Wedding Bells are Ap-peal-ing *groan*

[W & T's sleepy mummy]

Hi guys! This thread has probably been done before, but when I searched for weddings, I got around a gazillion posts! I'm supposed to be getting married in August and I haven't organised a thing yet!!

I was hoping to hear some great wedding stories. How did you do it? Outside, in a church? What worked at the wedding, what didnt? What tiny details did you spend so many hours on and then no one noticed? Did you ever regret spending hundreds (or perhaps thousands) on a dress for one day, or did you feel justified because it was your wedding day and you deserved it?! I would love to hear what things made your day really special to you.

Please help - I have no hope - I'm as organised as a 4 year old. DP is as organised as a 1 year old!!:D

[JellyBean06]

Outside, civil service.

Waste of money! Should have eloped! :)

Don't leave everything until the last minute (making programmes at 2am on the day is not good) and if plenty of people are coming make a gift list (I got 20 white platters because some idiot told people that's what I wanted!) :D

I ordered my flowers through Roses Only - cost $160 for 3 dozen and that was enough for everyone and I made the bouquets myself. Don't listen to Bridal Shops if they tell you there's enough room in the seam to let the dress out - there isn't! Don't pay for an open bar. You can save heaps by doing the invites yourself.

[draught]

It has been done before but as so many of us love a wedding almost as much as we love a baby you can never have too many of these!

I organised our wedding - church ceremony and reception on the in-law's farm. Things that worked well and saved us money - a friend who was a professional photographer - we paid but it was mates rates. No flower arrangements for the tables - bowls with floating candles and a couple of fresh flowers. A chocolate fudge cake for the wedding cake that doubled as dessert - just plain white chocolate bands and my SIL put fresh flowers on it for decoration.

Things that can cost a lot that NO ONE ever notices - your shoes!
I made my own veil - the pattern and fabric cost me $21 - the cheapest one to buy cost $60.


For a lot of stuff it depends how 'formal' you want to be.
For example - you could have a jukebox for music, fingerfood in a garden with big eskies of cold drinks, and really make a party of it.
Or you could book a restaurant and have a sit down dinner rather than a function centre.
Seriously - I could go on and on for ages.
So - my big tip is to sit down with your DF and work out what the two of YOU want and what is important to YOU. ( eg, DH and I wanted a great party with good wine, food and music. Didn't care about colour schemes etc.)

Then you can start to get an idea about which direction to look in - and then we can keep plying you with ideas!!

Oh - I should add - special things for us were - the speeches and seeing all our friends.

[JellyBean06]

Things that can cost a lot that NO ONE ever notices - your shoes!

This is sooo true! My feet swole the day before so I legged it to Betts & Betts and bought white sneakers with diamantes on them! No one knew! :)

[W & T's sleepy mummy]

Thanks guys! Your wedding sounded lovely draught. We are trying to cut expenses any way we know how. My sis is getting married in March and their wedding is heading up to around $15,000!! Eek!

Jellybean, if only they had given you the platters before the wedding - you could of made them all eat off their own platters! Or you could've pretended you were greek and smashed em all!!:D

[draught]

Our whole wedding, including honeymoon cost us under $10,000.
I have helped out at friend's weddings that cost less than $3,000 and have had a ball.
I have been to a wedding that cost $56,000 and was pretty bored to be honest.

If you have the wedding you want, with the people you want and the atmosphere you want it will be perfect, whether the colours match, the glasses match or the music is your son's xylophone!

I have hundreds of ideas - making your own invites, mass books, name plates etc to save money.

I have posted this before but one great idea I saw at a friend's wedding - they didn't have bridesmaids etc - for speeches her sister and his dad and her Uni mate and his best mate (my DH) all spoke briefly, then to make the toast they drew a number from a bingo ball and we all had to check our place cards - the winning number was the person to make the speech for a toast - they figured that everyone there was a person who knew them well enough to do it - so it went really well! (And I think it is a great way to work out who to invite - would you want them to make a speech about you?)

[Percy]

Hello

Well i am actually getting married on Saturday, two more sleeps!!! We had the whole thing organised while i was still pregnant, so it felt like it would never come butg all of a sudden its here.

We are having a garden wedding with a celebrant, and then we just walk upstairs to the reception room, so much easier i think.

I wanted a very small wedding, still ended up with 80 though. I have to admit, i too have thought numerous times 'we should have just eloped" but now that the big day is getting closer i am glad that we havent!

Good luck with your planning.

[W & T's sleepy mummy]

Congratulations jakes mum!!!

I hope your day is wonderful & special! Good luck and have lots of fun:D

Thanks for your help everyone. I'll nag DP about it again tonight! When ever I mention it he just waves his hand vaguely at me and says 'What ever you want dear'!! I think he's terrified of the amount of work involved! Poor dear P.

[Puk]

I organised our wedding but i was pretty laid back about it. All in all it cost us less than $5000! A friend made the dresses which i chose out of wedding magazines, we got married in a garden at my favourite pub in the country and had the reception there as well! My aunt who is a celebrant did the ceremony, i had the music i wanted on a cd that i burned. My 3 bridesmaids, my flowergirl and i all carried one single long stemmed rose - cost about 12 bucks! :D I was in white so i carried a red rose, the others were in burgandy and carried a white rose. Everything was so simple and easy and it all went according to plan! The boys just wore a suit and i bought them all matching burgandy ties - i did make DH wear a vest too! :p
We had a fairly large bar tab but people still added on to it during the night! My friends and i did the decorating with stuff that i had bought, i also ordered balloons and a gas bottle and blew them up myself - really helped with the nerves! :D
All my friends and family were really good and helped out as much as they could and everything was perfect!

Good luck planning your wedding, i hope it is magic! :)

[hartz]

Our wedding is in April and I have only been planning it since April so don't panic when the bridal shops or suppliers tell you that you are leaving it late.... and they will!!! First decide how you want it, how many people you want to invite and whether you want sit down or cocktail type food. A good place to start is a place that is special to you or you fiance or maybe you both like the beach or the bush. If a church wedding is important you will need to get onto that straight away since alot have a 6 month booking requirement. Our wedding is going to be fairly simple as neither of us like fuss... I wanted to elope finace says no so we are having the ceremony in a cute little chapel outside of Melb and a lunch to follow, will be casual so no dancing and speeches and because we are only inviting 25 or so people they are able to pick what they want to eat as I wasn't wanting a set menu. We will have a drink tab on the bar but I don't imagine people will go flat out on that at lunch... hope not!!! So far the dress is costing more than i would have liked but I adore it so I think its worth it!!

In order of importance you need to firstly work out what your budget is, then choose and book venue, celebrant and then find a dress!! The rest comes together easily, well it has been easy for me so far but I havent had a picture of how my wedding would be from when I was 6 and I have been lucky the places we like were free on the date I wanted!! Right now I just want it to be over tomorrow so we can get on with being happily married and making a baby!!!!