Let's Talk...Getting Married
Just in case you missed me jabbering on about it, which is doubtful but I’m getting married! In October my boyfriend and I will be getting married in our home city and it’s safe to say it’s probably going to be the highlight of our year but first, we’ve got to plan the thing. The internet is bursting at the seams for inspiration of absolutely dreamy wedding days and that’s all well and good but it’s safe to say if you’ve got married or you’re getting married you’ve probably felt the same way I do right now which is overwhelmed and a little confused about the whole thing. So what better than to write a blog post about the whole thing and where we are so far with our wedding planning.
the type of wedding we want
Getting married is something that I’ve always wanted, it’s the been the one thing in my life that I’ve always been sure of and I'm so excited to be a wife. When we’d discussed getting married in the past the only constant theme there was is that we wanted it to be personal and intimate to us so there was never a question that we’d have a huge wedding with a big party. For a long time, we thought we might elope so it could truly just be about us making that commitment to each other. However, once we got Josie and Edie there was no way I wanted to get married without them being there and truthfully not having my dad and sister there is something that I’d probably regret and I really don’t want to regret anything about a day I’ll remember for the rest of my life. For my boyfriend, getting married is a little more complex due to divorced parents and trying to navigate that is extremely difficult and draining. It took us a little while to decide what was truly right for us but we’ve finally made our decision. We’re having a really small ceremony with less than 30 guests in our home city at a place we both adore. We’re not having a reception afterwards which I’m sure to some might be an odd choice but it’s just not something that feels like its for us so we’d rather try and go for a meal with our closest family instead. While we want a really small wedding and there not to be a huge amount of fuss around the day we do want it to be as nice as it can be so we chose the venue that we really wanted even though it was a little expensive as it’s only something we both hope we’ll be doing once.
the crazy cost of weddings
I always knew that getting married was expensive, the average cost in the UK is around £25,000. A huge, huge sum of money that neither of us want to pay because not only can we not afford something of that scale but we simply don't wish to pay so much on one day, it doesn’t make sense for us. Our budget is £5000 and all being well we’re going to be slightly under that but it’s amazing how quickly that money gets eaten up. Who knew a registrar was so pricey? Because I certainly didn’t. We’re trying to do a lot of things ourselves and we’re not having things like wedding cars, a florist to decorate the space, and hen and stag do’s will not be big affairs so that will save us a lot of money.
not having crazy expectations
Pinterest is the place where unrealistic wedding dreams are made of that is one thing I know for sure. Before we started to plan our wedding I used to just look at the images on there so wistfully but then as soon as I started looking at them for actual inspiration and breaking down each thing piece by piece the most simple whimsical wedding can soon get incredibly expensive so I’ve had to take a step back from scrolling constantly. Every wedding is different and what we don’t see is what's behind those dreamy images and the realities of the day and how stressful it might have been to get to that point. Whilst I do have a Pinterest board that I’m slowly adding to and I have picked myself up an issue of Rock n Rock Bride to flick through I’m trying to stay in my own lane with wedding planning and not letting myself have crazy expectations. Something else I’m constantly trying to remind myself is that something is undoubtedly going to go wrong and it will only add to my memories of the day, just like when my boyfriend proposed then 5 minutes later I slipped and fell in a bog covering my brand new sparkly engagement ring in mud.
what we’ve done so far and what we need to do
Even though we’re only having a small wedding there’s still plenty of things to do and here’s what we’ve done so far;
Picked our date and put a deposit down for the venue and the registrar
Asked my sister and best friend to be my joint maid of honour.
Got invitation samples from Papier.
Written our guest list.
to do
Research and start e-mailing photographers.
Pick our wedding bands.
Decide on food.
Find my dress and my boyfriends suit.
Give notice of marriage.
Plan out our DIY’s for our floral design.
Decide on decorations.
Research and find a florist for my bouquet.
