When I think back to when What The Dad Said and I were planning our wedding, we joked that as soon as a bakery, florist or similar knew that the items we wanted were for a wedding, the price doubled. As we were paying for our wedding ourselves, we were on a budget but still wanted a personalised wedding without the additional costs that usually come with it. So we set about looking for ways to add personal touches to our wedding at a fraction of the cost.
Organise a personalised wedding without the additional cost
Wedding Flowers
For as long as I can remember, I have always looked at my Mum’s wedding flowers sitting in my Granny’s display cabinet from when she married my Dad. Opting for silk flowers instead of real ones gave me the luxury of admiring them whenever I visited my grandparents. With the cost of real flowers coming in way over budget, I was pleased to opt for silk flowers, just like my mom, so that I, too, could keep hold of them and allow my children the same luxury of admiring them as I did as a child.
Instead of choosing a local florist, who all came in over budget, I found a lovely florist on eBay who showed me examples of her work and allowed me to change the flower colours, etc., to match our wedding theme. We managed to purchase all our wedding flowers for under a third of the price real flowers would have cost, and they were delivered in advance, so there was no worry about things going wrong on the day.
Wedding Cake
Wanting a traditional tiered cake, we visited many cake suppliers in the local area and were surprised by just how much a wedding cake would cost. It was my Mam that suggested that we buy plain iced cakes and decorate them ourselves. So we ordered three plain iced cakes from M&S (one fruit and two sponge), added our own tier pillars that we had purchased from eBay and then decorated them with the same flowers we were using for my bouquet and the buttonholes, along with matching ribbon around the bottom edge of each tier.
Wedding favours
One thing I would change about our wedding is the wedding favours we chose. We decided to stay traditional and have sugared almonds in little pillow boxes on the tables for the evening reception. However, come the end of the night, there were so many leftovers, and the ones that had been opened were left behind too, as it appears that nobody actually liked sugared almonds.
If we were choosing wedding favours now, I’d add mini curly wurly bars, love hearts or Haribo’s on the tables, as I’m sure everyone would appreciate them, plus it would save time filling pillow boxes and painstakingly tying a ribbon around them.
Decorations
We held our wedding reception in a local hotel that provided the basics in terms of decorations, with tablecloths, chair covers and red carpet upon arrival. Other than that, it was really down to us to decorate the room further. We originally considered adding flower arrangements to the centre of each table; however, the cost was prohibitive, so we opted for balloons.
We found a local company that was able to supply and deliver balloon centrepieces and a balloon arch over the buffet table at a fraction of the cost of the flowers, which allowed us to add disposable cameras (we did get married over 20 years ago, so not even sure you can buy disposable cameras anymore) on each table for our guests to take photos of our big day. The balloons were a big hit with the children, who loved releasing them into the sky at the end of the day.
These are just some of the ways we managed to have a personalised wedding without incurring additional costs.
