Planning a wedding in newcastle

I would strongly suggest going into YAP for your dress ( even just for the experience) they made me feel amazing and beautiful! My dress is from there !

I'm afraid I am getting married in Oxford though so thats my only input xx

Can't help as only started booking things myself but woo! Another Newcastle bride! Have you set a date? X

Will probably be November 2014 maybe 1st.

What about you?

11th October 2014 x

Congrats. It's so difficult, looking into prices of things at the moment. Can't believe how much photographers are. ?

I live in Gateshead and got married in Newcastle on 5th May last year- can't believe how quickly it's gone!

We got married in the Haymarket Room at Newcastle Civic Centre; had our wedding meal in the private dining room at Cafe 21, and had our evening reception at The Central pub in Gateshead (just by the Hilton).

We used Adam Faulkner Photography and can't recommend him highly enough; he was a pleasure to deal with and we love our pictures. He is £895 for full day coverage.

Have you got any ideas about the sort of day you'd like? if I can make any useful suggestions I will! Obviously I recommend myself for hair accessories; jewellery & artificial bouquets etc ?

Hi Amy. I've been to the Bridal factory outlet in Northallerton and it's worth a look - they have lots of styles to choose from. I wish though that I'd gone after I'd been to a few other bridal shops and got more of an idea as to what I wanted. The outlet sell straight from the rail and therefore (understandably) want to take care of their dresses. When I first went in I got the impression that they didn't really want me to try too many on because of this, although to be fair the lady who helped me kept on going off and getting more styles for me to try. I think it's more the place to go when you're ready to buy (there was a bit of sales pressure) but definitely worth a trip and they were very helpful!

Butterflies Bridal at Thornaby (down the A19) is good too if you're on a budget. Their prices are very good and they have a decent sale rail. All of the other dresses can be ordered in but if you choose to buy straight off the rail you get an extra 20% off the price.

I want to go into the proper bridal boutiques, just for the whole experience but hadn't even given nay thought to if i'd be able to try on the dresses in Northallerton. will definitely go to a bridal boutique now.

Thanks for the advice. ?

I want to have a day that is not going to have me in debt for the rest of my life but is not cheap and tacky either. Looking into different places etc. sit down meals after the wedding are really expensive (hotels etc.) but the rooms look so beautiful.

Just wanting an intimate wedding, with some kind of meal then a party after. want to get married as late in the day as I can. starting to think about scrapping the sit down meal and maybe having a hog roast or something instead at the night time but not sure how that will work as I am getting married in about November next year.

Think I'm going to have to try to shop around. I am going to have a look at your website. Definitely want fake flowers as I have hay fever and don't think I'd look to attractive with pollen making my eyes puffy and itchy ?

I am going to look into Adam Faulkner Photography as well.

Thank you

I don't know anything about Newcastle I'm afraid but I can give you advice I have learned along the way about budgeting the venue so perhaps you could afford the venues you love, their prices aren't set, try tweaking these things around:

Go to venue open days. We went to our venue's open day thinking we could never afford it but along with other cutbacks we saved £300 by booking on the day.

Think about your meal options. If you aren't to bothered about a sit down meal think about afternoon tea, BBQ or hog roast instead. We are just having a BBQ and dessert as the BBQ will be so filling. Will also have a evening buffet later but chose the second cheapest option the venue had. We saved sooo much money on this!

Forget about canapés if you can't afford them. If the venue will allow you why not have a basket of goodies instead. Say if you are getting married just after Halloween you could have Halloween style treats or you are near enough to christmas that you could have stuff like roses, quality street lying around. Be careful about the amount you leave out you don't want people feeling sicky before the meal.

Day of the week makes a massive difference to budget, think about having a weekday wedding.

Negotiate with the venue regarding price.

As for the rest:

eBay is your friend so is DIYing when it comes to budget.

Choose a photographer with a DVD only package, much cheaper than album packages and you can buy your own album later or buy one off the photographer later.

Definitely check out wedding dress outlets as you said but also try high street, BHS and Monsoon have lovely dresses.

Go to wedding fairs, get loads of ideas and if you see something you like and order it at the fair they should give you a discount.

If you are wanting something quite intimate with a nice meal then I do think it's worth checking out some of the restaurants with private dining rooms; they weren't as expensive as I expected. To give you an idea of costs we had 44 (the max you can fit into Cafe 21s private room) and it cost us about £1800 for the 3 course meal, water, soft drinks and wine, and the room hire. The wine was served throughout and doing it this way saved us about £200 versus what we would have spent if we'd bought their wine and allocated 1/2 bottle per person. And everyone who wanted to drink, drank a lot! It's not exactly cheap but felt very good value. Adding in the ceremony at the civic centre, and hiring the pub and putting on food for the evening too we were able to have everything we wanted on our £5k budget.

If you choose to go for just evening food then ignore everything I said above! Have you seen any venues at all?