we're getting married!

Lots of you will know that on January 16th 2015, the love of my life asked me to marry him... 

and I obviously said YES! 

(cue sparkly diamonds....eeeeeek) 

This is incredibly exciting for us, and it means that i can finally step into the world of wedding blogging - if you follow me on pinterest, you will know that i constantly bombard my board with wedding ideas. it's fun to look at even if you're not getting married, because who doesn't want to plan their dream wedding a few years in advance... 

but anyway, we have started to plan everything and finally put down a deposit on our venue, and set a date about three weeks ago! 

We set a date pretty much as soon as we got engaged, so that we could plan everything effectively, and also so that we knew what kind of time frame we had to save, save, save! 

We're getting married on Sunday September 4th 2016, which so happens to be my Grandparent's fifty-first wedding anniversary <3 

So i thought i would do a little bit on budget weddings ideas, kinda step by step as we go through the process ourselves - because we don't plan to have a huge extravagant wedding for numerous reasons..

a) we're students

b) we'd rather spend the extra £10,000 on a deposit for a house or a car or something useful

c) the day is about us, and not how fancy everything else is, so we know our guests will enjoy the day because they love us, not what we can afford! 

d) we're being realistic to our budget, and our lifestyle

*not that we don't love big weddings, they are fabby, it's just not what us students can afford to do!*

VENUE

As I said, we just put down a deposit on our venue, and after looking at about 25 different hotels, and trying to figure out what would best suit us and our guests, we found an amazing deal at a local hotel! 

Here are some of the reasons we decided upon this one, and things to look for when you're booking your venue on a budget...

1) Will you be having your marriage ceremony in a church or in the hotel? 

We chose to have the ceremony in the hotel,purely for ease. we're getting married in Aberdeen (roughly 500 miles away for my family, and about 200 miles away for Steve's), so rather than having everyone shipping around and travelling about in unchartered territory... we thought it would be easier to do everything in one place! (Not only that, but we save money on fancy cars too!) 

2) What does your wedding package include for the price? 

Look around all the possibilities of venue - some might look prettier or have more space than others, but charge you an absolute fortune for pretty much nothing! 

Check out the menu's, centre pieces, chair covers (surprisingly cost a fortune), how many guests does your package include?, does it include evening food too?, what other deals is there?

We were extremely luck with ours, we found an incredible deal with lots of added little extra's which would have cost thousands to add on to some of the other venues we looked at. 

Find the best deal for you and your wedding! 

3) Accommodation 

If you're getting married in a hotel, like us, quite far away from home... what deals does the hotel offer on accommodation, and does it have enough rooms for your guests?

We aren't having a huge wedding, so ours has plenty of room for our guests, and the more stay there.. the better the deal they get on their room! (perfecto) 

Not only that, our venue is very central - not out in the sticks - and if there was 'no room at the inn' there are plenty of other hotels about ten to twenty minutes away from our hotel which would be of no hassle to our guests to stay in! 

4) Your date

Does your venue have your date available?

Book it in a preliminary booking, and they will usually hold it for you for a few weeks while you make a decision about it. Don't risk not booking it in and losing your dream wedding date (we all have one...)

There are obviously a hundred other things to think about, and these are just a few, but there are hundreds of really helpful websites like www.hitched.co.uk and others that can give you incredible tips on stuff like this! 

I hope you liked this blog post! 

muchos love

ysabelle 

xxxxxx