Hello and welcome to my blog - Something Borrowed. My name is Nina.
Last year, 2017, was one of the busiest years of my life. I moved house, had my first baby (A gorgeous little girly) and got engaged! Yippiee!
This blog will follow the ups and downs of wedding planning and will include some hints and tips I pick up along the way.
As females it is expected that we grew up dreaming of the big lavish wedding day; with a white dress and lots of bridesmaids. It is assumed that by the time we are actually asked to marry someone we have this perfect idea in our heads of how we want our day to be. This was not the case with me.
I have on occasion thought about my wedding day but I have never had a clear idea of what I wanted. This has made planning much easier for me as I am not trying to aspire to an un-chievable image in my mind. Also this helps me with the budget. So, when I got engaged I had no idea how much a wedding would actually cost and trust me on two nurses wages it’s going to be difficult to have the day that we would both like, but it can be done. Due to our finances we have worked out that we should be able to afford a wedding in 2019, we will however be taking out a loan in order to achieve this, something which needs to be thoroughly considered first.
My partner and I talked about it and agreed that there was no way we could save enough money to be able to afford a wedding anytime in the future and we didn’t want to have to wait 10 years to
be able to afford it. Life’s too short. So we shall be taking out a loan.
My partner is not religious therefore we shall not be having a church wedding, which is fine by me. Despite the fact that it is cheaper, I also do not want a registry office wedding as I want something a bit more personal where I can still include all of my family. Therefore we have been looking at local halls. On average, package deals for the local halls cost around £9000 for a weekend. This is for 50 people, our guest list is nearer 120! Therefore we started looking at other options, one that seems to be a good compromise is golf clubs. Golf clubs tend to have restaurants on site which are able to offer catering services. Some also have bars and many are licensed for ceremonies. Many people feel that the aesthetics of some of the big manor houses are better than those of the golf clubs but the ones that we have been looking at still offer some beautiful scenery to get the perfect photos on the big day. The golf clubs also offer packages and these seem to be lower in price than the manor halls and more flexible. Where you decide to have your wedding is one of the most important parts of the day, it needs to fit in with the general feel of the wedding but also be somewhere that you both feel comfortable. As I have mentioned my partner is not religious therefore he would not feel comfortable getting married in a church and I would never expect that of him either.
WARNING! Open days can be a great way to view all sorts of venues and get some great ideas for the big day. However, the first open day I attended was at a local manor house and I fell in love with it. All £15,000 of it!
From the bridal suite to the gardens it seemed absolutely perfect. Sadly we have to be realistic, there is no way we can afford that so we had to give in and look elsewhere. The trouble was everywhere we looked we were comparing to the original love (the manor house) and nothing came close. So my partner and I went back to the drawing board, a venue that we had previously decided against we decided to go and view, a local golf club that’s being renovated. We fell in love with it and are happy to say we have now picked a beautiful venue for less than half the price of the manor house.
Thanks for reading and I will see you all next week when I will be discussing the all important dress.
