Getting Married on a Serious Budget

hacked

So, I've exhausted Pinterest and the internet. After looking at so many websites and pictures it gets slightly exhuasting and everything melts into one.

I am getting married this September after a short engagement and my fiancee and I are on a serious budget. He is moving over from the USA and won't be able to work for at least 6 months until he gets his stamps, so we're trying to spend as little as possible. We got a great deal in a no frills wedding in Finnstown Castle Hotel, but the rules are we are not allowed to hang anything on the walls. I got my dress in a sample sale. My friend is a photographer and he gave us a great deal.

The bar for the afters has a sound system, so we have an 80s hits theme and we're just going to do up a playlist and keep it simple. Djs are expensive!

My problem is decorations. The budget is pretty much spent on the hotel and the dresses alone, so we're trying to work out what to do to keep it simple but pretty when we can't hang things on the walls.

Looking for tips from other Brides who have been in similar situations! TIA!

Loveinapril

Are the hotel doing your centre pieces? Usually the hotel with dress a room up a bit so there may be no need to add anything. I added stuff to mine because I wanted to personalise things. I bought lots of flowers in Smithfield market (babies breath is so cheap) and had them in glass vases and plastic cocktail bowls from Dealz. I also had tonnes of candles in little glass holders from Ikea.

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Loveinapril wrote: »

Are the hotel doing your centre pieces? Usually the hotel with dress a room up a bit so there may be no need to add anything. I added stuff to mine because I wanted to personalise things. I bought lots of flowers in Smithfield market (babies breath is so cheap) and had them in glass vases and plastic cocktail bowls from Dealz. I also had tonnes of candles in little glass holders from Ikea.

We technically don't have a wedding package, we're on that much of a budget lol!! We decided to just do an evening deal with ceremony starting in the hotel at 4, straight into a buffet dinner and then afters, so because it's a buffet I'm not sure they will even be doing simple centrepieces like they would have with the meal.

How are the markets in smithfield? We were thinking babies breath and maybe odd rose!

wildwillow

Use freestanding pots and lots of foliage and some flowers. Link them with paper bunting in a design relevant to the theme or couple. Finnstown Castle is pretty well decorated so you just need to add the personal touch. Cheap plastic pots can be painted or otherwise decorated...fun for an activity for hen's party. Weigh them down with some stones or gravel.
Bamboo sticks will give height and can be wrapped to blend. I did this for church and reception for a couple a few years ago at almost no cost.
PM me if you need foliage as I've loads in the garden and am not too far from the venue.

baby and crumble

IKEA, Penney’s and Tiger are your friends here.

What is your budget for decorations and more crucially what are your skills for DIY or your friends/family skills?

Are you thinking just loads of colour and sparkles or a theme?

hacked

wildwillow wrote: »

Use freestanding pots and lots of foliage and some flowers. Link them with paper bunting in a design relevant to the theme or couple. Finnstown Castle is pretty well decorated so you just need to add the personal touch. Cheap plastic pots can be painted or otherwise decorated...fun for an activity for hen's party. Weigh them down with some stones or gravel.
Bamboo sticks will give height and can be wrapped to blend. I did this for church and reception for a couple a few years ago at almost no cost.
PM me if you need foliage as I've loads in the garden and am not too far from the venue.

That is SO kind of you, thank you!

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baby and crumble wrote: »

IKEA, Penney’s and Tiger are your friends here.

What is your budget for decorations and more crucially what are your skills for DIY or your friends/family skills?

Are you thinking just loads of colour and sparkles or a theme?

To be honest, the budget for decorations is at 0 for the moment. Despite finding my dress on sale, it was still over budget but it was my perfect dress and I'd received a cash gift earlier that day, so I bought it.

We don't really have a theme per se, but the whole feel of our wedding (venue included) wound up feeling quite romantic. The colour scheme I'd had in mind was ivory, blush pink and dusty rose...along those lines. I love all things candle and fairy lights. I'm not sure if I just lack creativity or if my brain is too fried from planning a wedding in 4 months!

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Victoria Greasy Ringworm wrote: »

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Those all sound like ideas I had been having, thank you!

Finnstown are fantastic. We actually can't afford a wedding package, so they very kindly gave us a bespoke package to fit our budget...but it's more of a party than a wedding. It's literally just room rental and food. Chair covers etc are all at added cost. With a buffet I don't think they will do centrepieces, but we shall see!

Goodness, yes, getting married from the states is a headache. We actually hadn't planned on getting married so quickly and not right now, but my fiancee has been looking for work for a year and no one will look at him without the visa. We've been together long distance three years, so we're just wanting to close that distance now! We'll get by, we just can't justify a big wedding, but I'm ok with that . I'm currently having the headache of getting my own US birth cert apostille stamped and it wound up being more complicated than I had anticipated, so in the back of my mind im peparing for the legal stuff to maybe get postponed. Fingers crossed!!

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Cash_Q

We had zero decorations at our wedding. I just decided to give myself one less bit of hassle because at the end of the day nobody notices that kind of stuff. We made our own table names/ numbers using Microsoft word which were all named after bands we love, venue had candelabras on every table and that was it. Finnstown is such a beautiful venue that you won't need any embellishment and all eyes will be on you two anyway. I understand you want to have some decor but if your budget is literally 0 then why give yourself hassle?

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Victoria Greasy Ringworm wrote: »

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haha! I remmeber your post. That's amazing It's nice to know there have been others in the same boat. It's also hilarious with such similar stories we're getting married in the same hotel! xD

How did you find your couples interview in Naas? I have high anxiety, so I'm anxious about it even though there's a clear paper trail of a 3 year relationship back and forth!

Yeah the apostille is a headache. I had sent everything to a friend in the US as I read it was faster to have it hand delivered. All that got done very fast and they denied my birth cert saying it wasn't the right type of cert and now I need to apply for a new birth cert and have it mailed to ireland only to sent it back to Trenton. Phew! Hopefully it will be turned around pretty fast.

LittleWhiteDog

I have some wooden table numbers that I never used, you can have them if you pm your address to me? I will send you a link. You would need to pop them in a jar. If you collect jars & wrap a little bit of lace around them (think an old net curtain!) it can actually look fab & cost practically nothing!

baby and crumble

Well op for ours we did do a fair bit of DIY decorating. We really enjoy that kind of stuff though.

We collected glass bottles from friends and spray painted them gold, and used them for candles on tables - to be honest this was probably the thing we did that made the most impact. We managed to collect and spray over 100 bottles. It was intense but worth it. We also bought some cheap frames from ikea, printed out some artwork we like for other table decorations. We bought a bolt of nice navy glittery material to put over the tables instead of the white table cloths.

We also got some cheap 2nd hand lampshades and covered them in red velvet for on top of glass vases we got from our florist and it helped the place look like an old vintage nightclub. I made a cake stand with old vinyl records and a kit we got from Wish for like €3 or something.

Unfortunately we’ve found homes for all that stuff since so I can’t offer you any of it but you CAN do fun stuff on a budget.

BUT remember that it’s all just window dressing. Yes it looks pretty but it’s honestly not the be-all and end-all.

missmatty

We didn't do any decorating at all and didn't miss it, there was enough other work besides. We did have flowers on the tables as part of the package and I did get a guest book as well. People are often selling decorating stuff off cheaply or giving it away on 'Help me I'm getting married Ireland' on Facebook and I've noticed some nice wedding stuff in The Range as well recently.

SirChenjin

Aldi have wedding bits and pieces at the moment, which should probably be relatively cheap.

hacked

Thanks so much everyone! I was just feeling a little overwhelmed and needed a few simple ideas. We don't need much in the way of decoration, but I wanted to get enough to put our stamp on it, you know?

I feel like I have some direction now.

scarepanda

IKEA is your friend. You can get big packets of tealight candles for a relatively small cost. The same goes for little candle holders. Keep an eye out for multi packs. You can also get some yogurts in glass jars that look cool, so you could get people to collect them for you. Also tall candles in bottles are lovely. You can spray them up to suit your colour scheme. You can get a frosted spray paint that gives a lovely romantic look/feel for a relatively small cost.

Can you crochet/knit or do paper crafts? Or do you know anyone that can? I made all the flowers for my bouquets and table centre's for our wedding last year. It's time consuming, but you can do it relatively cheap and I was really happy with how they turned out, especially the bouquets.

Have a look in places like dealz, Mr price, pound shops for cheap stuff.

Pinterest is fantastic for ideas, but once your happy with something then don't look any further for the same thing coz you will bamboozle yourself!

hacked

scarepanda wrote: »

IKEA is your friend. You can get big packets of tealight candles for a relatively small cost. The same goes for little candle holders. Keep an eye out for multi packs. You can also get some yogurts in glass jars that look cool, so you could get people to collect them for you. Also tall candles in bottles are lovely. You can spray them up to suit your colour scheme. You can get a frosted spray paint that gives a lovely romantic look/feel for a relatively small cost.

Can you crochet/knit or do paper crafts? Or do you know anyone that can? I made all the flowers for my bouquets and table centre's for our wedding last year. It's time consuming, but you can do it relatively cheap and I was really happy with how they turned out, especially the bouquets.

Have a look in places like dealz, Mr price, pound shops for cheap stuff.

Pinterest is fantastic for ideas, but once your happy with something then don't look any further for the same thing coz you will bamboozle yourself!

Yeah I think that was my problem. I got overwhelmed looking at so many things and I needed help bringing it back to basics.

I thought of the wine bottle idea when I was out earlier. I put up on an appeal on facebook asking people to save things like that for me. A friend who got married last week said she had a ton of Blue gunpowder gin bottles from her wedding. Those are pretty and figured we could put flowers in them, so I think I'm starting to get some ideas of what I can do!

scarepanda

Ya you can get some lovely designed bottles that you wouldn't have to do anything with either. Even some food stuff bottles can be cool. Last year aldi had two wine bottles that we actually used that were cool. We didn't end up spraying either coz they looked good on their own and put some crochet roses in them and tall candles (we had two table centre designs). Most was from IKEA. Aside from a light thing my husband made for the table centre, all the other stuff we did and made for the table centre's came in at roughly €7.50 each per table, which included bottles, jars, candles and the material to make the flowers. Some stuff was bought and some was kept by friends and family.

For table names/numbers we got a horrible plastic photo frame from IKEA for like €1 each and sprayed them silver and they really did look good. So if something doesn't look right/good in the shop, think beyond to what you can do to see if it could be transformed.

Made a list of what you want to do, have a look online/Pinterest for ideas and once your happy with something you find stick to it and tick it off the list as decided upon. You'll just go around in circles driving yourself demented other wise.

Ps, if your in Dublin, the range in Liffey valley business park (?) Has a great range of craft stuff for cheap enough. You'd be surprised what what you can find in there. I got a load of those pearl yolks and put them into one of the smaller jars and I thought it looked really good for very little cost.

Also, on our invites we asked our guests for suggestions for the DJ. You could do the same to compile a playlist and then you will have music your guests want and take inspiration from suggestions ye get.

If I think of anything else I'll pop it up here for you!

damianch

Just a thought, but if you are not having a Dj then I am guessing you won't have lighting etc they usually bring with. Does the hotel have disco lighting etc ?

If not I think you could kill two birds by having candle centrepieces on alternate tables . You could get floating candles in vases/ fish bowls and add pink dye to the fish bowls to create a light/colour/feature/centrepiece all in one ..

You can also get cheap battery tealights and put them in a vase full of aqua beads



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hacked

scarepanda wrote: »

. Also, on our invites we asked our guests for suggestions for the DJ. You could do the same to compile a playlist and then you will have music your guests want and take inspiration from suggestions ye get.

If I think of anything else I'll pop it up here for you!

Yeah I was going to scope out nice jars in my local supermarkets over the next week or two!

That's too funny, that's what I wound up doing. I told people our 80s hits theme and asked them t osend a list of 10 songs they want to hear from that era. I will honour all requests except for Journey... lol

SheepGoHere

hacked wrote: »

Yeah I think that was my problem. I got overwhelmed looking at so many things and I needed help bringing it back to basics.

I banned myself from pinterest/weddings online/one fab day for a few months, because it was all just overwhelming me and wrecking my head. I did a lot better without the constant 'inspo'!

Loveinapril

hacked wrote: »

I will honour all requests except for Journey.

Ah I thought you were lovely until that!!

sullivk

Nice vases from Ikea with flowers from Aldi/Lidl.
Make table names/numbers with card and rubber stamps or fancy pen. We cut a ridge in top of a wine cork, stuck a bit of wire in the bottom and that was our table name holder... Just popped them into the flower arrangement on each table.

Nice jars with battery powered fairy lights from Penney's? You don't need to spend a fortune if you don't mind a little DIY!

twowheelsonly

I was at a wedding last year where literally all the decorations were handmade - table centrepieces, bride and bridesmaids bouquets, ceiling decorations etc. They also had the tealights / floating candles in a variety of glasses and jars. It really was impressive.

My sister had a wedding similar to yours recently and it was nice and simple as well. She decorated the centre aisle chairs with plain curtain netting which she dyed a light gold colour and added a tiny amount of glitter to each. Her table names were very impressive - microsoft word on plain white paper and soaked in tea for a vintage look. Did two of each , cut them down a bit and stuck them to black card for a double sided table name. The venue will have the holders for these. She made up her own sweet table - glass bowls and glass bowls of sweets and treats that she bought over a few weeks and, believe it or not, small 'chip bags' that a friend of hers that works in a chipper supplied !! Most people didn't even cop that

If you do have any banners etc that you want to hang just ask your photographer friend if they have any lightstands or backdrop stands you could borrow.

Lots of good ideas on this thread BTW. One thing I would do, if at all possible, is to get some sort of DJ. As it's more or less a party that you're having a DJ will make a huge difference to getting people out on the floor as will the lights. It's something that will be remembered when most other details are forgotten.

Enjoy !!!

hacked

Loveinapril wrote: »

Ah I thought you were lovely until that!!

Hehehe! I'm sorry, Glee killed it for me.

Milly33

If ye are handy start colleting some tin cans nice shiny ones.. Then get a nail punch some holes in them.. And well you can either stick tea lights in them, or just punch holes in the top and put some foliage.. Head to the woods and pick some ivy, just make sure the bugs are out of it.. You can use jars also as vases or tealight holders.

You can pick up a big reel of yarn in the wholesalers and use to tie around the tops to pretty anything up..

If you don't want to do diy, pick up some potted plants and use them as the centre pieces...

damianch

Have you considered something like this ? The blue roses aside (it was what the bride requested me to do ) but you could do something similar and it’s very cheap . Maybe 150 euro for 20 tables

Kdenney

Victoria Greasy Ringworm wrote: »

I think I posted in your thread about the Apostille stamp on the birth cert because my husband was born in NJ too! I'm well versed in the marrying someone from the states and all the hassle it entails! It was all worth it in the end We were together long distance for 3 years too before we decided to just get married and him to move here. Best thing we ever did!
Good luck, I hope it all works out for you guys!

Victoria Greasy Ringworm, I'm an American getting married in Donegal in November, and I'm currently trying to figure out how to get the Letter of Capacity to Marry as the US government doesn't issue them. How did you get that for your husband? Thanks!!

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Kdenney wrote: »

Lorenna, I'm an American getting married in Donegal in November, and I'm currently trying to figure out how to get the Letter of Capacity to Marry as the US government doesn't issue them. How did you get that for your husband? Thanks!!

Have you checked with the US embassy in Dublin? My fiancee is in the same boat. From what we've read it seems like this is something the embassy should be able to do. We emailed them to check and are waiting to hear back after the weekend. I'll keep you posted on what we find out!

Kdenney

hacked wrote: »

Have you checked with the US embassy in Dublin? My fiancee is in the same boat. From what we've read it seems like this is something the embassy should be able to do. We emailed them to check and are waiting to hear back after the weekend. I'll keep you posted on what we find out!

Thank you for your reply! I contacted my old boss, a family law attorney in Florida, as the Registrar said an Affidavit notarized by the a US Embassy won't be accepted. She advised I contact the state Vital Statistics office, and they actually have a specific records search they can do that will give me a Certificate of non-marriage or something. Try that with whatever state he lived in on the US.

hacked

Kdenney wrote: »

Thank you for your reply! I contacted my old boss, a family law attorney in Florida, as the Registrar said an Affidavit notarized by the a US Embassy won't be accepted. She advised I contact the state Vital Statistics office, and they actually have a specific records search they can do that will give me a Certificate of non-marriage or something. Try that with whatever state he lived in on the US.

Are you sure? Because the US embassy got back to us and said they perform that service at a 50 dollar charge. Embassy wouldn't say they do it if it wasn't accepted.

Kdenney

hacked wrote: »

Are you sure? Because the US embassy got back to us and said they perform that service at a 50 dollar charge. Embassy wouldn't say they do it if it wasn't accepted.

Just check with the Registrar in the county you are getting married in. Mine said an Affidavit wasn't acceptable. I had an embassy appointment that I cancelled when I was able to find the request for records search with the Florida Vital Statistics office. All the Embassy will do is notarize an affidavit that you bring in and sign in front of them attesting that you are not currently married. They can't verify that the information is correct, only that you signed it. That's why my registrar said no, that you can and do need to get a Certificate from your US state saying that they conducted a search and you are not married.