Archive for the ‘Wedding Planning Articles’ Category

Brides to be are being offered a unique way of saving money without scrimping on style as a new website offers plenty of ‘something borrowed’.
With the average cost of a UK wedding now an estimated £21,000 a new business is offering the chance for brides and grooms to lend out and borrow wedding essentials, from top hats to marquees and even wedding dresses.

Founder Lynn Bunniss launched www.theborrowers.co.uk in the wake of the recession in a bid to save money, cut waste and address a throwaway culture. Now she’s urging couples, both wedded and yet-to-wed to make the most of the website.

She said: “Couples can save a fortune by borrowing rather than buying new – too often with weddings, items are bought and used once before being either stored or worse, sent to landfill. Hundreds of thousands of vases, candleholders and table decorations, not to mention bridesmaid dresses, accessories and shoes, as well as “The dress” are sitting in storage gathering dust when they could be rented or lent to others.” The Borrowers website enables lenders to advertise those very items.

Lynn added: “Getting married is one of the most important days in your life but there’s no reason why it should break the bank. You could borrow almost everything you need to host a wedding – from a garden to house the marquee, the marquee itself, tables, chairs, crockery, decorations, even your wedding dress.”

The average couple typically spends £600 on marquee hire, £300 on transport and around £2,000 on wedding outfits, hats, shoes and accessories – all money that could be greatly reduced by borrowing.

“Our ethos is about encouraging people to take a more sustainable, environmentally friendly approach, to allow people to save money and help them use their property responsibly to earn an extra income”, added Lynn.

What to do with your wedding dress after you’ve worn it

Considering you’ve just spent the most money you’re ever likely to spend on a single item of clothing in your entire life, you’re possibly not considering what you’ll do with it after the wedding day. But because it’s a big white wedding dress, it’s reasonable to suggest you may never get to wear it again.

If like the “average bride” you’ve just spent around £1000 on your wedding dress for your big day, it does seem like an awful lot of money to spend on something, then stuff it in the loft. Yet polls suggest that is exactly what 99% of brides have done with their wedding dress after their special day.

Without a doubt there are other alternative ways of dealing with the most important dress of your life after you’ve worn it just the once, so here are a few suggestions, followed by our own poll for you to let you know what you’ve done or intend to do with your wedding dress after your wedding.

Feel good and donate it to a local charity.

There are plenty of charities around that would benefit from the donation of your wedding dress – including our friends at St Francis Hospice in Collier Row who specialise in bridal cast-offs.
However, if you still don’t like the idea of parting with your dress, how about raising funds for a charity by wearing it to the office, or running at a charity event? Breakthrough Breast Cancer organise a “Brides At Work Day” – Google their website for details.

Make it a work of art

You have your wedding photos to remember, but what about that special relationship between you and your wedding dress?
Not so long ago we posted some cracking photographs of brides with the Trash you wedding dress concept, but we are also aware of a Cherish the Dress idea.
The idea is a bride can go be a movie star for the day, and take part in her own full, glamorous professional modelling shoot, but with your wedding dress firmly in the spotlight. Of course this means you will get all the fun of pulling the dress back on, having your make-up done professionally done again, and posing away at a glamorous location.
Either way you’ll end up with some fantastic photographs to remember your dress by, just make sure the photographer is really aware of what you’re trying to achieve.

Make a mini wedding doll of yourself

Some brides would really love to have their dress mounted inside the biggest picture frame and hang it on their living room wall, but perhaps the other half may not be so keen on this idea.
So perhaps a better option is to have a little doll crafted entirely in your wedding day image. There are specialists to be found on the internet who can work with your own materials to create a mini-me replica of you.
Not perhaps the cheapest of ideas, but the doll does act as a permanent reminder of your wedding dress on display.
Of course, the best part of this idea is that you can pass it down to your children to keep as a new family heirloom.

Selling your wedding dress

It may bring a tear to the eye of some, but the prospect of selling on your dress and recouping some of that wedding expense isn’t as bad as it sounds.
The best way to think about it is to consider spending the money you receive on something else special, perhaps a holiday, or something you will keep in your home. By creating either a fantastic memory, or an ever lasting piece of furniture it give you a fond memory for years to come.
Beware though, sites like ebay or other wedding dress selling websites will take a big percentage of the price from you.
And once it’s gone, if you’re not happy with the small return you got on your expensive dress, there is little you can do about it.

Make it wearable again

How about just keeping it? But instead of stuffing it in your loft, dye it another colour, trim the bottom of it, and make it a posh dress you can wear at any posh party you attend. It’ll still be your wedding dress – the dress you got married in, just with a different look and feel.

So, there you go, plenty of ideas what to do with your wedding dress after the wedding, take a moment to vote below on what you’ve done, or are planning to do with your dress after you’ve worn it on your wedding day.

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Fake Wedding Cake

Most couples who are marrying this Summer are looking for little ways to reduce the overall bill of their wedding costs, and we think we may of found a useful little money saving tip for you all – a FAKE WEDDING CAKE.

Strange as it may sound, this idea is becoming more and more popular amongst frugal brides and grooms who are looking to ensure they get value for money, and the concept is a fairly simple one.

The idea is that your cake supplier provides you with a “dummy” cake made from foam. The fake cakes come shaped in a variety of different sizes with multiple tiers as required.

The cake company ices and decorates the cake shaped foam to match your requirements, and the whole thing looks so realistic you would want to eat a slice… except obviously you can’t !

When you’re happy with how your fake wedding cake looks, you simply place it on the table for all your wedding guests to admire and photograph you standing beside it with knife in hand.  A further option could be that the top tier is an actual cake, so at the moment of cutting, the whole thing is even more realistic.

Fake that Cake – then eat a real one

The bakers then make you a nice simple, square cut fruit cake, or sponge or whatever option you’d like – at a fraction of the cost of a full blown wedding cake. And of course, when it’s cut into slices for your wedding guests to share, none of them will ever know the difference.

It’s a good way to save yourself a few pennies, and actually if you kept it a secret, it could be a good fun personal joke between yourselves for many years to come.

Although if you’d prefer the real thing, then we have a large selection of Essex Wedding Cakes suppliers in our main directory, follow that link to take a look, and get in touch with one of them. You never know, perhaps they can also supply you with a fake wedding cake.

It’s been a while since we added some decent videos about wedding dresses, so we thought we spend some time check through YouTube to help you find some nice wedding dress ideas.

Inspiration for your wedding dress can easily come from flicking through magazines or visiting wedding dress shops, but there are plenty of ideas to be found on video searches too.
This clip is a collection of new styles for 2010. Enjoy.

For those of you who have never heard of DJ Mike Porter then you probably aren’t really from Essex at all. Mike is a (now retired) wedding DJ and more well known for his shows on Southend Radio, Essex FM, Time FM and probably more radio shows around Essex that we can’t be bothered to research ourselves at the moment.

Anyway, Mike is now making movies, as well as holding down his day job on Southend Radio, and here is a recent clip from a Channel Five show called My Wedding Day Ruined my Life.

“Absolutely anything can go wrong at a wedding, from the groom getting caught with his pants down, to a bar room brawl, and whatever happens you can guarantee that the trusty wedding DJ will be there to witness it…”

Save the Date ideas

The idea of “Save the Date” cards is a simple yet very effective way of announcing to your future wedding guests that they shouldn’t book any holidays or make arrangements for your wedding date.

Often official invites only get sent out a few months before the wedding day, and with summer weddings, you don’t want to find out your nearest and dearest have booked their two week holiday right on top of your special day.

A good and affordable idea of making a Save the Date stick in someone’s mind is to have personalised fridge magnets printed. This way the recipient will place the magnet in the heart of their home and be reminded of the wedding regularly.

Personalised Fridge Magnets

Search Ebay for sellers that will design and print your personalised Save the Date fridge magnet – give them a few basic details, like your names, and the date of the wedding, and within a week or so they can be delivered to your door.

Save the Date Fridge Magnets

Another unique and fun idea for making your personalised Save the Date fridge magnets comes from beau-coup.com who make custom caricature save the date magnets.

Using their clever system, you just email them a nice photo of the bride and groom to be, and they make the personalised save the date fridge magnets with caricatures of you both. Not only do they look wonderful, your wedding guests will want to save them for years to come.

You get to choose your own background on them to make them look as funky as possible, and add the details you wish to remind your wedding guests about.

So if you’re looking for personalised Save the Date fridge magnets take a look at these and let us know how you get on – we’d love to see the likeness they achieve on your magnets !

No doubt the sensible brides and grooms amongst you have drawn up a wedding budget, and hopefully are managing to plan and organise your wedding comfortably within your set figures.

However, have you ever considered the cost that is faced by your wedding guests for the privileged of attending your wedding ?
A poll conducted by High Street bank Halifax suggests that in order to attend your wedding and it’s full celebrations, it could cost your friends and family an average of £624.10 each.
The poll looked at costs that a typical wedding guest will face and considered wedding gifts, hotel rooms, new outfits and travelling costs.

The bank concluded that wedding reception drinks cost an average of £43.70, wedding gifts ran up to around £100, and celebrating on the Stag or Hen parties costs £92.50, or as much as £258.50 if you were planning a weekend abroad.

The poll also found that 62% of wedding guests think that the bride and groom should consider these costs to the wedding guests before they make any decisions when planning the big day.

Head of Halifax banking Mike Regnier said: “The cost of attending other people’s weddings is often underestimated. It is clear that wedding guests are spending in order to be there for their loved ones.”

It’s a fair comment really, whilst you may of been planning and saving for your wedding for sometime your guests may not of been.
The best advice we can offer is to allow people as much time as possible to put some cash aside. If you’re planning a Hen night or Stag weekend that is going to be expensive, consider setting up a savings account and ask your friends to pay a set amount in there each month, perhaps enough to cover the hotel or the flight.

Whilst the country is experiencing financial upset, don’t make your wedding guests feel bad, or even worse, they may have to turn down some of the celebrations to be able to afford to attend.

Is the Credit Crunch affecting your wedding plans ? Vote in our poll in the right hand column of this article….>

We were chatting to a bride to be on Monday whose wedding in Essex is coming up at the end of May and she was telling us all about her wedding plans.
The excited young lady was laughing at the fact she’d got everything done and her wedding plans were running so smoothly she could relax and enjoy the final month’s preperations without any stress.
Her final booking was made a few weeks ago when the couple booked a harpist to play for their wedding ceremony.
Her wedding DJ was booked, as was the photographer. The dresses were on order and the men’s suits were booked with the hire company.
The wedding flowers had been arranged and the happy couple were just finalising details on how they wanted their table centrepieces to look, and even the wedding favours were all delivered and ready for the wedding guests. Everything was in order and the bride to be looked very happy, excited and pleased to be so organised.

That was until we asked her whether she was having a videographer for the wedding, to which she replied no, and was now nervous that everyone had asked her this and she now regrets not booking one.
The fact was that they had reached their set budget for the wedding and felt a wedding videograher wasn’t a necessatity for them.

It’s true, plenty of the wedding guests will own a camcorder, some of them may even bring it with them, and maybe one of them will record the back of your heads from their seat towards the back of the ceremony – but nothing beats watching a professionally made DVD capturing all the moments of your big day.

The thing is, hiring a videographer at your wedding is something you’ll never regret, during the day you’ll barely notice they are even there. They’ll arrive before you and leave after they’ve captured hundreds of moments from your wedding day that you didn’t even realise happened.

Asking a friend at your wedding to point a camcorder in your direction will never have the same results as a proffesionally produced wedding DVD, and you certainly won’t get the same excitement went sitting down to watch a shaky effort from your mate as you would do from a proper wedding DVD.

Even with today’s IT programs, you may be able to edit the clips at home, add some titles, and a bit of background music, but can you be sure that the end product is something you’ll really want to watch again and again ?

Our recomendation of the day is that should you find you have sufficient budget for your wedding, you’ll certainly never regret hiring a videographer to capture your wedding day and present it to you on a wonderful DVD for you to enjoy for the rest of your life.

For more info on how to get a quality DVD of your wedding day – speak to one of our wedding videographers in Essex.

Writing your own wedding vows

If you’re planning a civil wedding in Essex, then you can also consider writing your own wedding vows for the ceremony.
Having the option to customise your own ceremony needn’t be a scary idea, and can be a lot of fun, and certainly a great deal more personal then the usual formal vows.

Your registrar will give you a few options of the standard wedding vows to choose from, but if you think you’d like to write your own, then that is perfectly acceptable too.
As with any formal ceremony, there are always one or two rules to abide by, but they aren’t really too hard to fit into your personalised wedding vows.
Legally a civil ceremony is not allowed to use certain wording that has any religious references, by this we mean words you may use everyday without even realising, such as Angel, Heaven etc. Should you want background music or ask a friend or relative to make a reading, these aren’t allowed any religious references either, for example Robbie Williams “Angels” would not be allowed.

The personal wedding vows also need to include statutory declarations :
“…Solemnly declare that I know not of any lawful impediment why I, (name), may not be joined in matrimony to (name)”
The other part of the ceremony that needs to remain intact is the usual calling upon those present to witness your vows, other then that the wording is yours to personalise as you want.
Things to look for ideas are poems, special quotes you may of made over the years together, or even famous wedding or marriage quotes made by celebrities.

Personalised Wedding Vows

Other ideas or things to consider when writing your own wedding vows :

• How your life has changed since you met.
• What qualities does your partner have that made you fall in love.
• Talk about special moments since you met.
• What happened the day of the proposal.
• What are you looking forward to in married life.
• What does your partner do to make you smile.
• What dreams in life do you share.

Personalised wedding vows can be the most romantic thing you can ever share, and even if you’re a little nervous about writing the vows or reading them out in front of all your wedding guests, you’ll look back at that moment with very fond memories indeed.
Writing your own wedding vows helps create your own very personal wedding style, with a special touch.

Welcome to March 2009, Spring is in the air, wedding planning season is in full swing and we’d thought we’d kick off this month’s blogging with a couple of excellent wedding photographs.

Now everyone loves to have great photographs from their wedding to treasure for the rest of your happy married lifetime. But have you ever thought of getting the wedding photographer to snap away at a few dysfunctional poses, something a little quirky or different, something that you can look back on and laugh at, a memory takes a moment but lasts forever.

These two photos we’ve found here, must of come from weddings that wanted exactly that, the photographer has captured a moment that they may not of wanted capturing at the time, but heh, this is meant to be the happiest day of your life, so at least look back on it and have a good laugh at what went on !

Preparing for your wedding

Did the bride really want her armpits to be shaved with the photos in the wedding album ? Maybe, maybe not. It’s an excellent wedding photo, and I bet she looks back on this and laughs, however, why is she moving her lips as if her moustache is next to be checked for unsightly hair ?

Can I help you with that piece of cake ?

So the bride had unfortunately dropped something down her wedding dress, let’s hope it’s not the knife used to cut that wonderful looking wedding cake ! What does the groom do to assist his new wife….? Lick her elbow. Most useful thing to do while the wedding photographer is snapping away. But lets face it, another excellent wedding photograph capturing a wonderful moment of a beautiful day.

Make sure you ask your wedding photographer to capture images that are not just family members lined up in a row, but get some quality photos of what really happened during your wedding day.

Happy wedding planning !