girl now - she does have a bit of an attitude but it's easy to put her back on track. She's a little sweetie. My baby is the difficult one, she started crawling at 5 and a half months (her sister only started crawling at 9 months) but she's into everything. I nickname her the Tazmanian Devil as she can rip the kitchen apart in about 5 seconds! We've had to put a stairgate on the kitchen to protect it from her! Lol!!

I'm no good at sugarcrafting, I can ice with buttericing and a piping bag so that might have to do .. or I teach myself quickly over the next fwe months! Thanks for your offer I'll definitely be needing some help!

I would suggest a Registry office & then a Village Hall which is sometimes free of Charge or as little as £50 to hire.

Doing your own buffet cuts costs also using an Ipod for music. Having just a bouquet for you and buttonhole for the groom cuts down on flower costs, table decorations can be bought in the sales.

Hi Sherrie!

Thanks for that .. we have the village hall down the bottom of our road, I could walk there They do charge a small fee to hire, but that's well within a small budget. Flower wise, that's along the lines I was thinking .. I'm going to get silk flowers so I can make the bouquets myself, I'm going to do for myself and the girls so that they can keep them as a memento of our big day. I'm also scouring Ebay for wedding bits, and am going to make my own invites. Can't wait! They have a sound system in the village hall so we can just hook an ipod up to that which will work out well I think

Making your own invites doesn't always come out cheaper. I bought loads of stuff to make my own, then decided anything I made looked like a crappy homemade invite, so ended up going with Vistaprint for them and they've cost 83p each.

An idea for invites is Vistaprint, I cant recommend it enough for value and quality. They are always having offers and actually fo free invitations, all you pay for is postage. I'm using them for mine, but will be adding some ribbon to jazz them up a little.

HTH

All we did was put some ribbon in the colour we wanted around each tier and some flowers on top - just remember you may need some dowles in the cake to stop it dropping and not to put fruit ontop of a sponge!

Hooking the i pod up sounds great - you could also ask for people to wirte their fav party tune on their rsvp

Claire x

Hmm .. *runs off to check Vistaprint* .. thinking about it, might not have much time with the small people around, and we could personalise with a photo too ..

Sounds like a great cake idea, if I use silk flowers for our bouquets then I can just use some spare flowers to lay on top of the cake. Mmmm good ideas! We're also going to do a wedding list for gifts (which I never wanted to do, but the consensus between most of my friends is that they'd prefer a list so they know what to choose) so we'll do that and put both the invite and the gift list thing in the same envelope .. maybe?

Yeah thats what alot of brides do - or you could always put a gift list available on request - if you didnt want to include it in the actual invite

Just checked out Vistaprint .. I didn't realise that they did matching stationery! Also checked out birthday invites as the girls birthdays are in Feb and March!

Which is the best place for wedding lists? I read a while back that John Lewis was pretty good, but I feel that if I'm offering a budget reception to friends, that John Lewis gifts might be a bit .. out of place?

If you register with Vistaprint you also get lots of offers by email every week so you can save a lot of money on all your stationery.

Debenhams, House of Fraser, Argos, NotOnTheHighStreet, Next etc.

But yes.. John Lewis does have pricey things, but you could just ask for vouchers for your chosen store rather than actual items.

Im pretty sure the bigger BHS stores also do gift lists

Claire

Must have been that the person's wedding I went to had stuff like TV's and a washing machine on their JL list lol ?

Crikey!! TV's and Washing Machines!! That's crazy! I think we just would like nice kitchenware and linens .. so not expensive. Must convince Mr G to not buy anything else for the house otherwise we'll have nothing left to put onto the list ..