Worried what people will think

Hi Hun let me firstly say welcome to Hitched and congratulations on your forth comming wedding.

A few of the brides on here are having exactly the same style of wedding that you are describing. It's very fashionable at the moment to have vintage 'tea party' style weddings. They are having vintage tea cups with bunting to decorate the room/village hall etc. At the reception a buffet or a hog roast seem to be popular.

If it wasn't for the fact that my other half is from Essex (we live near Birmingham) and so are most of our friends , then that is exactly what we would have done.

Your day, your way , , , anyone that cares about you and your other half will love what every wedding that you have, , ,

xx

P.S

All the ladies & gents on here are really really helpful.

Any tips, idea's or help you may need ,you only have to ask. There is always someone willing to help or advise, ,

xx

I wouldn't worry at all what people will think! Your ideas sound lovely, and doing so much yourselves will mean that there will be so many more personal touches and this will come across much more than how much you have spent on them if you see what I mean...

Your guests will be happy just to be able to share the occasion and celebrate with you, rather than criticising. The most important thing is that you and your OH are happy with your choices ?.

To be blunt - you will always have people who will not agree with your tastes - its hunman nature & not everyone likes the same things. As long as u & your OH love your ideas, that's all that matters - be confident in your choices. I think the idea of a village hall is great android can totally see how you can do decorations etc yourself as most will let you set up the day before. As for the catering - with your mum being a chef your in good hands! Personally i'd find doin the catering a bit ambitious & probably extremely stressful - but you could ask some of your aunts / cousins to help? As for wedding stationary loads of brides on here have used vistaprint and its very reasonably priced. Good luck!!!x

If your MIL2B wants a 'posh' wedding why hasn't she offered to pay for it?

If afternoon tea and a buffet is what you want then have it, it doesn't matter what others think. You're not going to please everyone. By having something that you want, and doing it your way you'll have a day that you enjoy and will remember for the rest of your life. And as long as you end up married to your OH the rest is just window dressing!

Among general wedding chit chat, the only negative thing I have ever heard about anyone's wedding is when they all look very Wedding Industry standard, with few personal touches and nothing that really stands out as being particularly meaningful to that particular bride and groom. I LOVE weddings where you can really see the couple reflected in the style of the venue/decorations/food and have enormous respect for anyone who takes on a lot of DIY projects. I went to one wedding which was about 30 people at the registry office, then down to the local pub for lunch and back to their house for beers in the garden. Fantastic day, the bride and groom had a wonderful time and we all really enjoyed ourselves. I think the whole shebang cost them less than £500.

I have momentary worries that people will think us silly for our sci-fi DIY wedding, but all the feedback we've had so far is that people are really excited about it and love that so much of it is 'us' rather than stuff you'd see in any old bridal magazine.

Short version - don't worry!

Me too! I wish I was more creative or knew people that were crafty. I think venues like village halls are brill because you can really put your own stamp on them. and I love the idea of afternoon tea. There's no reason you should pay out thousands and thousands of £s to pay for dozens of people that you don't even know that well or really want there, just to keep certain people happy. It's your and your OH's day and it's one of the times in your life that you call the shots.

I'm sure your MIL2B wouldn't expect you to start married life in loads of debt just to have a big fancy wedding to keep her happy. Sorry if this sounds harsh but quite a lot of MIL2Bs will find something to complain about anyway!!

And any real family & friends certainly won't laugh at you. Enjoy your planning & welcome to Hitched xx

I've done lots of weddings in Village Halls & they can be as lavish or as simple as you want them to be. Noone is going to think any the worse of you or critisise you for having the day that you want. A village Hall can look stunning when dressed and it doesn't cost a fortune to have what you want.

A few examples of how you can have a wedding on a budget in a village hall:

It's your day (you and OH) and do it your way. It sounds lovely and you, which is what counts.Just remember to enjoy the day and not stress too much about your catering on the day. Does your mum have a friend who could oversee things on the day so you and your mum can enjoy it?

Welcome to hitched

i think your wedding sounds fantastic. its always the little touches that make it i think.

a memeber of mfamily turned their nose up at me doing my own favours. i just turned it around and said thats its my my wedding my way

in fact i love my wedding favour idea it includes both my young children. were making yummy chocolates in moulds and putting them in home made boxes.

your wedding will be great hun x

I think your wedding sounds lovely, and exactly what we'd have done if our parents hadn't pitched in and given us enough money to have a bigger evening reception. As it is, we're getting married in a register office (a pretty one!) and then having afternoon tea in a village hall before going on to have a sit-down meal in the evening in a bigger venue. I'm not looking forward to the evening part anywhere near as much as the daytime part!

I can simply echo what the others have said. Its your day, and its really what you make of it.

I have read discussions here where brides have complained about guests/family suggesting their wedding is too pretentious - so you certainly can't win them all!

The personal touches will bring you some great memories, and I wish you all the best!

We are having something similar to you. Getting married in a register office then having our reception at a village hall. The reason we have chosen to do this is that we would rather spend the money on nice food, free drink and a live band than on a fancy venue.

A stately home or castle isn't really us anyway.

We are decorating it ourselves with home-made fabric bunting, fabric lavender hearts, jam-jar tea-light lanterns, mis-matched vases. We will do our own flower-arranging to save money too.

Most of the time I think it is a great idea, sometimes I freak out and worry that other people will judge us for being "cheap". My fiance's family are all rather flash and his siblings have had weddings in castles, stately homes and all sorts (he is one of 4).

I think that your plans sound lovely, if I was a guest I would think, "how nice, this couple are having a beautiful, fun, wedding without flashing the cash."

The think to remember is that when guests go to a wedding they are looking to have fun and will be pointing out nice things to each other NOT picking holes with your choices>

:-)

My wedding is on the cheap too. I don't care what others think they all know we like to spread our pennies as we can.I love free printables i will be using loads of them. We printed our own invites with a simple free pdf from internet. We stuck a simple sticky diamante to it and it was simple stylish and a5. I am not into prissy bows (no offence if you love them).

We are having our do in a small village type hall. I have got loads of streamers we will twist Looked on ebay and got some wire garlands (24 job lot)with petals attached not sure how they will work but around the beams possible maybe tables. Bought nice white cotton table clothes we intend to resell after. Mostly in the sale from argos and random other places. When your buying to decorate and you don't know if you want to spend x think of resell value its surprising what things resell for on ebay.

Afternoon tea for us too. I get married saturday so royal wedding day i am cooking cakes, herby scones (bought ham hock today to go with them) make some kind of herby butter as well. I am so excited . I do wish i had got round to making bunting but i left it to late now. I have a nice Laura Ashley duvet i was going to cannibalise.Lucky for us the china at the hall is scalloped and very vintage looking so we didn't have to buy or hire any. We are hiring for free glassware from waitrose. its a 48hr hire and £1 a breakage so sounds very reasonable to us.

we are having a hog roast brought to us in insulated bags as it works out half the price of a normal hog roast for the evening. We went for a disco as well.

we are having a sweetie table as favours and i made a lovely sign for it with some vintage style free downloadable fonts.

Personally I wouldnt worry at all. If its what YOU want, then it shouldnt matter what everyone else thinks. You can make the stationary yourself and it will still look really good and not cheap at all.

if people laugh at you for what you wanted on your wedding day then they arent worth having there. You should be able to enjoy your day the way you want to, not how everyone else wants you enjoy it.

Get some ideas about what you want to do, and then start working on how you want to make things. x

I think anyone that loves you both will feel it a priviledge to be there even if they get a bag of chips ! I know it is easy for me to say but it is your day and what is most important is your marriage to OH. It sounds fab to me. I have been to many a posh do and the best wedding I have been to yet was in a village hall. The mix of people was right and it was fantastic !

Do it! Its the finer details that make a wedding not flashing the cash! I went to my cousin's wedding in germany and for them 'coffee and cake' is like the 4th meal of the day so they had a coffe and cake session at the begining with about 30 different cakes(!) then a buffet in the evening. I loved it! It was so cute and personal and who doesn't like cake?!!!

If you have it until the sunday I would do it myself and not bother with the staff. and if you really wanted - you could always chuck your bridesmaids a tenner or whatever, if youre trying to save money dont complicate it I say x

Exactly what i was gonna say! If people don't like it, tough luck its what you want that matters. Ive tried to do as much as i can myself that includes save the dates, invites, sweet table, all decorations, even the wedding cake! i want it to be personal, if someone says anything horrible about my day then i will personally show them the door. ?

... and if they are that sort of person, then there's a pretty good chance they wouldn't come in the first place.

A £5,000 wedding can be much more fun than a £50,000 wedding.

Well, we were going to set up ourselves, then we realised we would have to tidy up and clean afterwards which we really did not want to do (who wants to wash wine glasses on the night of/the day after their wedding?). Anyway, in the end we decided to hire caterers. We are not having fancy food, the caterers will set up the room for us, serve the food and drinks (if you do it yourself, you need to consider who will serve the food to your guests) and then they will come back the next day and tidy up. Deciding to do this was the best thing we have ever done, it has really taken a load off our mind.

Re your earlier decorations question, we are decorating ours with home-made fabric bunting and fairy lights. The tables will have mis-matched vases with flowers we have arranged ourselves, jam jar tealight lanterns and fabric lavender filled love-hearts. All stuff I am making myself. I do love sewing and crafts though. In terms of decorating the place, the sky is the limit. You just have to think about what you like and how you want it to look.

If you have any other questions, just ask! Will be glad to help ?

Congratulations!

I think a village hall reception sounds lovely and you have free reign on decoration (which you do not get with a lot of wedding venues!!) and can make it look amazing.

I would think about hiring catering staff just so that you can concentrate on having fun, or alternatively do you know any semi-reliable teenagers who would appreciate £20 for clearing some tables?

Most DJ's I spoke to were happy to set up earlier so that they weren't interupting the proceedings, you may find that they are more flexible than you think!

Good luck with your planning... I googled some village hall pictures to help inspire you!

Congratulations on your engagement and welcome to Hitched! ?

I'm going to keep this short and to the point - this is your wedding day, do what you want! (there are some slight exceptions to this but nothing that will concern you yet ?)

WSS!! I think you wedding sounds lovely. At the end of the day it's about you and your h2b. If your guests don't like it, they don't have to go!

I love this idea. If i went to a wedding like this i wouldnt think cheap, i would view it as a more personal wedding xx

I love your plans, and would love to be invited to something like this, much prefer the personal touch to a generic run of the mill nop thought wedding. Have you thought about a hog roast for your evening buffet? My sister is having one at her wedding and we were really surprised at how good value it was, I dont know your budget but might be worth gettng a quote as it is substantial fod that you dont have to worry about! just a thought

I have a very long story behind our changed wedding which i wont go into!!!! but we are having ours at a 'typical venue' by which i mean a hotel which is quite popular for weddings and we HAD to have min numbers day and night and we HAD to have their drinks and we HAD to have a wedding breakfast. our wedding was turning into the same as every other wedding ive been to which wasn't what we wanted, it just wasnt us. as lovely as theyve all been. then due to the long story i wont go into we cancelled the wedding and nearly changed our honeymoon into wedding but OH had an idea so i called venue and they agreed to less people and afternoon tea instead of wedding breakfast. weve cut down on the drinks and overall, our venue cost has been halved and i am so thrilled!!! in fairness the only way we managed it was cos the other weddings that weekend cancelled.

im excited that our wedding is different, its alot more informal and i think we are going to have such a laugh. yes some people will have something to say (most of whom i have bumped to the night do now, ha ha ha!!!!) but i honestly dont care because most of them have all admitted since their weddings they have alot of regrets and would do things different if they could, whereas i know i wont have regrets cos it is so 'us' x