Our DIY Wedding... for under £11k

So we are really pushing to keep our wedding under £11k, this doesn't include the engagement ring, hen/stag dos and the honeymoon.

We also really wanted to minimize cost for our guests, because at our age when everyone is getting married it can become costly!

OUR COST SAVING TIPS:

Homemade 'save the dates' - we bought cheap children's chalk board to write  the details, which will be reused at the wedding, then had our STDs printed at Vista Print who provide free envelopes (see below).

Invites - our friend designed them from picture's/ideas we provided and then our local printers (First Colour London) printed them, who also provided free envelopes.  We created a wedding website to minimize the invite size, adding all the accommodation / travel details to the site www.hopfest15.blogspot.com #HopFest15

Accommodation - we've booked a cottage for the weekend and our top 20 guests will stay for free.

Guests - we've have a total of 76 over the 2 day celebration.  Keeping the numbers small reduces the price... we've been good at saying no to plus ones and unwanted 'extended' family.  Stay strong, its your wedding.

Food - we are doing some of the catering ourselves via M&S / Sainsbury's

DIY Candy Bar - We bought plastic retro sweet jars from Amazon (10 for £10), and then bulk sweets from Makro UK (a huge order for only £55, incl. delivery)

Wedding shoes - using ones I already owned.

Outfits - Vintage dress from House of Vintage Brides and my second outfit was a sale item from Mango.

Flowers - I'll be bulk buying these for bouquets and decoration from the London Chelsea Flower market and doing it myself (max spend £50 for 100 steams of baby's breath).

Wedding Rings - we bought ours from F.Hinds as we wanted plain traditional rings, and this was a way to save a lot.

Decorations - I've bough over 300ft of bunting on eBay for £50, plus ribbons and candles.  We've also collected glass jars and baskets.  I am currently making paper chains from coloured printer paper.  I have also tied ribbons on all the glass jars for a rustic look.

Loki is unimpressed I wont let her help!

Entertainment - we've created a playlist, and hired a PA system (no DJ), plus festival feel entertainment (face painting / temp tattoos / glow sticks / sparklers / garden games / face in the hole) etc. and a bouncy castle!

Photograph - this is where we spent more than budgeted, as we have hired a photog for 2 days plus a Polaroid camera, disposable camera and borrow a friends GoPro.

Confetti - I am making my own by drying rose petals.  We regularly have roses in the house and this is a really easy cheap personal touch.

Vouchers - we received loads of vouchers for Christmas, and I have found a few online, saving us £250

Our biggest spends were venue hire (incl cottage for 4 nights) and photographer at £5700k.

Great places to find a cheap alternative:
Amazon
eBay
Ikea
Marks & Spencers
Tesco
Twitter
Any high street pound shop

Wedding Stress...

Yes wedding are exciting, but the planning is not always fun... even with an endless budget there are little things to worry about.

I am finding it particularity difficult planning a wedding in the style I didn't really want to keep my H2B and the families happy, especially when it feels like a fight just to get his in put.

What to do?  Leave it and let him organise and accept it probably wont be how you imagined... or just do it all yourself and slightly resent him.

Next Steps...

In exactly 9 months today I will be getting married!  My next steps in the wedding planning business is the dress, then I can confirm the colours and start on the bridesmaids... But until the dresses is decided upon (which I think will take until the end of December - if not longer), I am going to use this time to collect decorations I know I want.

Candles - large church candles that we will place around the venue
Large glass jars - for the candles and flowers

I've decided to go with DIY flowers, sourcing a local wholesale flower market, I'll order them in advance then pick them up the day before (fortunately the venue we have hired I get the run of the place from the Thursday night before hand)... then we'll set the flowers up on the day of the wedding as the ceremony doesn't get going until 3.30 pm.

We are also having home made bunting - which I love for cheap, easy and colourful decoration - my mum has offered to make this, so on my return at Christmas we'll go shopping for materials... she will need to make about 200 meters though!!

Not sure what other decorations to have at this point - we are going for a low key, relaxed, family feel 'party' rather than wedding as both my H2B and myself are a little intimidated by the whole commitment thing, and I am not a fan of 'stiff' stressful weddings - I want the day to be about the MARRIAGE and creating our own family, not the WEDDING!  (Hope that make sense)

If you have any decoration ideas please tweet me @bride2bride

Wedding Planning... Day 210!

This weekend I am going to Brighton to visit my brother and his long suffering girlfriend (we love her!)... and whilst I am there I've arranged my first official wedding dress appointments.

Brighton also has the benefit of lots of vintage/retro shops in the Lanes so the 'sister in law' is going to take me around and show me some great places where we can look at vintage wedding dresses.

I've booked appointments with the following 'off the peg' wedding dress shops

http://www.ozoneweddings.co.uk/

http://www.oceanbride.co.uk/

http://www.leonieclaire.com/

Other & vintage dress shops

http://www.whiteleaf-wedding-dresses.com/

http://www.janneflemindesign.com/

http://www.hopeandharlequin.com/

http://www.suzieturner.co.uk/

http://www.natashabailie.com/

http://www.vintagebrighton.com/ - lots of local vintage shops in Brighton

Other Brighton wedding resources

http://www.devlinphotos.co.uk/ - search vintage Brighton wedding

Planning the Wedding Budget

The next step for me was the decided on a budget, I do not want to spend my life savings on the wedding (because if I am honest I'd prefer to run away and get married rather than have a big party for everyone else)!  So I set an amount after a bit of research, and settled on £12k, plus any extra provided by our parents.  The average wedding budget in the UK is £11-12k, and in the US $19.5k (but most spend between 14-25).

I feel it is very important to keep track of the costs because once you start going deeper into the wedding details there is so much you want to include or add and soon you'll be a few thousand over budget, at one point our budget was edging toward £16k!! :O  Because of this though I found lots of way to save on cost which I will share with you all as I take this process!

I used a simple excel spread sheet to keep track of costs, budgeted, deposits, and total spend - I also used this as a list of what needs to be done, and where I had found ideas, plus contact names etc.

If you do a Google search you'll find plenty of wedding planner checklist free to download.  http://www.savvysugar.com/Wedding-Planning-Checklist-3039079

The Mood!

Theme, Colour, Style!

After picking, viewing and confirming our venue (lucky the first one fit the bill perfectly), I started planning the theme, colour and style as the mood of the wedding and the rest of the planning would flow from these ideas... so I started cutting out from magazine and the Internet things that appeal to me and work together then created a mood board!

We are going for a relaxed, outside family feel, with a fun fair theme, and royal blue and purple colours!!