Monday 12 February 2018

A Wedding On A Budget

Throughout the planning process I had a lot of comments and questions here about how we were managing to stick to a small budget for our big day. With the average UK wedding registering at an eye-watering £21,000, our aim of spending £4k or less looked naive at best. But achieving our wedding on a budget actually turned out to be incredibly easy.

For a start, it helped that we were consciously trying to do things a little differently and keep it low-key, and so didn't want a number of traditionally expensive extras such as wedding cars or fancy floral arrangements. But what truly enabled us to stick to such a small budget was the help of friends and relatives, many of whom already work in the wedding industry. Now, I appreciate that this isn't a tip most people will be able to replicate for themselves, but knowing a wedding photographer, a professional cake maker, and a graphic designer specialising in wedding stationery was an enormous contributing factor in our wedding eventually coming in at a not-so-whopping £3,272*. However, the following tips are hopefully more easily replicable.

* In actual fact, our entire spend was just under £6k, but for the purposes of this post I'm only counting the elements that would be part of a more traditional wedding day. The extra £2,600 paid for a large family brunch on the morning of the wedding and - something that was incredibly important to us - hotel rooms for all the guests travelling from overseas. We basically booked out three floors of the city centre Premier Inn for the weekend!
Decide what your main priorities are & allocate money accordingly
Ours priority was food and drink. We wanted yummy cake & fizz for after the ceremony, amazing vegan & vegetarian food, and enough free booze that people could get a bit tipsy. And so that's where the majority of our budget went.

I've had the pleasure of being friends with the brilliantly talented Elle Jane since we met through blogging years ago, and our wedding coincided with her going into business as an occasion cake-maker. She made us 200 beautiful bite-size cupcakes to enjoy after the ceremony with glasses of Prosecco, which I bought from Tesco during one of their regular "Buy 6 bottles get 25% off" promotions.

Meanwhile, the meal was a real highlight of the day. Our fabulous reception venue, The Lansdowne, served up a delicious three course meal for a mere £18.50 a head, which meant we had money left over to put behind the bar.
Avoid bridal shops if you're on a strict budget
When it came to outfits I knew two things for sure: I wanted something comfortable and relatively non-bridal (and if it featured polka dots then so much the better), and I wanted to spend as little as possible. In the end, I managed to find my literal dream dress in the sale at Lindy Bop for a mere £16. Yep, you heard right, £16.

That sorted, I found polka dot dresses for my nieces - Gracie's turquoise dress was also from Lindy Bop at about £11, while Amelie's pink number cost £20 from Amazon - a cheap petticoat from eBay, and a pair of teal Mary Jane shoes which I'd spotted years ago in Clarks and loved, and eventually tracked down on eBay, paying £13.

All of which left enough in the budget for Thomas to splash out on a new suit from Slaters in Leeds which, thanks to having previously worked in the Glasgow branch, he got a discount on. Picking up a pair of secondhand brogues from a vintage store in Bristol left Thomas suited and booted for just over £100.

My advice, then, would be to avoid traditional bridal stores (particularly if you know you want something less traditional and structured) and embrace secondhand shops and eBay as sources.
Reuse & repurpose
I was also really keen to use the beautiful 1940s diamond ring I'd inherited from my granny and, as I wasn't fussed about having a traditional wedding band (in fact, without the existence of my granny's ring I don't think we'd have bothered with rings at all), it made sense to repurpose it as my wedding ring. Meanwhile, ever keen to keep costs low, we bought Thomas's hammered silver ring from Etsy for just £18.
Do It Yourself (or get a mate to do it for you)
Partly to keep costs down and partly for the reasons outlined in my post on planning an anxiety-free day, we kept things incredibly simple and pared back. No favours, no bouquets (actually this is maybe my only regret - in retrospect I would have loved a bunch of sunflowers), no complicated table settings beyond jars of flowers. And I don't think anyone attending the day at any point thought, "you know what, I'd be enjoying myself so much more if there was more stuff around."

But what we did have, we did ourselves (or, more accurately, roped in people to do for us).

The flowers were from supermarkets, arranged into jam jars (collected by friends in the months leading up to the day) with the kind help of my cousins, and dropped off at The Lansdowne on the day by a friend (who also made the tree trunk sign below).

The seating plan was a vintage suitcase that usually sits on our wardrobe, strung with twine and with beautifully calligraphed cards pegged onto it. My cousin Sadie volunteered for the writing, cousin Caroline's husband Steve did the stringing, and in the space of an afternoon we had it finished for the cost of four sheets of card and some mini pegs from Paperchase.

So my advice would be to keep things as simple as you dare and, for everything else, get people involved. I had so many friends and cousins not only willing to pitch in but actively wanting to help.
Think outside the box
Finally, my absolute top tip would be to consider non-traditional venues. There's not many places you could feed 70 people for less than £20 each, but your favourite local gastro pub may just be one of them. Even if they don't do normally private hire, it's worth asking (opting for a weekday wedding is also a huge money-saver: ours was on a Monday).

I also can't emphasise enough how much we loved hosting the party at a place we were so familiar with and fond of, with staff who knew us and enjoyed celebrating alongside us. We still get such a kick from going back to The Lansdowne for a pint and remembering what an ace time we had there with our friends and family.

Price Breakdown
Food & drink: £1846
Outfits (mine, Thomas & bridesmaids) & rings: £268
Flowers: £57
Ceremony venue: £670
Extras (including photographer, taxis, make-up artist, balloons, confetti, gifts etc): £432

My other wedding posts:

All photographs by James Mottram Photography

Saturday 3 February 2018

What I've Been Reading Recently

Recently I'm mostly reading the rather odd combination of feminist theory and Agatha Christie novels, the latter being just about all I can cope with, intellectually speaking, after grappling with the former! However, interspersed with the Judith Butler texts and Marple mysteries, I have read a few absolutely cracking books lately that I wanted to share with you.

The Wages Of Sin by Kaite Welsh*
Rating: ****

Sarah Gilchrist has fled from London to Edinburgh in disgrace and is determined to become a doctor, despite the misgivings of her family and society. As part of the University of Edinburgh's first intake of female medical students, Sarah comes up against resistance from lecturers, her male contemporaries, and - perhaps worst of all - her fellow women, who will do anything to avoid being associated with a fallen woman. When one of Sarah's patients turns up in the university dissecting room as a battered corpse, Sarah finds herself drawn into Edinburgh's dangerous underworld of bribery, brothels and body snatchers - and a confrontation with her own past.

If you're after historic fiction with feminist leanings and a Gothic Edinburgh setting - think Sarah Waters crossed with a Victorian Ian Rankin - then The Wages Of Sin is the book for you. With the medical student characters and glimpses into both high society and the degradations of those living in poverty, it reminded me a little of Sarah Moss's brilliant Bodies Of Light. It comes with a CN on discussion of sexual assault, which some may find triggering (and which I wish I'd known in advance), but that aside it's a superbly atmospheric read and Sarah is a heroine to root for. I'm hoping to see a follow-up to this soon. 

Hunger by Roxane Gay
Rating *****
With the bracing candor, vulnerability, and authority that have made her one of the most admired voices of her generation, Roxane explores what it means to be overweight in a time when the bigger you are, the less you are seen. Hunger is a deeply personal memoir from one of our finest writers, and tells a story that hasn't yet been told but needs to be.

Whether it's writing about the rape that left her eating to make her body, in her words, "safer", or her unflinching account of society's hatred of fat bodies, Hunger was often a tough read. But I love Roxane Gay's writing, which is never less than raw, honest and true. Highly recommended. 

Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu
Rating: *****
Vivian Carter is fed up. Fed up with her high school teachers who think the football team can do no wrong. Fed up with sexist dress codes, hallway harassment and gross comments from guys during class. But most of all, Viv Carter is fed up with always following the rules. Viv's mum was a punk rock Riot Grrrl in the '90s, inspiring Viv to create Moxie, a feminist zine that she distributes anonymously to her classmates. She's just blowing off steam, but other girls respond and spread the Moxie message: Moxie Girls Fight Back!

A YA novel about using zines to start a feminist revolution is obviously right up my street, but what makes Moxie so brilliant is that it's not just about large acts of change but also about the small moments - for example, the subtlety with which Mathieu handles the love interest's "not all men" bullshit is especially well done, giving teen readers the tools they'll need to challenge such behaviour without being preachy. On top of which, Viv Carter is a wonderful heroine, totally relatable and utterly likeable. I want to press copies of this book into the hands of every teenage girl, not to mention every teacher who's ever dismissed incidents of sexual assault in the school hallways as "just a bit of fun". 

The Miseducation Of Cameron Post by Emily M Danforth*
Rating: ****

The night Cameron Post's parents died, her first thought was relief. Relief they would never know that, hours earlier, she'd been kissing a girl. Now living with her conservative aunt in small-town Montana, hiding her sexuality and blending in becomes second nature to Cameron until she begins an intense friendship with the beautiful Coley Taylor. Desperate to 'correct' her niece, Cameron's aunt take drastic action. Now Cameron must battle with the cost of being her true self - even if she's not completely sure who that is.

I absolutely raced through this lengthy YA novel, completely immersed in the lives of Cameron and her friends. What I found most impressive was the nuance with which each character is written: even the Pastor in charge of the conversion camp to which Cameron is sent is treated with sympathy, with the reader never allowed to forget that each person is human, not simply a villain or a hero. The Miseducation Of Cameron Post has recently been made into a film starring Chloe Grace Moretz as Cameron, and I cannot wait to see such a brilliant, important, heart-wrenching book on the big screen.


* I received these books from the publishers in exchange for an honest review.