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a-HA! I knew there was a wedding thread in here, but with search down I couldn't find it... Anyway, I've been engaged for a grand total of two weeks now, and we're going to have the wedding at Bletchley Park (site of the WWII codebreaking stuff) in Sept-Oct 2009. I've been offered my grandmother's dress from 1949 but I have to wait for measurements and detail photos to see if it's suitable for me. If not, I'll be sewing my own dress, which I'm more than capable of doing.  I've been vaguely skimming wedding forums like indiebride.com (ok and the best I've found, but way to American-focused to be that useful for me), confetti.co.uk (great Q&A section but the forums are chavvy as gently caress), and craftster's wedding forum (where I found some of the most HIDEOUS wedding photos I have ever seen in my life, omfg). Besides the few in the OP, can anyone recommend any other wedding planning/ideas sites, preferably UK based? And if one more person asks me what my colours are, I'm going to twat them one and just say black. All black.
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Jul 4, 2008 11:20
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amethystbliss posted:Awww, congratulations! I think I met you in the fall at a goon meet in London. Weren't you the girl who is also from PA but moved to England? I just got engaged three weeks ago, there must be something in the London air quote:I don't know of any UK sites, but it's probably easier to find a theme you want and pick the location accordingly. quote:We were toying around with the idea of doing a vintage rustic theme (which could potentially work with your 1949 dress), and these sites are really good. quote:And because I've been showing anyone who will look, how awesome are these centerpieces? quote:Such is the hassle of trying to plan the elaborate wedding and deal with all the immigration issues of an American and a Brit. But for us, the transatlantic thing means we're doing the ceremony and reception here (with very close friends and family flying over) and then doing a PA reception a week or so after for everyone else who can't afford to come all that way. But that in itself kinda sucks because now we're limited to North America for our honeymoon, unless we somehow win the lotto and get a round the world ticket and continue flying west... And trying to find venues with any sort of character whatsoever over there is proving difficult.
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Jul 5, 2008 11:14
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amethystbliss posted:I don't know what you're looking for in a honeymoon, but here are a few U.S. places that we considered. We're kinda thinking about going west coast and doing San Francisco and Yosemite and maybe up to Seattle and Vancouver, but that's more dependent on how much money we have (as I'd really love to go to Tokyo if we're going that far already, and RTW tickets are only a couple hundred pounds more). For the most part we've seen all we've wanted to see of the US (especially PA. ugh, I'm so sick of spending all my holiday time and money there) and there's so many places in the world we'd like to see before we get too tied down... Anyway, we've still got a good year to decide. We were talking about rough costs last night though, and our money seems like it's going to be going mostly onto venue and food and his suit (he's always always wanted a bespoke Saville Row suit) and the honeymoon. My dress, whether it's vintage or sewn myself, will be only a couple hundred quid, the flowers and photography and cakes are being done by friends, and we're going the mp3 server route (as every single wedding we've been to with a DJ or band has been embarrassingly horrific. I mean, really horrific. "Unbreak My Heart" and 50 Cent's "Candy Shop" horrific.). We'll have smaller things like train tickets and hotel and stag/hen night costs on top of that, but they're nothing too major. So it looks like we'll be adding up our quotes as we go along and see how they match our savings and how much is left over for honeymoon booking. Right now we're building a guestlist and asking the important question for each person - "We like them, but would we pay £50 to feed them?". Quite a few are getting knocked down to the B List this way... What did everyone do about registries? We've lived together for a while now so we have all the appliances and kitchen stuff we need, but we're undergoing huge renovations over the next 5 years so we don't really want sheets/towels/etc when we have no finished bedrooms/bathrooms/etc to put them in yet. Do people get pissed off with the registry services that let you split up big projects, like "you've just bought us 5 sq feet of a bathroom"? Or likewise, the honeymoon splitting registry stuff?
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Jul 7, 2008 11:04
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This article was perfect timing for us as we just told my fiance's parents last week that we're not having any kids under 10 at the wedding. Mostly because his brother's kids are loving out of control and I don't like being around them for more than 10 minutes, let alone all day at what's supposed to be "our day". So we're going to organise a creche for the under 10s with games, dvds, and pizza or something, either at the venue or a local hotel, and friends who want to use it can. We've yet to tell (horrible parent) brother about this yet, but the (very good parent) sister is delighted as she said she can properly enjoy herself without having to worry about staying sober in case something should happen to them. I'm hoping most of our friends with rugrats have the same attitude! Did anyone else say no kids at their wedding? We want to word it so that it's clear that kids are not accepted, and a creche will be provided (but just saying "a creche will be provided for the under 10s" makes it sound like it's optional to cage them in there). Oh, and we don't have flower girls and ring bearers in the UK so there's no problem with allowing some kids in but not others...
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Jul 9, 2008 11:12
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I think a picnic reception is a fantastic idea. One of our first dates ever was a picnic in Greenwich Park, and ever year we try to go and have a picnic for our "anniversary". But planning anything outside in England is just asking for trouble... 
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Jul 11, 2008 17:56
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Optimus_Rhyme posted:Had anyone had to have ceremonies/receptions in multiple places? Planning the PA one is going to be a big hassle, but at least my mom's there to take care of all the stuff on the ground. It'll also probably help that, beyond the venue itself, I really couldn't give a poo poo about the details. So whatever she wants to do is fine, really (she eloped and so did my brother, so this is her only chance to do wedding stuff).
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Jul 24, 2008 10:48
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ElanoreMcMantis posted:What part of PA? I'm planning my reception in PA (wedding in Vegas) so if you're area is close or closeish I could assist with a few lists and prices at least.  Four years was enough, thanks (or in the case of my fiance, 3 days was enough).There's one place in Lancaster my mom found that looks promising, but I need to run the photos past my fiance first and see if they're free (and how many hotel rooms are free) but we need to get a date sorted for the UK side of things before we can set a PA date. So hopefully that will happen in a few weeks. But if you've got any ideas I'm very happy to hear them because I'm not married to any of the ideas yet (pun intended).
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Jul 24, 2008 16:06
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ElanoreMcMantis posted:If you're looking at Lancaster check out the Historic Strasburg Inn as well as Mulberry Art Studios. I am a bit too far north to use either (too many elderly guests to travel), but I went to a wedding at HSI and it was really quite nice, and Mulberry seemed really cool and the lady I emailed with was very nice. It's hard to tell what the banquet hall is like without seeing it, and you'd think if they're that historic they'd be falling over themselves to show it off... It's nice that the MAS lets you bring your own caterer, though. hmm. thanks!
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Jul 24, 2008 16:42
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HippyJuliet posted:I work in a jewellers WolfensteinBag posted:^^^^ Haha I was actually just talking about that with him earlier! I know way too many people who are all "My fiance..." And there was another proposal on our mooring over the weekend, which now brings the total to three engaged couples (in a total of about 25 people total)! We've got our own little wedding prep support group now, though thankfully our dates are pretty spread out...
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Jul 30, 2008 11:30
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HippyJuliet posted:No problem. I work for F.Hinds, a family jewellers with over 100 branches. Website is https://www.fhinds.co.uk. Also, we're very excited because, after visiting venue this weekend and meeting with the fantasic wedding coordinator there.... we have a date! 19 Sept 2009! Or rather, 19.09.09 (or 09/19/09 for the Americans). That's got to be a lucky date! The venue and services there are exactly what we wanted and they were so flexible and easygoing about everything, not pushing us into any expensive add-ons or anything. But I still choked at the total once you add everything up and add on VAT. My god, it's a good thing we've got a year to save, because it's going to be a very tight year in order to put enough aside. And luckily everything else should be only a few hundred quid (I'm sewing my dress and the bridesmaids', our friends bake, photograph, and do flowers, and his suit will be fairly cheap). But talking to friends who've had weddings recently, it sounds like we're getting a pretty drat good deal for our numbers and venue support, so I suppose that makes us feel a little better... I feel like we should do something for our -1 anniversary, though.
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Aug 4, 2008 14:14
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midori-a-gogo posted:Anyone know where I can find nice wedding dress patterns? I've been looking around but nothing seems right; it's all too poofy or slinky. I'm just a plain-jane kind of girl with 60s sensibilities and not too much money to spend. Burda Simplicity Vogue McCalls Butterick (or even BurdaStyle, which are mostly free) ...and remember it's worth looking in the regular dress sections as well as the vintage reproductions on those sites and not just the "formal" ranges. If you're into vintage stuff, there's also Folkwear, Vintage Pattern Lending Library, EvaDress, Decades of Style, and a thousand independent vintage pattern resellers like Lanetz Living for ideas (though OOP patterns will likely be in limited sizes. Don't buy anything too far off your own measurements unless you really hate your dressmaker/yourself). (We've also got a Sewing and DIY Fashion Megathread here on SA that might help you?) squirrellypoo fucked around with this message at 15:02 on Aug 5, 2008 |
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Aug 5, 2008 14:59
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Oh. MY. GOD. It's just been pointed out to me that the day we've chosen for our wedding (19 Sept 09) is also International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Our anniversary for the rest of our lives will be on pirate day. I'm so, so chuffed with this. And in terms of invitations, our friends had everyone RSVP via an online form that linked to a Google Docs spreadsheet (which is stupidly easy to set up), so stuff like how many attending, dinner choices, hotel needed, and music requests were all handled on that without the need to hassle with stamps and such. If nearly everyone in your life is online (hell, even my grandparents check their email every day) then it might be another option.
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Aug 8, 2008 10:36
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And now we've got our Pennsylvania reception venue! That's a big load off... We liked the look of the Lancaster Arts Hotel from their site, but my mom stopped in there last weekend to speak with their events manager and that just decided it for us. The building itself is amazing - an old converted tobacco warehouse and we'll have the dining room for 50 plus a huge terrace, and it's only $200 to rent. The restaurant there will be doing the food (also very reasonable!), and their whole philosophy is to only serve organic, local, and in season food. So we won't know what's actually on the menu until the day before, but my parents are going to "snoop eat" there in September this year to get an idea of what we might have next year. I'm really, really jealous! Anyway, we went through so many ideas for venues that I'm really relieved to have found something again that's so us, and that it's really reasonably priced is just a bonus.
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Aug 12, 2008 16:20
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My grandmother's wedding gown (from 1949) arrived on Friday. The measurements and style aren't suitable for me, though, so I'll be refashioning it in a few months (once our building work is complete). In the meantime, though, I've posted pretty detail photos on my website if anyone is interested in vintage gowns...
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Aug 19, 2008 14:35
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CalamityKate posted:That's really pretty! She did a great job preserving it, the fabric still looks like it's in great shape. The netting from the veil deteriorated really badly, but she included that anyway so I could see how it attached to the tiara. In the same box as the dress, she also had her silk seamed stockings (brown, not white, or I'd wear those, too!), a handkerchief her mother hand-tatted, my gradfather's bow tie, and a receipt for his tux rental in 1949 - $5! The bowtie I left for my male cousins, and I wanted my niece to have the handkerchief, but the rest is mine. The dress has a TON of fabric, though, so I'll more than likely have plenty of scraps leftover to make keepsakes for the other relatives (probably post-wedding). I also have my other grandmother's wedding and engagement rings, and miraculously they actually fit me perfectly, but the style isn't exactly to me liking so I'm still not sure how I'll be able to incorporate those... quote:I'm bummed that the dress my grandma, aunt and mom wore for their weddings won't work for me or any of my cousins (they were TINY), but my mom suggested that we use the fabric to make picture frames for each of the granddaughters for their weddings.
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Aug 19, 2008 16:18
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LittleCat posted:Invitations - my fiancé and I are both web savvy, so we've set up a wedding website that's got an RSVP system and will have directions and registry info. Since we're doing that, I'd really like to skip the RSVP card with the invites and just let people know to go to the site for RSVPing and more info and such. We'll have a phone number on the invitation for people to call if they're uncomfortable using the website, too. Does that seem like it should be enough, or will I really be making people's lives more difficult? I guess it depends how internet savvy the peopple you're inviting are, though. I mean, even my grandparents and all his older relatives have email addresses, so saving everyone the hassle of going down to the post office (and international stamp confusion!) is a big plus for everyone all around. That, and we can update the website information even after people reply (and lose the printed invite, etc etc).
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Sep 9, 2008 22:54
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innocent_deadly posted:Something I haven't seen discussed so much in the thread is the actual wedding dress. I'm also making the two bridesmaids gowns, but we haven't settled on a pattern yet. My sewing room is being demolished and rebuilt this fall, though, so I'm waiting til all the building works are done to start hoarding the expensive fabrics. innocent_deadly posted:My fiance is a goon too. Did they introduce you all to the forums or was it the other way around?
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Sep 10, 2008 10:32
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Woop, first hurdle cleared - I've just booked the registrar. I could only book a year in advance so I rang up at 9am today, only to find the answerphone contradicted the lady's instructions and their offices actually open at 9:30. So I rang back exactly at 9:30, left my message (they only operate on a callback basis), and just spoke to the registrar now. And would you believe some other bitch in Milton Keynes got in there first? GAH. So we were only left with the ceremony choices of 12:30 or 3:30. I went for the former, even though I was ideally going to shoot for 2pm. But so be it. As long as bridezilla bitch doesn't book up all the hotels and hair and makeup peeps in town, too, I'll be fine. So now we have to give notice at our local council's registry office within the next month, and they'll contact Milton Keynes with our info and the booking will be in stone. Luckily, I also have to go into our council's offices to get my UK nationality paperwork document checked so I can kill two birds with one stone... Really, this is with one year to go. People are stupidly organised about these sort of things.
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Sep 19, 2008 14:10
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Surely some of those guests are couples, though, so they'd only be getting you one gift, I'd expect. And if someone joins the registry late and all the $40 gifts are taken, they make be more likely to buy you something off list rather than trump up for a $60 or $80 gift. So I wouldn't get too upset if you don't get everything on your list, I think.
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Oct 6, 2008 15:15
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Gravitee, I love your dress! It's such a beautiful change from the ubiquitous strapless mono-boob necklines. It looks like you had a blast, too.
squirrellypoo fucked around with this message at 10:37 on Oct 10, 2008 |
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Oct 10, 2008 10:27
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Tatiana posted:I'm so in love with my ring, I didn't think I would be so fixated on how awesome it is, but here I am posting pictures on the internet. That's absolutely gorgeous! I really love it, from the colour to the details on the band. You have great taste! And thanks for the tip on Palladium - we're researching wedding bands and neither of us want gold but the other silvery metals seem to have downsides, either in cost or maintenance... quote:but we are throwing a party, in the country my family lives in but I don't. Planning is a bit of a nightmare, and my mother is going crazy picking out doilies, And last week we made the trek down to our council's offices to officially give notice. One of the questions the registrar asked is if we were related by blood. Of course we said no, but then my fiance asked "wait - has anyone ever said yes??" The registrar was awesome, and said in her two years of the job, four couples answered yes. She said three were Roma, which was understandable as it was a cultural thing, but the other one were white and English and otherwise looked like normal people. She was all "Seriously, get out more, I mean, it's a BIG city!". In any case, now everybody has like ten days left to object to our proposed union before we pick up the paperwork (and hand carry it to Milton Keynes at some point in the next year!).
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Oct 20, 2008 10:56
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Farewell Horizon posted:Wow - Saturday I attended the most cliche wedding you could ever imagine. Holy moly. SO I got drunk. I feel bad because it was what the bride had always dreamed of, but drat.
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Oct 20, 2008 16:56
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deltat posted:She has already stated to me "if you get me a diamond, I will not marry you" and "don't spend more then $100 on a ring". Frankly, I'm going to suggest you do what we did - we were in Dublin on holiday and, without telling anyone, we went ring shopping over the course of several days. It gave me time to see what was available, what jumped out at me, and no pressure to buy right then and there. My fiance kept saying "you're going to wear this for the rest of your life, so make sure you love it". You might pick a ring she likes because it's connected with you, but she'll find one that's truly HER if you give her a chance. And I always said I wanted to be surprised, so he kept the ring when we came home and waited for the right time to actually do the proposal. It was still VERY much a surprise (4 months later and in a restaurant, believe me!) and he knew I'd love the ring and that it'd fit. We told no one about our shopping until the proposal, so it didn't take any of the excitement away or anything, either. And if you want suggestions of ring shops in Dublin, PM me. (maybe I'm alone here, but those claddagh rings always scream "tacky tourist souvenir" to me...) squirrellypoo fucked around with this message at 10:32 on Oct 23, 2008 |
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Oct 23, 2008 10:29
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Gravitee posted:A. If you are female and engaged/married - did you pick out your ring? If not, do you like what your SO picked out for you? Would you have preferred something else? Did you discuss at all what your likes/dislikes were beforehand? That was February. In June he finally made his surprise proposal. And he was very upfront on letting me pick whatever design I wanted - his thoughts were, you've got to wear it for the rest of your life so you'd better REALLY like it. And it was also a safe bet that I wasn't going to go all blingalicious anyway with my tastes...
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Nov 28, 2008 09:50
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Papercut posted:We were together for a little over 4 years before I proposed, a little over 1 year living together. Our wedding's not til September, but I've quite suddenly come down with some really serious health problems that mean I'll just be happy to BE THERE on Sept 19. Really, gently caress losing weight, gently caress the dress, gently caress the hair, gently caress the table decorations. If I'm able to stand and maybe do the first dance, I'll be ecstatic. We're going to carry on with the reservation until we know otherwise (since it means losing a ton of money), but I'm going to ask a friend of ours (who just got married in August and is super organised) to act as my wedding planner over the next few months as I can't deal with all the planning on top of the hospital visits, medication, and treatments. But I'm enjoying still following this thread as it fulfils my need for frivolous fluff right now.
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Jan 13, 2009 12:10
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Gravitee posted:Kissing bowl $10
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Jan 16, 2009 11:40
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Gravitee posted:We didn't want people to clink glasses all through dinner, so we used a kissing bowl. If you wanted us to kiss you had to make a donation and put it in a glass bowl we had on the head table. We ended up raising $75 and donated it to charity. It worked too - clinking was kept to a minimum and we were able to raise money and not look like greedy bastards. (e.g. Dollar Dance)
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Jan 16, 2009 18:46
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CagedLiberty posted:Is anyone at the stage where they can't really do anything for a while? I've booked my photographer, church, and reception, but my wedding isn't until April 2010 and it's too early to start thinking about anything else (like centerpieces etc). I'm thinking once my exams are over in May I can start planning more. Speaking of, when is the latest we can acceptably send out invitations? Everyone who's coming from overseas already knows the date, it's just a formality... Our wedding will (hopefully still) be 19 Sept 2009. squirrellypoo fucked around with this message at 12:08 on Jan 28, 2009 |
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Jan 28, 2009 12:05
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My bridesmaids finally decided on their dress design! The only parameters I gave them were that it had to be a knit dress (no way am I undergoing extensive fittings for them on top of my dress!), and they had to choose the same pattern. Luckily, both of them have similar body types so picking a pattern that suited them both was relatively easy!  It's from Burda WOF magazine 09/08 #132, the Gant Exclusive Design dress... There's more talk about it on my sewing site if anyone fancies hearing more. PS: Could someone, anyone please tell me what the last acceptable posting date for wedding invites is? I think my question got lost on the previous page.
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Jan 30, 2009 17:22
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amethystbliss posted:To sum everything up, I'm from America and he's from England and visa requirements are quite strict.  The Metro photo is fabulous, and I can't wait to see more of your dress.(I became a British citizen on Tuesday, fyi!)
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Mar 6, 2009 15:29
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LittleCat posted:I had a scare about my health in January, and I was so stressed that I'd be unwell for the wedding... it's frustrating to know that you can put thousands into a wedding and have it come apart due to something totally out of your control. It kinda puts all the "omg my colours are slightly off on these napkins my day is ruined!!" bullshit into perspective for me. I've had to stop reading wedding blogs as I just want to loving slap them all on a regular basis and it's stressing me out. Thank god you're all sane in here.
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Mar 12, 2009 12:11
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GoreJess posted:Okay, can someone give me some insight into the tuxedo vs. suit debate? Are tuxes really necessary? Will it look really strange if my fiance & his groomsmen aren't wearing identical black suits? Oh, and notmartha's wedding blog had some great advice about wedding suit vs tux shopping recently. Edit: and lawdy, the smitten kitchen blog has some awesome tips on making giant celebration cakes and freezing layers and stuff, too, if any of you are doing your own cake... squirrellypoo fucked around with this message at 16:37 on Mar 17, 2009 |
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Mar 17, 2009 15:00
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amethystbliss posted:Thanks! He's based in London and is willing to fly worldwide for weddings. His website is https://www.davidmmcneil.com. We thought he'd be super expensive, but he only charged us 500 pounds (~$750) for the entire thing! That included his flight costs from London to Barcelona, his hotel costs, 100 processed images and a DVD with printable rights to all of the pictures. Edit: whoa, his website is quoting a grand, minimum, for wedding photos, though!! And in other news, my bridesmaids picked the fabric for their dresses on Saturday (the idea of "colours" and "themes" really rubs me the wrong way so I'm making their dresses to the same pattern, and letting them choose the colours they want). I posted it before, but the dress pattern is from Burda magazine: My friend Gez fell in love with this silver silk jersey (which we bought the last of, bwahaha), choosing peach silk charmeuse (satin) for her dress's "cummerbund":  And Pip immediately went for the deep plum silk jersey, with silk charmeuse to match (the lucky cow even found perfectly matching shoes at Westfield afterwards!!).  So that was much easier than I thought! The funny thing is, they both chose the colours they happened to be wearing that day, too.
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Mar 23, 2009 15:13
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Neris posted:This is really pretty, I'm sure it's going to look awesome! Are you making the dresses yourself? I know you have quite a way with a sewing machine... All this talk of name changes makes me curious - do women still really change their surnames in the States? In the UK, the majority of women keep their maiden (ha!) name, or if they're really posh, double-barrel it. Of all my friends that have gotten married in the past few years, I can only think of one that took her husband's name.
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Mar 24, 2009 11:59
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Iggles posted:Er, really? I'm British and don't know anybody who's kept her own surname. Do you have any statistics for this or are you just going by your friends? None of them have taken double-barreled names either. Maybe it's a London thing?
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Mar 26, 2009 12:31
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Nione posted:How did you do the RSVP on the website? Was it a webpage through a site specializing in wedding pages or did you do your own hosting? Did people have to log on to RSVP or did they just leave a guestbook message saying yes or no or did you have a form or something? 1. Go to Google Docs. 2. Choose New > Form 3. Fill in your questions and answers (click the big "Add a question" button to make more questions) 4. When you're done, hit Save 5. Choose More actions > Embed, and copy/paste that into whatever wedding site or blog you've already got set up. 6. You then see all the responses in spreadsheet format in Google Docs, and you can share it with your partner, or Mother in Law, or whomever else you want and you can all edit it (or not, if you choose that) It's really, really easy.
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Apr 8, 2009 12:01
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We just had to face facts this week and recognise that there's no physical way for us to be married on 19 September 2009 if I'm only getting out of hospital from my bone marrow transplant in mid-July (they keep pushing back the date on me, grrrrr) and not even able to go out in public in September. So we need to ring the venue and plead with them to allow us to change the date to Sept 2010 and hope they'll take compassionate pity on us and not make us forfeit the £2,000 deposit. So now "our day" will no longer be "our day". It'll just pass like any other day now and be someone else's day. I'm thoroughly depressed at wedding stuff right now even though the brain says there's lots of good reasons and upsides to postponing it for another year, but that's not much consolation right now.
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Apr 16, 2009 12:50
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