Self Sufficientish Weddings

[Milims]

I've just found my wedding dress in the chairty shop! I happend to have dropped in some curtains and spotted it, tried it on and it was perfect so I handed over the £35. It's brand new but had just been hung in a shop for a while, so may need to be dry cleaned. We already have the rose petals dried and saved for the confetti. All we have to do is get round to actually booking it - we've been trying for the last 3 years!

[Eigon]

We had a 'do-it-yourself' wedding, back in 1990. A local dressmaker made my dress - that and the ring were the two most expensive things about it, and the dress was only £80.
My mother-in-law did the flowers - she taught flower arranging, and did it beautifully. We were also lucky enough to hold the wedding on the weekend that the church was celebrating it's patronal saint's day, so there were decorations up for that as well, including all the new vestments on display, which were quite beautiful.
We had no photographer - we got our friends to take photos and then we picked out the best ones afterwards for an album.
We used one of our friend's cars to get to the church, decorated with white ribbon.
We hired the top room of a pub called the Garden House, and used their lovely garden. A local lady made a vegetarian wedding cake for us, and we had a bigger one made at the local cake shop for everyone else. The pub got an extra barrel of beer in for us, and laid on a buffet for us. They'd never done a wedding before, but they were brilliant.
And because we were local archaeologists, and the church was on the edge of the excavations (we'd actually dug up some of the previous parishoners), and just down the road from the local newspaper offices, we got our photo on the front page of the Eastern Daily Press as well!

[ellie12022]

Good luck to anyone planning their weddings, I got married last October and we had a wonderful time (exhausting though).

We had a vicar friend to do a blessing for us - as her wedding present.
We had a local venue that has its core value as sustainability (they grow their own veg, & otherwise get as much locally and/or organic as possible). And they decorated the venue as well flower wise.
My sister & neice helped make the invitations, and helped me do my hair & make up.
My dress (not white) came from Debenhams.
The men's suits were hired.
I arrived in my matron of honours campervan!

We used local people as much as possible, and also my family I think appreciated being involved. My dad enjoyed sampling different wines from Oddbins (the place wasn't licensed so we had to provide our own) - Sale or Return, which worked very well. (They delivered to the venue, but mydad had to return the glasses).

Choose the right people to help and it makes a huge difference. My matron of honour was great at organising me & driving me around.

[Fizzy Izzy]

Flowers: You may not be able to grow your own, but something that we did that was nice was have growing plants rather than cut flowers. We planted them afterwards. We had a lovely apple tree at the front of the church (very ish) and then we got to continue to enjoy our flowers growing the in the garden all year. It didn't cost very much to buy from the garden centre,

Otherwise we saved so much by friends doing things for us (as other people have mentioned). MIL made the cake, my Mum made the buttonholes (from wildflowers that she picked randomly the day before), SIL made the invitations (she's very crafty) and her BF did the photos for nothing. Three friends clubbed together to pay for the ceildh band as their present to us. The bridemaids dresses my Mum made (we bought my dress - this was the most expensive thing we did buy). Some friends from church bought food, prepared and served the buffet, we only paid the cost of the food. My DH bought himself a new suit and tie (nothing fancy), but has since worn these numerous times for other occasions. For decorations we cut up a double duvet cover and turned it into bunting! Mostly sewn by my DH... It was very nice :)

Best of luck with all the planning!

[sheena]

My Daughter is getting married in 2010 so (don't know what I did there but the post is now below, already losing my marbles)!!!!!!!!!!!!

[sheena]

My Daughter is getting married in 2010 so I have got loads of time to pull off agreat day for her.
So far I have found a lovely simple dress with shoestring straps in a charity shop which I have unpicked and used as a template for the bridesmaids dresses.
I bought the material from our local fabric warehouse and sparkly beads to go against the old gold colour of the dresses (the most expensive part of that was the beads)
So I am making 2 of them for the older bridesmaids and i was lucky enough to find a little girls bridesmaid dress on e-bay, which I have taken the front out of and replaced it with a lovely organza and sewn co-ordinating rosebuds on and matching gold bow and coloured ribbon on the back. (total cost for everything there £40)

My daughter is wearing my old wedding dress which I will adjust nearer the time and I am sewing crystals on the train, so that is already sorted.
My sister in law is making headresses for everyone and doing the flowers herself(very arty little thing she is)
A friend is making the cake as a present.
We have all sat and made the wedding favours and matching butterflies to sit on champagne glasses as a name place tag, with attached bags of wildflower seeds.

The venue is a local church and we can walk around the corner to the venue which is a borrowed marquee, with hay bales which we are going to cover in tulle(100 metres in the factory clearance for £20) and attach the matching butterfly theme.
All food will be home grown, locally sourced and made by the family.
Lots of home brew and other beverages will be supplied.
The grooms and ushers suits they already have.
They are buying welsh clogau gold wedding rings with there own personal inscriptions and their friends are providing the music - so looks like we are well on the way.
Will post photos nearer the time - if I haven't died of exhaustion or impatience first!!!!

[invisiblepiper]

OK - will finally try to post a photo - or at least a link for a photo of my daughter's wedding last November - forgot that I made her cloak too!
This is the bridal group caught by a friend when the proper photographer was in danger of stepping backwards into a fountain in the local memorial park where the photos were taken!

all_laughing.jpg (71.37 KiB) Viewed 3924 times

[sheena]

Beautiful photograph, all the dresses are gorgeous

[fruitcake]

Lovely to read everybodies stories and ideas.

We got married last April - organised it in about 3 weeks - we went to the Isle of Tiree (told no-one except our 2 close friends who were holidaying there anyway).

I bought the first dress I tried on - and chose one that I will wear again at any excuse. My biggest treat was Scottish made jewellry, OH wore his kilt as did the best man and the maid of honour wore an old dress of mine that's been to many a wedding / posh do before. My dress also matched shoes and a 'cardy' that I already had. I bought flowers (which were in season) from a local shop in Oban. The best man took the pics and other friends all shared the ones they took. They also decorated the vans with ribbons.

We told a few other friends who were on the island the night before - one of them videod the ceremony in the registry office (which is basically one of the tiny council offices which doubles up).

We stayed at a friends guesthouse http://www.ceabhar.com/and when they found out they offered to close the restaurant and cooked specially for us all and they and friends provided Cairn o Mhor sparkling oak and elderflower

We spent the morning surfing, got married early afternoon and spent the rest of the day drinking fizz on the beach before stuffing our faces with locally grown Tiree steaks for dinner and then enjoying a fabulous sunset.



I really really enjoyed it!

[Urban Ayisha]

The dress is gorgeous!!! ^^^ looks a bit like a sari? lovely!

our wedding cost us less than £200 as we both arrived by public transprt, only had 5 guests, got married in a friends sitting room decorated with fairy lights, our wedding rings were matching silver claddagh rings a fiver each from a local market and i wore a shelwar kamzee (sp?) i made from off-white muslin and spangly bits unpicked from another old top and a long skirt, shoes £5 from southall market and then we all went out for dinner at a mediterranean restaurant.

financially it had little impact on our humble earnings, i'd say it was pretty eco-friendly. it may not have been the most glamorous american movie-ish wedding you can get, but it was and remains the happiest day of my life!

[Seraphim]

There are some lovely stories and ideas here! I'm getting married in July and so far we are on target to do the whole thing for around £2,000. Which is still a lot of money for one day in my books ;)

I have asked for people to not use confetti (bubbles are ok), no balloons due to environmental concerns. My mum bought my dress for me as a gift, I intend to have something nice made out of it afterwards, or at least salvage the material. Our rings are second hand (but gorgeous) and all the food will be locally produced. We're keeping it fairly small.

Someone here mentioned that they had ceillih in the evening (yeah, I so can't spell that)... I really, really wanted one more than anything - unfortunately there don't seem to be any small local bands that can provide that and the big national ones are waaaaaaaaay over my budget *sob*

[Flo]

Sheesh we got married when we had the time. Bought the ring but got married in the clothes that came out of the wardrobe between doing two gardening jobs (well we had to earn a living like being self employed).

Hired the village hall for the evening and put on food the children had made (yes we did invite them - shows you how laid back we were that we waited till they were teenogres and old enough to come to the wedding). Declared no presents as we already had a house and let people bring their own bottles but extra food came too. Threw the hall open to everyone in the village (120 people) and friends - there were more than 120 people who came. Best man called in his mates to do the jazz band for the entertainment and they were joined by other players too.

We shared the left over food with the village next day and the youngest daughter arranged the cleaning up of the hall along with her troop of friends as part of the service element of their silver award Duke of Edinburgh award.

[bonniethomas06]

Wow, these all seem fantastic. I could do with a groom really!

I had a friend who had a huge bunch of sweet peas for her boquet, they are really easy to grow in bulk and look stunning - she paid £45 for hers but I am sure you could do the same for the price of a packet of seeds and they don't exactly take much arranging, do they?

Have a fantastic day!

[genipuss]

Hi We got married in December in our local church.
and then had a reception in the local civic centre ball room

The most expensive bit was the cost for the church, this was important to us, but if it isn't there were some beautiful registry offices around us (Devon) for around £100
this is our link but might be worth looking at your local council website
http://www.devon.gov.uk/devon_s_register_offices.htm

We got married at Christmas because it saved us on flowers as the church was already decorated.

We had tealights running around the aisles and front
100 for around £1

We got married at 4pm for 2 reasons
1) It made the most of our candles and
2) We didn't have tome for a sit down afternoon wedding breakfast

The civil service club cost us £150 including a bar and staff,
We went to Makro and bought 24 bottles of cheap sparkling wine for the toast (They looked nice as well) for £20 that covered 80 adults.

We went for an eclectic look and brought 100 plates some glass bowls for table decorations knives and forks etc all for around £30 from charity shops none matched but they were all white or white with some gold and looked really good.

Off of ebay we got
All of the bridesmaid dresses for around £10 each
10000 dried rose petals for about £5
some flickering electric tealight candles for the table cant remember how much exactly but were really cheap
some fake crystals to add sparkles to the tables again can't remember how much

I would also recommend getting your dress off of ebay as there are some real bargains a good trick is to go around the bridal shops trying dresses on for stlye and shape etc then look on ebay for the same dress or one very similar you shouldn't pay more than £50 I would be a little wary of the dresses from china as the fabrics are very cheap looking.

Table cloths and napkins were from our local party shop

We got all of the groomsmen to wear their own black suits and white shirts and we got the waistcoat and cravat sets for £8 each at the end of the season in the BHS sale in October/November

Instead of presents we asked everyone to bring a dish here is the poem that we wrote to put it nicely

http://www.dougandemma.co.uk/#/giftregistry/4531145493

As you can see we also created a wedding website this made it easy to invite people and also to give addresses and look at food options etc we also bought some cheap invites for those family members who really wanted one.

My friends nan made all of the flowers except my bouquet and grooms button hole

We hired a DJ at £150 was very good

We put disposables on all of the tables and got some one to film with our camera
we also took the main table to a proffessional studio directly after the wedding.
They took loads of photos about 150 then we bought the disk and copyright for £150

sorry to ramble so much x

[sheena]

You ramble away, it sounds brilliant - well done, well worth all the preparation.