Essex Weddings

Must be my age or something, but I've been to more weddings in the last 3 years then most people would in a lifetime.
This weekend we're travelling to my cousin's wedding, he lives in North London, but has decided to get married just South of Birmingham.... not sure why.

Anyway, today's wedding related post is about their wedding invitation. Now, I gather that it's going to be a big affair. The bride has a large family and there's going to be a big wedding guest list, all very traditional.
The invitation arrived not that long ago, and when I opened it I was a little surprised to see the cover of the invitation had a photo of the happy couple in fancy dress !

This leads me to think about the perfect wedding invitations, and if there is such a thing?
This particular wedding invite, opened up and had several cards inside, packed with information for the wedding guests, including how to get to the ceremony, details about the hotel and wedding present list info. It was a great wedding invitation, I was just a little surprised to see some dodgy fancy dress photo on the front cover.

My wife hand made every single wedding invitation for our wedding, even all the evening invitations. They were lovely, nice little flowers glued to the front, there were very personal and attractive.
Some of my other mates sent a card from a shop with two cartoon bride and groom frogs on the front, and the words "we're getting hitched" Not quite as much effort, but they looked nice and of course we got the point - we were invited to their wedding day !

So today's ramblings in conclusion, if you're sending out wedding invitations to your guests, don't worry so much about what you think the guests opinion of them are, just send your invites out and the recipients will be equally as happy to of been invited to your wedding day !

Happy Wedding Planning !

I was recently at a wedding of one of my friends, they had a fairly big family between them, and invited plenty of friends along to the wedding too.
About half way through the ceremony it suddenly occurred to me that there was something missing...... they had no official wedding photographer.

Strange as it seemed to me, I asked my wife what the reason was. She was just as surprised as me, and thought the same, surely one of the first services you booked for your wedding day was the photographer?

Later on in the day, I walked up to the new bride and groom and congratulated them on their fantastic wedding. They were both delighted with their day, and all the wedding guests seemed to be having a great time.
I used the opportunity to ask them both why they chose to have no wedding photographer, I was a bit concerned that maybe the photographer had let them down and was half expecting to upset the bride with my question.
"We're surrounded by wedding photographers" came the bride's response.
With that, almost on request, an auntie barged me to one side and asked to take a photo of the happy couple.
They smiled, she took the snap, and I thought it was ok - it was their choice not to have a wedding photographer.

Anyway, as the day went on the wedding guests snapped away, as they do. Photos of the couple cutting the wedding cake, photos of them with their parents, kissing in an archway - the list goes on.

The interesting thing was that, there was no single person ordering family and friends around to pose this way or that. The newlyweds simply took a pose and a bundle of paparazzi style wedding guests snapped away.

At the end of the night, the wedding DJ announced that everybody who had a digital camera had to come to the DJ booth.
At the request of the bride and groom, every wedding guest who'd taken digital photos of the couple was handed a credit card style note requesting that they email the full set of their images to the new husband and wife.

Genius I thought, this way they get to flick through literally hundreds and hundreds of wedding photos, choose their very favorites and get them printed at a tiny fraction of the cost of an official wedding photographer.

So, if you want a traditional wedding photographer for your special day, of course you should in theory get a lot of high quality images to treasure from your wedding day.
But, if your budget doesn't quite stretch to an expensive professional wedding photographer, consider printing up these little cards with information on where your wedding guests can send their digital snaps to !

Happy Wedding Planning !

I went to a large wedding fayre with my (now) wife a couple of years ago.
There must of been 200 stalls crammed into the exhibition centre, more stalls in a marquee, and plenty of wedding cars and even a red double decker bus parked outside.

We were getting married in around a year's time, and we were looking for ideas for our wedding. The perfect solution for engaged couples has to be to head to a wedding fayre, with so many different wedding services together in one place you could wander around speaking with wedding professionals, get handed a few freebies and go home with lots of new contacts and ideas for your perfect wedding day......or so we thought.

Upon queuing up at the entrance we were greeted by a charming magician, showing us a few tricks and handing out his business cards. A magician is a great idea for keeping your wedding guests entertained especially during that gap between your meal and your evening guests arriving for the wedding reception.

Once we finally got to the front of the queue, my fiancee was handed a "goody bag" - I'd describe is as a bag of adverts for wedding services, and then we were asked for £6 each to enter.
This made me stop to think, here we are planning our wedding day, we come to an event to be sold services, and we have to pay to speak to them.
If you go to your local market, do you pay an entrance fee to discuss the price of bananas with the fruit stall holder ? Er......no.

Anyway, in we went, £12 lighter. We were a bit amazed by the variety of wedding services that were on display though. There was everything from dresses to discos, florists to photographers and everything else in between.
Weddings, it seemed, was a massive market, with customers tripped over themselves to spend their hard earned cash.

Our wedding day was pretty much planned, we had the date, we'd booked our wedding venue along with their caterers, we'd booked our wedding DJ and chosen the dress. However, there was still plenty of things we hadn't arranged, so we spent hours speaking with photographers, videographers, wedding florists until we were too tired and out feet ached.

The point I'm making is, why was there so many engaged couples, and often their mum's spending all that money just to get into the wedding fayre in Essex only to be sold more wedding related goods ?

I liked the wedding fayre, I hated the 3 carrier bags of flyers I was given and I left there having booked nothing, and told all the wedding services I'd look at their website and be in touch.

Happy Wedding Planning !

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We all know weddings are a very expensive business.
The average cost of a wedding day in the UK ranges from £15,000 to a mind-blowing, pocket splitting £25,000 - depending on what articles you read.

With the ongoing credit crunch in the UK, we're wondering how big an effect this can have on your wedding day plans.

The best way to avoid any calamities when it comes to paying the final bill for your big day is effective budgetting of your wedding planning.

Never leave yourself open to falling in the trap of trying to make your wedding day a huge celebrity style event, just because you think this is what your wedding guests expect.

Ensure you're fully aware of the costs involved, double check everything you plan and ensure there are no hidden costs.
For example, a wedding venue may say they'll charge you £1,000 for exclusive access to their venue for the day. Another wedding venue 5 miles up the road may ask for £3,000 to hire.
The first thing you must ask is, what am I getting for my money? The first wedding venue may include hire of their rooms only, leaving you to plan meals, seating, drinks, table cloths & cutlery, entertainment etc.
While the second, more expensive wedding venue may include caterers, the wedding DJ, cake stand hire, all the little things that'll soon add up on your wedding day budget.

If someone is charging you a price per head, spend time to consider how many wedding guests you're planning on inviting. A catering bill of £30 per head may sound reasonable when you book it, but if you invite as little as 10 more guests - you've just spent yet another £300 on your wedding day.

It's important to recognise that it's not the amount of cash you spend on your wedding day, it's the way you spend it that counts. And as the credit crunch begins to have an affect on more and more weddings, even if you only have a £1,000 wedding day budget - with careful planning you can certainly still ensure you and your wedding guests have a fantastic day to remember.

Happy wedding planning !