Obviously I've never been married before and neither has Dunc so it often feels like we're stumbling along in the dark when it comes to planning our wedding. I'm very grateful that I was living with Emma when she was engaged so I got observe the process up close but that's nothing compared to doing it yourself. That's why we need YOU! If you're married (particularly if you've been married in the last few years) or even if you've been to a few weddings recently and really admired the reception venue, food, photographer, wedding dress, cake etc then I'd really like to hear your advice. Often word of mouth is a powerful influence when it comes to wedding planning.
When it comes to planning our wedding, I want to be super organised (well as organised as I can be). Since I don't handle stress very well, it'd be good to have as many of the things out of the way as soon as possible. I don't want to get to two months before the wedding and we still don't have a photographer.
Dunc and I have agreed that we want a simple wedding. We don't want to spend truckloads of money to make the day special. What will make it special is being surrounded by those we love. Dunc has a big extended family and mine is small so we're looking at a guest list of around 150-200 people. Painful attempts to cut loved ones off the list didn't work so we're looking at going el cheapo for the reception.
As you can tell by the title of the post, finding a reception venue is our top priority at the moment. That's because we're planning on getting married in Perth and April is a popular month so many venues are booked well in advance. Because of our large guest list, we need a venue that will hold at least 200 people. And we need it to be fairly cheap. None of this $100/head business. If we did that, then we'd be looking at paying $15,000-$20,000 just to feed people at the reception. We don't have that kind of money and neither do our parents who are graciously helping us out. I don't want to exclude a friend just because I can't afford to feed them. I'd rather go cheaper and have everyone.
So what we're hoping to do is hire a yacht club, surf lifesaving club or similar venue and have caterers. The wedding will be held in the afternoon and then have an afternoon tea/cocktail reception which will finish earlier than most receptions. Some potential caterers that have already been recommended to us are:
But we still don't have any recommendations for venues so if anyone has any suggestions for those and for additional catering companies, please leave a comment.
The sooner we get a reception venue, the sooner we can announce our wedding date to everyone!
7 comments:
The piece of advice I give marrying couples is this...
1.Enjoy yourself, its your day, organise it the way you want it to be...Parents may not like some of your decisions....mmmm..its not their wedding....even if they help you with it financially....its your one special day...organise it the way you want it.
2. Make sure there is plenty of time for photos between the wedding and reception. Photos are the memories you have of the day...the tangible evidence, make sure you are not rushed in having them taken. Friends can always go down the pub or cafe and socialise during this time....don't worry about them, worry about
yourself...its your special day.
3. Have fun...laugh, and don't stress if something goes wrong...its your day.
Thanks Mark. Yeah I've already had my mum on my back about some of our plans for the reception, telling me I need to invite random relatives we never see etc. She said because she's contributing financially that means she gets to have a say in the guest list and what kind of reception we have. I said NO. I'd rather pay for everything myself than have someone contribute but with strings attached. Fortunately, she's now realised how annoying she was being and has backed off and we can make decisions without being hassled. What we're going to do is just book everything and then tell family what we've decided. But I thought I'd ask random people on the web since there's a lot of useful tips out there :)
We went el cheapo as I couldnt justify spending so much money.
We had our reception at our church. We cleared out all the chairs, used the churches tables and chairs and decorated ourselves. The place looked amazing and it was soooo cheap.
We also used an asian restaurant to cater for us. They had never done a wedding before and were so excited they wanted it all done perfectly. They gave us free waiters to serve meals to people and they had soooo much food leftover that we were eating it for months afterwards (which is handy when one of us was a student and one working in retail).
They gave us a 5 course meal for about $18 a head. We then just had a few people make cakes, and a few people bring cakes from the cheesecake shop and people were happy!
We hired a dance floor which was pretty cheap and people had no problems getting up and boogying down. :)
I think its important that you go with your own sense of style. We did things how we wanted them done. The amount of people I had telling me that 'you cant do that!!' was enough stress to keep me going for months, but it was worth it in the end.
AHHHHH!!! I have so many ideas for you guys, but I'm tired from writing....so maybe soon I will give a few ideas....if you want some anyway :)
oh, and one of my friends is a wedding cake maker. you can give her any idea and she will run with it (shes also really ridiculously cheap!) She is amazing.
We had all these ideas in our head and she put it all together for us, no-one else has had our wedding cake!! Which is nice to know!
Thanks Bek, that's helpful stuff. What's the name/contact details of your friend who's a wedding cake maker? I have a few ideas for a bit of an unusual cake :)
Hi Sarah,
I'm happy to help you guys in any way I can. Whether it be doing you some jewellery using a combo of polymer clay and beads in a design you want or giving advice!
Another thing you can do for the reception if you want to save money is not have a main meal. I've seen quite a few weddings where you still hire caterers but you have a fair bit of finger food and a really nice cake. People don't seem to mind. You can still set up chairs and tables and a bridal table too if you want to. Even cheaper is to do this in a church hall rather than a reception centre/club. Depends how fancy you want it but a church hall can be done up just as nicely as a hall.
Lastly, on the day, try your best to take note of whats going on. A lot of people I know say that they remember nothing from their wedding day. If you do all the stressing and organising beforehand and then let everyone else do everything on the day, you will have time to really take in whats happening. On my wedding day I purposely stopped every now and then and took a visual picture of what was going on. I do remember most of my wedding day!
Thank you everyone, for your help! Thank you Amanda, I'll chat to sarah about it:)
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