Suit hire should have just got a little easier. It seems that there is a Moss Bros in Hull now (at the top of House of Fraiser) so everyone who needs a suit now has one. Should make everyone match a little easier.
There is also a Moss just behind the hotel to make it even easier to drop them off.
We had a picture sent to us from the Hotel in an email showing the room we’ve booked for the wedding all decked out for a ceremony and it looked really nice. It was pink, with white chair covers. Anyway, I’ve now been thinking colours, everywhere I look I’ve been thinking ‘colours’ hehe. While I was doing some web designing I found a deep purple/pink/red that I like using one of my colour designer programs, but it’s so hard to decide. Graham also showed me a very beautiful deep purple colour that he found on a dress, which would also look nice. I am also wondering ’should I go 2 tone’? For example deep purple, with a matching lighter colour.
It’s hard to decide but I want the wedding pictures to look fab (doesn’t everyone in a wedding? lol), which means getting the colour just right.
Answers on a postcard…….
Forgotten to say we have finally started spending our money.
The venue now has a £750 deposit down on it and the council has 25 of our earth pounds to save the date.
Our letter said that they arrange all the details 10 weeks beforehand but I think that we (or should I say Amy) will be arranging things well before then.
Graham
So now we’ve nearly got an initial booking for a venue. Graham has been exchanging emails with the hotel and we’ve got some dates to choose from. The next step is wedding insurance from the looks of it. Now this cost as much 28 or 78 quid, dependent on the value of the wedding. We have a more modest budget then your average wedding, you’re average weding being being around 15k it seems…hehe we’ve decided to not be that extravagant. We were looking at various insurers on a web based money saving guide Graham uses, and looked at Greenbee and Confetti. Now something strange was going on there. They both have exactly the same form to fill in when buying it online!! Why is that I wondered? They’re both underwritten by the same company from what I can tell, yet charge different prices!! Lol
Our venue search up to now has been the following cycle
Nearly without exception.
The only place that seems to be the exception to this is the first place on our list. The Solent Hotel where we got engaged in the first place.
This hotel’s prices work on the ‘All Inclusive’ model that some people like and some hate. I really like the idea of letting someone else do all the hard work but I think that Amy would like a bit more of a hands on role. The compromise will probably come in the centrepieces.
Solent has a price per head of somewhere between £80 and £100 for the wedding breakfast, food, bar drinks, wine at the meal, toastmaster, etc. Impressivly they have no room hire charges (for the breakfast, there is still one for the cerimony), which I think makes up for the expensive price per head (that an an hour of free bar and ‘free flowing’ £28 a bottle wine included in the price). However the important thing is that they actually have a range of rooms to put people in.
Many other hotels seem to have a wedding area. This area fits 200 people in and they want as close to that many people turning up, paying and staying. We aren’t anywhere near this number. This hotel has a room that fits 100-200 people, however it also has an area for 60-100 and 20-40 people. We’re very close to 40, but not nearly close enough for 60.
What has really empressed us though is what they are doing for us in the evening.
Average age at our wedding will be nowhere near the 30 mark. Hiring a disco would end up being a £2-3000 first dance photograph and nothing else. We don’t even fancy it ourselves very much. We’re more social people than dancers.
Solent have offered us an area of the bar that we can have to ourselves for the evening (no hire charges), we can put a few quid behind the bar for people to get a drink and people can also buy their own if they have really had a bad evening (maybe if they have kicked themselves in the face and given themselves a black eye… just me then). Despite it not being an evening do, they have even said we could order some buffet food, maybe a few plates of sandwiches, but just something to be there while we all have a natter. We don’t want people to come 250 miles for a few hours and then be sent straight back home again, so this really has worked out for us.
And to top it all off they are offering 20% off Friday weddings for next year*. Great stuff
* For anyone who hasn’t planned a wedding recently here is how days work out
** OK, so I even know some people who got married on these days, but you get my point. We even thought of doing it this way as 90% of our guests would either have as little problem with a summer holiday weekday as a Saturday or would need to book holiday for a Saturday as well as a weekday. Pretty much only Ian, Amy and I who do a normal Mon-Fri doing summer.
I think I am may become the queen of bargain hunting (or soon will anyway…).
I’ve made progress on wedding cake ideas. Most places charge hideous prices for custom flavoured layers and custom design weddings cakes that cost 300-1000 quid. Well that seems extreme for a cake lol. Recently Graham’s sister Karen gave us advice to spend money on the things we will remember most, and a magazine I also read included a quote from someone saying ‘think about the cost per minute’. In other words think about how much things cost in relation to how much time will be spent on the thing that day. A cake is good for photographs and (hopefully!) is very yummy when eaten, but generally will not gather a lot of the days attention. I found M&S do some gorgeous cakes which we then can add decorations to, but I’ve also checked out waitrose’s food service too. Graham and I have so far come to the conclusion that Waitrose offers us the sort of thing we are after and at a more stomachable (excuse the pun!) cost, which will let us spend more money on the important things…like ensuring everybody there has a cracking good day and things like the photography is fabulous.
One thing I am doing is I’m making a scrap book for the wedding magazine ideas that I really like and want to look into implementing. Magazines have some really good ideas that I’d like to centrally put somewhere so I remember them in future, so I’ve bought a large thick notebook and I’m going to turn it into a scrapbook of magazine cut outs. Should do the trick.
So – all the parents got together last weekend at Cardiff and all went well, other people you read about who are planning their own weddings say about parents not getting on and all that, and all those comments made me stress but I shouldn’t have stressed out about it really!!
Had look at the Royal Horticultural Society flower show which was really nice – I got some herbs…anyway back on topic I was looking to see if I could find inspiration for wedding flowers but I didn’t spot much. I wonder if this is because of my rather big lack of imagination on the flower arranging side of things. I’ve got no clue what I really like and what I don’t. I look at magazines and think, that’s alright, that’s alright, but don’t really have ANY strong feelings about flowers. Is there something wrong with me lol? I think the magazines will have to help me on that front.
Whilst away at the weekend, my dad had a fantastic idea about doing some fancy thorntons-like chocs, bought in bulk for the favours (which would be then contained in a paper wrapper with the box) rather than just regular chocs in fancy foil (which, after checking prices seem to be priced at the same sort of cost in bulk). Say the word ‘wedding’ and even the cheapest thing becomes ‘fancy’ and about 3 times the price, which is what happens with a lot of these websites selling regular chocolate hearts in foil wraps. What a con.
Found another venue to add to the list of possibilities. I’m have slight trouble finding venue options at the moment really. We’re looking at about 40 guests for the wedding – and the sorts of places that are really nice but moderately priced in terms of the venue and cost per person are wanting minumums of 60 or 90 people. Boooooo!!
A week and a half ago Graham and I visited a wedding fair which was exciting stuff. SOOOOOO many adverts came our way lol. We also got some little freebies while we were there – like food samples and fancy toiletries which was nice. It was at the Botleigh Grange hotel which is VERY pretty. The outside has a lovely paved area with seating and then a huge grassy area with steps leading down to a large pond. It’s very picturesque. Graham and I have put it on our venue list and while it would make for great wedding photos – it wasn’t such a great deal with the kids that will be attending the wedding or with the drinks for the adults, so while it’s a possible venue, I’m not sure so far that it’ll win on the venue front.
Very good wedding fair though it has to be said – they had a bag-piper at the gates AND a horse and carriage that was giving rides (we didn’t go on one cos it was busy though). Inside there were loads of stalls with loads of ideas and now we have ideas for the sort of photography we’d like to have which is good. While we’re probably not looking to get things like ‘a formal toastmaster’ it’s great to see the options. We also found a couple of custom ring makers too…but we’ll see where that goes.