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

Where to start?

So after confirming the venue I had found earlier online was still available for the date - everyone was informed...

I used www.weddingvenues.com to locate venues in our desired area and narrowed it down to a couple online, once we confirmed the date, we set time to visit the venue before putting the deposit down.

We went to see the venue on my birthday, a couple of months later than when the wedding will be...but we fell in love, it is perfect!!

Next I set about planning a list of what to do to plan the wedding...

THE LIST
Engagement
*Ring
*Announcement
*Party

Wedding
*Budget
*Theme
*Season
*Decorations
- Style
*Venue
- Location
*Food
*Drinks
*Ceremony
- Vows
- Registrar
- Civil/Religious
- Registering
*Entertainment
- Disco
- Band
- Fireworks
- Games
- Magician
- Doves
*Dress
- What style dress suits you?
*Bridesmaids
- Flower girls
- If you have a sister do you have to make her BOH?
*Groom
*Groomsmen
*Bridal party
*Photographer
*Stationary
- Save the date
- Invites
- Name cards
- Seating plan
- Favors
- Order of Service
- Gifts
- Master of ceremony's
*Flowers
*Cars
*Rings
*Hen Do
*Stag Do
*Honeymoon
*Wedding Presents
*RSVP
*Guest list
- Do you include children?
- Should you invite family members you never see?
*Seating
- Receiving line
*Speeches
*Tradition
- old, new, borrowed, blue
- is it acceptable?
- taboos/bad luck
- what if?
*Extra - unique ideas

I will provide links to sources I have used, ratings, Q&A and  my experiences as we get closer to the dates!  As the one thing that I have found missing in the process is someone reliable to ask all these questions to, my mum is from a different generation and has a very different style to me, my girlfriends are all unmarried and probably sick of 'what you think of this' every 5 minutes...

Please get in touch if you have any questions or suggestions for me, it would be great to recieve them.