Getting Married... - The Bear and Badger

regmcfly

Right, thought I'd start this, as we're just starting off on the way towards it, and any help / experience would be welcome. As far as I see it, there are the following things to sort out -Â

- Wedding itself (for us, it will not be a religious one - what's the best way around this? Where etc?)

- Venue - We're having about 80 for the meal, then around 50 others afterwards.Â

- Music

- Flowers

- Outfits

- TransportÂ

Now, I know that hotels etc can put a lot of this into a package deal (ie venue, food, decorations, dj etc) but I'm wondering what experience people have had with all this - what's the likely cost of this going to be? We really don't want a fancy glitzy thing, but at the same time, don't want to seem cheap or anyfin.

Rev

I'll be your planner. Done it twice mate.

Bollockoff

My sister went to a dog's wedding once.

Aaroncupboard

Our costing is currently about Â£8/9000. That is us keeping it as small as possible. The main cost area for us has been the catering (village hall requiring outside food caterers). However, I'm sure that if you are getting a package type deal then you can accomodate everything for what should be cheaper. We are going all over the place so we have had to get everything seperately.

We have been saving 200 quid each for the past year and a bit to afford it all (some nice tax returns have helped too!).

adkm1979

Elmlea

Ours cost something utterly obscene, but that was because we had 130 for the meal and another 100 later. You can budget anyway you like though, a venue will do Â£8 or Â£80 a head for the wedding breakfast without blinking. FYI, this week I finally paid off the last smidgen of debt from our wedding, and we're almost 6 months past our 5th anniversary!

Flowers depend on how big your venues are and how much you want. Transport & entertainment are pretty fixed costs as are outfits.Â

Not sure what you mean by the "best way around" a non-religious wedding. Find a registrar and a venue with a license to have weddings and you're set. I'm sure the Scottish uses we're pretty lax so you can go pretty much anywhere.Â

Invite me, I come with a fancy uniform and a massive sword you an use to cut your cake!

regmcfly

I'm aimin for something like Â£6000- have had a quote of Â£4995 for hotel day and night reception, leaving Â£1000 for dress (mrs reg doesn't want a white dress etc) and car hire. About doable?

Aaroncupboard

Just be mindful of the little bits and pieces (save the date cards, invitations, wedding favours etc.).

Nice little idea we are doing, all R.S.V.P.s will respond with a song choice. I will give the list of songs to our DJ so that we have a personalised set list.

krs

Whoah whoah whoah, hold on there just one Jesus buttocking second. The Proclaimers have three songs?

Frosty

I think they have four.

JonB

Mine was in Cyprus, in a registry office located in an old mosque in the centre of Nicosia. About 50 people to the ceremony, and then off for a night in a hotel. Next day, just family around my wife's Uncle's place, had the cake. I got a suit made and my wife put an outfit together that actually looked good (as opposed to the traditional meringue wedding dress). Invitations, a few flowers, hairdos, photos and so forth. All came to about Â£700.

Elmlea

regmcfly wrote:

I'm aimin for something like Â£6000- have had a quote of Â£4995 for hotel day and night reception, leaving Â£1000 for dress (mrs reg doesn't want a white dress etc) and car hire. About doable?

Yeah, absolutely, but do they cover everything; like will the place settings match your theme/invitations etc? If they're doing utterly everything for that then you really just have the ancillaries. Invites can be cheap if you do a lot yourself. Outfits dead cheap if it's just you and a best man and you're renting or something.

Aaroncupboard

Definately recommend making invites, much cheaper option and they do look quite nice.

Rev

Seeing as I was married in dunfermline, im sure there are some people I can recommend reg.

regmcfly

Aaron - last wedding I was at had that idea with music and it was ace.

Have just done the wedding mission in Sleeping Dogs. Seems fairly easy, all I have to do is hijack a wedding cake can.

Elmlea

An accurate metaphor.

Frosty

The internet failed me in my attempt to find a picture of cake in a can.

[Deleted User]

Have a chicken in a can instead

Aaroncupboard

That actually looks regurgitated.

Mod74

I don't see photographer on your list Reg, that's circa Â£600. Car hire will be about Â£350.

So as long as a she's OK getting a Â£50 dress from M&S you're sorted.

That venue price seems high, that's Â£62.50 per head. I'd have thought you could find somewhere that's probably nicer for less.

I haven't added ours up, and I don't want to, but even though we kept everything pretty modest it has to be in the 8-9k range.

acemuzzy

Videographer?
Sweetie table?
Honeymoon??

Toughest bit we found was getting our head count down, and sorting out the table plan. And paying for it, obviously - 150 people in Epping did not come cheaply, sad to say

Aaroncupboard

Im glad to see numbers are around 100/150 for most people. We were thinking our wedding was unusually small (not that thats a bad thing). A sweetie table seems to be one of the in things at the moment.

Mod74

The missus found a company that printed fun size Love Heart tube wrappers with your names and date on. Only problem was they were self assembly, but that only took an hour to glue together.

Definitely do the invites and programme yourself. Plenty of places let you download a template to make or upload your own images/text. I used Vistaprint because I'm an idiot, but they did the job OK and were only Â£20 for 100 postcards.

Mod74

You're looking at Â£125 to get married at the council offices, or Â£424 to have the registrar come to you

http://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/info/666/marriage-ceremonies/821/getting_married_in_edinburgh/

igorgetmeabrain

@reg - Â£6k sounds very ambitious, especially given your headcount for the wedding breakfast. Â

Ours, earlier this year, was very similar to what you appear to be aiming for but cost all told about Â£7.5k (NOT including wedding/bridesmaid dresses as I don't know how much that was).Â

It was a modest (but perfect) affair, set it a quiet and extremely modest country hotel - not at all swanky.

Here's our final breakdown of expenses:

**************
Hotel rooms (incl our bar tab) - Â£200
Drinks package - Â£650 (41 adults, 7 kids)
Wedding breakfast - Â£1500 (41 adults, 7 kids)
Evening buffet - Â£1650 (100 people)
Registrar - Â£300
Register Banns - Â£67
Cake & Edible CentrepiecesÂ - Â£250
Flowers - Â£160
Suit Hire - Â£440
Photographer (v. basic/cheap!) - Â£300
Rings - Â£720
Homemade invites/decorations (incl postage) - Â£105
Gifts - Â£30
Band (evening - at mate's rates!) - Â£1150

TOTAL Â£7522
************

That does NOT include musicians for the ceremony/day as we had mates who did it for free (e.g. a string quartet for ceremony/drinks should be around Â£500).Â

Honeymoon came courtesy of donations from family
/guests in lieu of traditional wedding list, so that's a huge expense avoided.

Wedding/bridesmaid dresses to be added to that total, which alone would probably bump it up to around Â£10k!

Total hotel package cost was about Â£1500 cheaper because we did it in January rather than summer.

We did a lot ourselves (like making the decorations/favours/invites/table-plan etc) which saved us a small fortune too.

Hope that helps.

Mod74

Reg, my sister in law makes jewellery (as in properly, not as a hobby) and I'm sure she could do you rings for a lot less than a shop would. Drop me a PM if you're interested and I'll give you her email.

regmcfly

Mod - asked a friend to do photography so he's doing it for gratis

regmcfly

What the fuck is a sweetie table

Mod74

Is he a photographer or a friend with a nice camera?

I considered asking one of my mates but in the end I didn't want her working all day and worrying about capturing the moments instead of enjoying herself. If money had been a real issue I'd have asked her.

regmcfly

He's a photographer and graphic artist. Es done photography for another friend's wedding, so he's an old pro.

Aaroncupboard

regmcfly wrote:

What the fuck is a sweetie table

Its a table of sweets.

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