My Vintage Wedding: The Budget

Today's post is all about how we approached the budget to our wedding, following on from my posts about our outfits, and all of the wedding details.  When you read in magazines or on blogs how much someone spent on their wedding, that figure is pretty meaningless unless you know what the money actually bought.  You need to know how many people attended, how much food and drink they were supplied with, whether it was held in a Chateau or on board a private yacht, or in their parents' back garden.



I did get a little annoyed at reading things like "I did my wedding for £1,000!" and then finding out they invited only 10 people and made them all buy their own meals.  There's nothing wrong with that - you can do whatever you like - but it's just that headlines like that can be a bit misleading unless you read all of the small print and can lead to unrealistic expectations.  When you say 'wedding', people immediately conjure up images of horse-drawn carriages, fairytale dresses and a party on a Gatsby-scale.  A generation or two ago it would have been getting hitched in your Sunday best and heading to the local pub for a bit of cake and a few drinks.

So, just to clarify.  We didn't have horse-drawn carriages, wear couture, have a Michelin star chef do our food or get married in a mansion with 2,000 gardenias floating in the pool.  We did have a jolly good time though, and all for at least 75% less than the average wedding these days.  Read on to find where we splurged and where we saved...

My Vintage Wedding: The Details

Following on from my recent post about our wedding outfits, I thought today I'd delve into the rest of the details of my vintage wedding, which took place in Wales in September last year (2015).  I will share all of the information on the venues, suppliers and so forth, but I'm not going into the DIY bits and where we saved money in this one - look out for another installment on 'the budget' if that's what you're interested in.  If it's the outfits that really interest you, then please see the previous post here.  Read on to find out whether I turned into a Bridezilla, or kept my sanity!

The Background
Chris and I met back in 2007, when a dear friend played cupid.  We bought a house and moved in together in 2013, and Chris proposed on holiday the following year.  He was adamant that the wedding should be a year exactly from that day - so, the date was set, and as soon as we returned from holiday we booked the venues.

My Vintage Wedding: The Outfits

Sharing all the details of my wedding could easily turn into death-by-photos, so I'm going to gently share a few posts over the next few weeks.  Today I want to share details of what we wore, with my description in the style of wedding announcements from old newspapers.

The bride was angelically elegant in a floor-sweeping halterneck bias cut gown of ivory silk.  A heavily embellished band of beads, sequins and rhinestones edged the neckline and crossed under the bust, dropping down to encircle the back of the waist.  A headband of radiant stars adorned the cascading waves of the bride's hair, and a fingertip ivory veil of sheerest tulle completed the heavenly ensemble.  The bride held a large 'Glamelia' bouquet trimmed with silver ribbon.  Bridesmaids were bold and leggy in cobalt blue lace, wearing silver hairbands and shoes to complement the silver beading of the bride's gown.  Each of the five young ladies held a smaller version of a Glamelia bouquet with trailing ribbons in ivory and silver.  The two flowergirls were sweetly pretty in navy lace, and held small bouquets of ivory ostrich feathers.  The Groom was especially dapper,  wearing a two piece black suit with waistcoat, and sporting a daring Kentucky tie in black.

Win A Singer Sewing Machine!

This is a super competition with a real vintage element that I am sure you will all appreciate. Do you have any family photos of couples married in the 1930s-1950s period?  If so, you could be in with a chance of winning a Singer sewing machine among other fantastic prizes in this competition hosted by author Kate Thompson, over at her Facebook page here.  A little while ago I reviewed her book, 'Secrets of the Singer Girls', set in a sewing factory in London's East End during WWII.  Kate is currently researching a follow-up book in the same era, and wants to see as many vintage wedding photos as possible!

Photo credit: Walter on Flickr (Creative Commons)

The Bride Returns!

I wasn't quite sure how to hail my return to this blog after my little absence for wedding and honeymoon, but I figured you'd just like to see more pictures, wouldn't you?

These are just a few snaps from family and friends, to tide you over until I get the professional pictures back.  I also want to tell you all about the planning and how the day went, but that will probably take a few posts, I couldn't cram it all into one!  We honeymooned in Andalucia so I will post about that too.

Wedded Bliss

The Beginners Guide to Vintage Wedding Dresses

Buying a wedding dress can be a daunting prospect. and I can understand why people might just go to one of the many bridal boutiques or high street bridal retailers to make it a bit of an easier process.  However, the range of styles in these shops can be rather limited as they are dictated by current trends, and you're not necessarily getting the best value for money.

Vintage wedding dress exhibition at Bath Assembly Rooms

It was my intention to buy a vintage wedding dress, and even though that's not what happened in the end (I bought a vintage style one), I did a lot of research, so you might as well benefit from what I've learnt!  This post is aimed at beginners - those who probably don't know that much about vintage in general.  If any of you are vintage experts then please feel free to add some more tips in the comments section, I'm sure they'd be very much appreciated.  Read on for my tips.

Clevedon Hall Wedding & Events Venue

There couldn't have been more perfect timing for my visit to Clevedon Hall, a Victorian mansion originally built for a sugar baron that has undergone a £3 million refurbishment and is now a rather exclusive venue for weddings, private functions and corporate events.  On my birthday weekend I was invited to experience an overnight stay and evening meal by an award-winning chef.  Clevedon is in Somerset on the coast, and is a little over an hour from where we are in South Wales.  It would have been rude to say no!

Penarth Pier: Unusual Vintage Wedding Venue

Do you dream in Art Deco?  If you're like me and are not really the castle type, then an Art Deco pavilion and pier might be more your style.  I have put so much work into researching venues that I think I should share it with you all, so that it may help another bride-to-be in her quest.  Even if you’re not getting married, there are some spectacular settings that are worth a visit!  One of those is the wonderful and unusual Penarth Pier.  Penarth is a Victorian seaside town here in South Wales, just outside Cardiff, and its beautiful pier has been a favourite spot of mine over the years.  Thanks to a £4.2 million renovation project, the pavilion has reopened and is now available to hire for events, as well as housing a cinema, cafe and gallery space open to all.

7 Things You Can DIY For Your Wedding

I have to admit as a bride to-be that I don't read many wedding magazines.  I find a lot of their 'advice' to be really unhelpful, and full of rules about what you can and can't do.  I recently came across an article of 7 Wedding Details Not to DIY and I was so infuriated that I had to write a rebuttal.  So read on, for 7 Wedding Details You Can Absolutely DIY For Your Wedding (but only if you want to).

Vintage Inspired Wedding Dresses on a Budget: 1940s

I have to confess that the 1940s proved to be a difficult decade to find vintage-inspired bridal looks from.  I was almost ready to admit defeat, when I came across a couple of truly fabulous options, and sighed in relief that there are actually some dresses within a reasonable budget!  Once again, all of these finds are under £300 - well, under £200 this time as they seem to have come in cheaper than the 1930s. (see my post here for 1930s bridal inspiration).

A glimpse of the gorgeousness to come...

The 1940s were a time when generally people continued to get married in their Sunday best - either a suit or a simple dress - unless they were affluent enough to afford the Hollywood silk gown that we all picture.  Gowns had changed a bit from the mid 1930s; though they may still be in silk-satin, but they weren't quite so slinky in silhouette, the necklines had perhaps changed to a sweetheart, and there may be some shoulder-pads added.  I've tried to show 'gowns' as well as dresses here, but haven't found any suit options.

Addendum: My mother, after reading this blog post, would like to add that even if you could afford it, a proper wedding gown was very, very hard to track down in the 1940s!  In our own family, a lady managed to get hold of one (black market?!) and a few months after she wore it she passed it on to another family member to wear too.  You can read more about real weddings in Britain on the Imperial War Museum website here, who are currently doing an exhibition of 'Fashion on the Ration'.

My Rockin' Wedding Plans: 7 Months To Go

I've bought a dress, booked a band, and literally have a shed full of prosecco.  What more do you really need for a wedding?!

I'm not going to go into too much detail of my plans on this blog in advance of the wedding, because friends and family do read it and I would like to maintain some degree of surprise for them.  I do intend to do a thorough report after the day though of everything we did, including costs, because one thing that I found frustrating from reading 'real bride budgets' was that they were very vague, omitting crucial details such as number of guests!  It would sound wonderful that they'd done a lavish wedding for £1,000 and then you'd find out that they only had 10 guests.

Here's a quick run through of where we've got to with the planning, and I've tried to state what I'm doing and what the groom is doing, because we're very much doing this together.

Venues
Ceremony and reception venues are booked.  I've also booked my hotel for the night before the wedding, which is 5 minutes away from the ceremony venue (just in case - best to be close I thought, in case there are any transport dramas!).  We are very lucky in that the registry office is located in a wonderfully grand building, which you might not believe is cheaper than getting married in the function room of some hotel!  Yes, you read that correctly.  Before that, the registry office used to be located in a mediocre brick building that's now a Subway.

For the reception we have hired a Grade II listed church hall.  It's small enough to feel intimate but large enough to pack in a lot of people, and comes complete with a stage, so it will be perfect for the musical entertainment we have planned.

Bride and groom's outfits

I've got a dress, he's got a suit.  I don't have any shoes yet, or accessories, but I'm working on that, and I will need to get the dress hemmed as it's super long, even on my tall frame.  Yes, it's LONG!  Ha!  How many of you thought that I would go for a '50s tea length one?  I will be doing my own hair and makeup, so I will need to set time aside to practice over the upcoming months.

Photographer

We are very, very excited about our photographer.  It's sort of a secret for now, but I will tell you more in a separate post!.

Guests

We've made an epic list, but haven't set the invites out yet.  We didn't do a big announcement, it's not on social media, and we didn't do that American thing of having an "engagement shoot".  I told all of my friends individually so that they could get the date in their diaries, but I don't think that my husband-to-be has done that (so if any of his friends are reading this now - surprise!  We're getting married!!).  My husband-to-be is in full charge of the invitations, he has some creative plans, so I might help out with the wording and check he's got the date and time on it, but other than that will leave him to it.  I've started one of those wedding websites too so that we can direct guests to that for all the travel and accommodation details.

Catering

Our church hall reception has no kitchen facilities, so we will have to get outside caterers in (tips for South Wales caterers gladly accepted!).  We'll be putting on a bar ourselves though, so will be obtaining a licence, stocking it ourselves, hiring glasses and bar staff (another area the groom-to-be is in charge of).  There is a LOT to think about when you're arranging all of this yourselves rather than have a venue take care of it for you, but we wanted to make the bar affordable for both ourselves and our guests.  Weddings are expensive enough for people to attend, without having to pay hotel prices at the bar.

Entertainment

The groom is a musician, so we have a large circle of musician friends, and this is another area that he is completely in charge of.  He's booked a band, is trying to get a DJ, and no doubt there will be other contributors to the entertainment, including the groom himself of course!

Wedding Cake

We were going to make a cake ourselves, because if you've ever made a Christmas cake, it's really not that hard to do a basic fruit cake and wack some white icing on it.  But then one of my sisters kindly offered to get us a cake as a wedding present, as her neighbour apparently makes to-die-for cakes, so we decided to take her up on it.

Bridesmaids

Because we have large families, I am having 5 bridesmaids and 2 flower girls on the day.  I know this must seem excessive, but we both have nieces that we want to be part of the day so we could never have chosen between them.  The bridesmaid dresses have been purchased, and they're all on the hunt for accessories.  I'll wait a while to get the flowergirl dresses as they are both small children and will probably grow taller over the next few months.

Flowers

I've asked my Dad to start growing some!  I'm not sure whether we'll end up using these to decorate the venue or if they will contribute to a bridal bouquet, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.  I've also started drying vast quantities of petals to make confetti with.  I just use up the flowers from the garden, or if I am lucky enough to get a bunch of cut flowers as a present then the petals from that get dried too.  It's really easy and I've already obtained quite a pile of petals.

Rose petals dry well to make petal confetti

Decorations
I've had so many kind offers from friends and family to help us decorate the reception venue the day before the wedding.  A colleague has offered to lend me some decorations, and as for the rest, we have an impressive selection already at home (from years of being magpies), and continue to pick up bits as we see them.  Just last week I picked up a wooden sign for 40p, when I know they retail for at least a fiver!  There's also a trend for vintage suitcases, rustic logs and that kind of thing, which you can hire for around £30 a piece - whereas we get them for free out of skips...

Bargain wooden block decorations from the charity shop, £1!

There are other things that are further down the list, like wedding rings, transport and a hotel for our wedding night.  And small but irksome things, like the need to find 15 white tablecloths...

I have to say that when writing this post I had a slight panic, because I thought that the wedding being in September would make it 9 months away, but then I worked out that it's only 7 months away, which gave me a few flutters.

So much to do, so little time to be a bridezilla.

My Mother's Wedding Dress

In the 1970s, my parents were fairly trendy.  I have seen the photos of my Dad in Elvis-like sunglasses, and my Mum in bell-bottoms and huge floppy hats.  They extended their trendy tastes to their wedding outfits, with my Dad wearing a blue suit, and my Mum wearing a maxi dress with matching hat.

Outlet Wedding Dresses

The last time I wrote about bargain wedding dresses, I mentioned how charity shops can be a good source, but today's focus is on another opportunity to pick up a good deal on a dress, through outlets!

Designers always have to make room for the new collections, and so the old stock sometimes gets sent to outlets.  Unlike with charity shops, everything is brand new, though perhaps there might also be a few samples that have been tried on in boutiques.  Still, they've never been down an aisle.

There's a Littlewoods catalogue outlet near some family, and I did find a Nicholas Millington wedding dress there for £60, which would have been over £200 new.  Again, not my taste, but a bargain if it's the kind of thing you're after.  I even posed in it for you, here you go:

Wedding Guest Outfits & Outtakes

Last year I posted some photos here of a beautiful wedding that we were lucky enough to attend for some dear friends.  Then I followed it up with some 'outtakes' here.  The professional photos came back a while ago, and there are a few with me and my Baby in.

I'm wearing a cherry print dress that was a present, with a shrug I bought off Ebay.  Chris is wearing a vintage hat, a Kentucky tie (gift) and a bargain suit that I think was about £2.50 from the car boot sale!

Vintage Inspired Wedding Dresses on a Budget: 1930s

There are lots of vintage inspired dresses at the high end of bridal design, such as Jenny Packham's 1920s and 1930s inspired gowns, or Ritva Westenius, but let's be honest that spending thousands of pounds on a dress is beyond reach of most of us mere mortals.

Fear not, there's a HUGE choice of vintage inspired wedding dresses out there, and all of my suggestions below are under £300.  That's right.  You can have vintage glamour on a budget!  Today I'm focusing on the 1930s, and will be back with more inspiration from other decades as soon as I've scoured the web.

1930's Style Bridal Dresses
Think bias cut slinky evening gowns in silks and satins.  Jean Harlow is your inspiration.

This 1930's 'Siren' evening gown from 20th Century Foxy would be a wonderful choice (£280).

Charity Shop Wedding Dresses

Would you wear a charity shop wedding dress?  With the 'average' price of a wedding gown topping £1,000, it's no wonder that brides-to-be are searching for affordable alternatives.

One option is to look in charity shops.  Some of you will recoil at the idea of wearing a secondhand wedding dress, but not all wedding dresses in charity shops are secondhand.  Some are unworn, donated by individuals, others are end of line from the makers.  Personally, as I wear vintage clothing, it really isn't much of a stretch to imagine myself in a secondhand dress.

The Death of the Garden Ring and the Arrival of the Bling Ring

A little while ago, I shared the tale of the engagement ring found in the garden.  Not a day or two later, tragedy struck!  The break in the band snagged on a scarf (a new scarf as well, that now has a bit of a hole in it, how annoying), and the ring was wrenched open.  I pressed it roughly back into shape, and that lunchtime went to the jeweller recommended to me, only to find the shop shut and a handwritten note on the door stating he was on holiday.  I didn't realise that the metal was now weakened, and continued wearing the ring, intending to pop back the next day.  By tea time, it was in two pieces, the band having snapped in a second place.

It was good timing that it happened to be the day that my 'proper' engagement ring arrived in the post, so when I arrived home I had the delight of opening a package that contained this beauty.  The poor lighting in this photo doesn't do justice to how pink the centre stone is, or how sparkly the whole thing is.

The Tale of the Engagement Ring Found in the Garden

When my Baby proposed, he didn't present me with a ring.  He knew that I perhaps would want to choose something myself, and he also might have been slightly scared to offer me a ring, given that on more than one occasion I have ranted on about it being an outdated, sexist tradition that came from men making a downpayment on their 'goods'.  And then I might have followed that with a rant about the unethical nature of a lot of the diamond industry, blood diamonds and all, coupled with their stockpiling of gems to inflate the prices, and the whole 'tradition' of a ring being a month's salary coming from a De Beers advertising campaign in the 1930s.

Earlier this year, when we were digging over the patch of garden destined to be our veg patch, I came across this ring, dirty and a bit bashed.  Here it is, in all its unearthed glory.

A Vintage Wedding

I'm very excited to announce that I will be adding a new feature to my blog...because I'm getting married!!  So, you can expect future posts about vintage wedding inspiration as well as updates on my own wedding planning as the big day in September 2015 hurtles towards me.

I had a proposal on a moonlit beach, and have been wearing a temporary engagement ring that we dug out of the veg patch!  I thought that was terribly romantic, but I've since ordered a 'proper' ring.  I'm impatient for it to arrive.

If you're wondering what kind of wedding inspiration you will find here, this is what I'll be posting about:
1) Making the most of a teeny tiny budget
2) Doing things a bit 'differently'
3) Vintage inspiration

So far, I have been immensely irritated by wedding magazines, which are pretty much adverts for a handful of over-priced brands.  We went to a wedding fair, and that was hideous.  The first stall we went to was a photographer charging £2,000.  Bridesmaid dresses are apparently worth £265 each, the 'average' bridal dress is £1800, cakes are £400, and a car to drive you two miles will set you back £370.  If I paid those prices I'd blow the budget without having any food or drink to offer the guests!  Any tips on a more DIY approach will be gratefully received.

I promise not to become a Bridezilla (because I can't afford to be...)