Our wedding came to £9k, including honeymoon (one week in Morrocco and one week camping in Cornwall).

DRESS - I shopped around for my dress and bought it from a little shop near where I live. It was from a collection caled White Rose Bridal. There are plenty of cheap dress sites that do beautiful dresses. I would even have a look at - http://www.bhs.co.uk/mall/department...ore/237839/1/1 - who have a surprisingly nice selection on occasion.

BRIDESMAID - to keep costs down I had one bridesmaid, one flower girl and one page poy. Instead of a bouquet my bridesmaid carried a small evening bag (with lots of tissues in it) and a corsage to dress it. Their outfits were made by my very clever Step Mum, using material chosen from a local fabric place.

PHOTOGRAPHER - we found our photographer by visiting a wedding fair near us. We saw examples of his work and liked his relaxed style, both in person and through the lens. We negotiated an hourly rate and had him for 3 hours; before the ceremony, during and after. This price included a DVD of print ready and preview images.

ENTERTAINMENT - Having never been a fan of discos we wanted a live musician but they were all mega bucks. One day we stumbled across a guy busking in Milton Keynes who sang abit like Jack Johnson/Sting etc. WE had a chat with him and he agreed to come and sing at our wedding for us. He even learnt our first dance!

FINISHING TOUCHES - The theme was always going to be oriental, but this was looking pricey (lanterns, orchids etc) so I went shopping online and in Chinese markets to see what I could find.



I found a fan for £1.50, some lanterns from Ikea for £4 each and we staggered some tea lights everywhere. It's amazing how a little goes a long way! The cake was made by my MiL and wrapped up in a banana leaf with some orchids by the florist.

Hope some of this is helpful. My points are to help you see that shopping around, being realistic and inventive will help you have wonderful weddings, without the price tag!

Yey! Great idea! We're getting married June 11th, 2011 (my dad's birthday).

Wow!!! We're getting married in a country hall, quite dull in comparison!

Or buying second hand. There's loads of websites (buymyweddingdress.com) where you can get top designer dresses etc for a fraction of the cost.

I have a £2000 Ian Stuart wedding dress...........(it makes me cry - i LOVE it) that I bought for second hand from preloved for £800 and I'll be selling it on after .

Benzmum, is there no one in your family that does photography as a hobby? We have Paul's uncle doing it for free, he's an amateur but I quite like the way I can tell him exactly what I want, as much as I want in the lead up to ther wedding! I hate photos of myself so am not prepared to pay a thousand pound for the priviledge!

My mum has a wedding floristry business so that's sorted! , can I show you my table centres, she's just finished them (10 of them - they're nearly 4 foot high LOL, luckily we're having the food in a big marquee!), and I'm really excited, I love them so much!


Apart from the venue and food, my main extravagance is the horse and carriage, purely because I adore horses. We've got 2 black friesians and 100 year old restored cream vintage carriage.

Oh and my wedding ring is black diamond! Much to my parents disapproval

As you may know, our Mr Zeke is poorly with cancer, it'll be one year on from his diagnosis, and I hope to god he can be there, I keep telling him how important it is to me that my main man is there!

Oh Pidge - thats lovely!

I know a photographer if anyone wants him I wouldnt call him cheap but he isnt expensive either - compared to otehr wedding photographers - he's doing em a few prints of the dogs and as he is a friend, they're just modelling for him if anyone wants to look at his website I dont know if I'm allowed to post it on here but I could PM it you


Edit:

Since I love dogs and my OH does too - instead of a horse and carridge I think I may just borrow my friends huskies and do up a Rig and make it fancy lol - great exercise for them lol and I turn up in my own style I once saw a big red London bus - the old ones with wedding ribbons on it - I was like - thats great for your wedding guests - wouldnt have to pay for extra cars

Also a wedding gift idea if like us you already live together and have enough clutter!

We're doing the whole "buymyhoneymoon.com" thing, blooming fantastic! We're creating an itinerary for a trip in Canada from Vancouver to Calgary. We're not booking it till after Zeke's gone, obviously I'm not leaving him.. and this option lets us do that easily.

We're going to have the whole day in one location if possible. Not doing a church wedding as neither of us are religious and i don't think it's right to stand in front of a vicar and make religious vows.

We're hoping to have it here:

http://www.stoodleighcourt.co.uk


As for the dress, i want something simple and nothing to meringuey if you know what I mean! I'm not paying an absolute fortune for it either as i don't see the point when you're only going to wear it once! I'm toying with the idea of hiring one but just can't decide. I find the problem these days is that no matter what you are looking to buy there is far too much choice!!

I agree there - brilliant points made by Hali!

I know what you mean about the venue - that's important to me too whereas Rich doesn't seem as bothered!!

For photographs we are thinking of asking my brother-in-law to do the main photos and then we're going to open a dedicated photobucket or flickr account and as part of the wedding favours i'm going to make little cards giving the user name and password and instructions on how people can upload their photo's to it. We'll then leave it open for about a month after the wedding and let people upload and then change the password.

OK, we got married in 2002, but here are my tips!

Flowers - they are pretty, but also pretty expensive. Any vases/stands etc you need will have to be hired at extra cost. Find cheaper alternatives that you can purchase and give to your florist to fill. We bought terracotta plant pots and gold spray paint from B&Q and gave the florist gold painted pots to fill with flowers. We bought candles for our displays from one of the cheaper high street shops (Internationalle I think). A friend at work had her wedding this year and bought cheap Ikea vases to fill with flowers.

Hair and Make-Up - consider asking at your local college if they have any final stage students who would do this. They are very closely supervised by their tutors, and often much cheaper!

Favours - we bought little boxes and sweets seperately and put them all together ourselves.

Extras - things like chair covers etc - do you need them? They often cost extra!

Travel - can you have your wedding in one place? Or can you 'borrow' a posh car (e.g. nice Merc saloon) from family or friends?

Dresses - I bought my wedding dress for about £300, rather than £1,500 - it had been the 'try-on' dress in the shop, so was 'shop-soiled' - however, had no damage and just needed a dry clean!

Blimey Esme, nice venue but not what I thought of as budget?

Shelley, love your flower pot idea!

It meant that all of our florist budget was spent specifically on flowers, rather than the stands etc... none of our pictures are digitised though, so I'd have to find some and scan them in for you to see!

Would love to when you get time!

It sounds like you've got a lot of the points already covered with friends/family, which is great

I do think you should appoint one 'official' photographer, even if it is jus an amateur friend...they will usually be allowed to stand etc. where other guests wouldn't be to get the good shots. and I think you might regret not having some of the actual ceremony - I don't look at mine often, but my favourite is the one of us signing the register which only the official photographer would have been able to get.


You could go on to YOP and see whether there are any amateur photographers on there who might be prepared to do it for you?

I definitely wouldn't bother with a video though - I don't think I've watched ours once in the 11 years we've been married!

I guess it depends. Everyone will have one thing that they don't want to compromise on. For some it might be the dress or the number of guests or the honeymoon etc...if Esme and her OH want a special venue, that's fair enough - and probably the reason why they particularly want to save on the other costs.