Registered User
Do it interstate!! We got married in NT and only had our parents andour one sibling each with a few friends who were local. It was beautiful, we used a celebrant in the park , can't remember the cost sorry then walked across the road to a big hotel and had a buffet meal in a seperate part of the dining room. Guests paid for their own alcohol. Mum made my dress cause I was 5 months pg! A lady at work's friend made the cake for $50, my brother is a wedding photography so we were lucky we got fantatsic photos free!
I am in Sydney and on school holidays so if you need anyone to do any phoning or enquiring for you I would LOVE to!! I can ask my brother questions too since he is in the business, although he is wayyy too expensive for nayone on a budget LOL
Registered User
Yup to Yass we go
Might have to make some phone calls on monday... wish i had a job already though.
What bad timing with a move and wanting to get married around the same time.
Id still be interested in heading down to Wollongong but i guess i need to find out some other info first.
Registered User
if you get the licence in nsw won't matter who marries you hun! or where!
there are some awesom places in ACT though - i would love to have exchanged vows at top of Mount Ainslie = the view is awesome up there!
Registered User
I did our whole wedding on a budget of $5,000
We hired out a community hall from the local council, and they let us go in late late on the friday night at set up all the tables and stuff ready to go. We did the ceremony there, and gave a friend of mine insturctions when we went to have photos done, to pull out all the tables and had the reception there too.
We used friends for alot of stuff - hubby is heavily into cars and his best man owned a 55 chevy - hello wedding car! and a good friend of mine was a good photographer - not professional but they look fantastic and he only cost me a slab of beer.
We had a catering company come in and do a 3 course meal for $15 a head and they did the dishes afterwards!!
We hired a juke box instead of having a band - it had the same affect and we didnt have to feed the juke box like you traditionally do with a band.
We bought all the alcohol at Dan Murphys liqour super store when it was all on special, I even went into well known bottle stores, picked out expensive wines and asked the person behind the counter what tastes just like it but is cheap as, then bought it in boxes of 12 - each bottle only cost $3 but tasted like it was $30.
I used E-BAY for EVERYTHING!! found a couple who do wedding invites - we picked the design and they printed them up $2 each including the envelopes. I found a listing on e-bay for a wedding store that went into liqidation and needed to get rid of all their stock, I paid $1 each for my black organza chair sashes and 50c for the organza bags and filled them with lollies from the darell lee's factory seconds store as the gifts to guests.
Got my dress off e-bay for $60... brand new still with tags and original price tage ($650) off a lady who bought it but found out she was pregnant and was going to be 7 months by the wedding and couldnt wear it but needed to sell it asap to buy baby clothes!!
The cheese cake shop did our 3 teir wedding cake - carmel mud with caramel icing, for $150.
So it can be done, it takes alot of research though. If you want some help just let me know
Registered User
ash, all you need to do in nsw is hand in your intent to marry form one month before you do so.... if you are moving, why dont you organise a celebrant to meet you at a lovely spot along the coast? if you are going past wollongong (where are you moving to?) check our Mount Keira - such beautiul lookouts, you and two witnesses in the rainforest irst thing in the dewey mornong! ah so special!!
then you can have the party later down the track, when you have the $$. bright side - you will get two dresses that you can wear again, instead of one that you will never use again!
Registered User
the celebrant will organise the intent to marry form for you and file it too.
there is a celebrant website that is like a registry - has a whole bunch of celebrants from all over the country, lists what services they offer, whenre they are prepared to travel, etc. Something like 'celebrant-e" dot com.
If you do go the registry route, you will need to do it yourself. you can print the form from online, and you need to submit it (in vic) one month and one day before the intended ceremony. You will need full original birth certificates (not extracts or photocopies) and ID to lodge the form.
Registered User
but i still want the dress i will never wear again!!
then you can have the party later down the track, when you have the $$. bright side - you will get two dresses that you can wear again, instead of one that you will never use again!
i jusdt talked to anth again and he has changed his mind. whats the point of getting married when the way we do it wont make him happy.
looks like im waiting until we can afford it, which given we are roughly $6000 in debt due to the move is going to be a long freaking time
Registered User
HI
Just an idea as an alternative.
Our wedding and honeymoon cost under $3000 and we had 150 guests.
Keep in mind that our wedding was in '99, so prices will have gone up somewhat, but the biggest cost we avoided was for catering. Even if catering has increased significantly it wouldn't affect the cost to you if you get your guests to pay for their own meal as we did.
Dress - $170 made by a friend, bought material and pattern from Spotlight - looked great!
Flowers - Only had a bouquet for me and one bridesmaid - paid for by a friend but only cost around $50 anyway, artificial flowers. looked great.
Cake - Didn't bother
[B]Bridesmaids dress - paid for her own
Celebrant - $80
Reception - Cost $400 to hire the Ballroom at Noahs on the beach - Newcastle - gorgeous venue. Had the wedding on a Sunday so it was cheaper! Included overnight stay in a spa room.
Food- asked guests to pay for own meals instead of buying us a present. $32 per head for a 3 course meal.
Alcohol - only supplied soft drink and non alcoholic wine, but the bar was open for guests to purchase their own drinks if required.
Music - Hired a jukebox - can't remember the cost but not very much
Honeymoon - 4 days on a houseboat on the Myall Lakes - under $500
There were other expenses such as suit hire and some table decorations, I did the invitations on my computer so only paid for the paper from office works. Cars were borrowed from a friend. Photos and video also by a friend who was learning photography.
Our wedding was beautiful. I don't feel that I missed out on my special day in anyway. The reception centre was just lovely and the meal was great. By asking our friends to pay for their own meal we probably saved thousands and could invite everyone we wanted to.This was actually part of the deal with Noahs, we got the reception room at a cheaper rate but we had to fill it with 150 paying customers. Maybe think about having your wedding on a Sunday or weekday - you will save heaps.
Hope you have a lovely wedding!
L.B.
Last edited by lmbmcb; January 3rd, 2009 at 11:09 AM.
Registered User
Ash - if you want the big day, don't let it put you off that you have to wait. yeah, moving now is a PITA, and it will leave you short of money for a year or so - but why not plan in advance - maybe look at your fifth anniv of getting together (i know Feb 18 is important to you - me too!) - or look for the next time it falls on the day you got together cos then you know it will be your anniv to the day (so if it was 06, you can get married in 2012 cos that's the next time it's on a Saturday kwim?) - i know a wedding is an important and very public declaration of your love for each other - but you don't want to do something you'll be disappointed in and regret. it's possible to do the small thing, but if you plan (and start getting bits and pieces now) it's doable on a still reasonably restricted budget
FWIW - apart from "THE DRESS" which was initially going to be hand made, but ended up being an off the rack thing that i loved - and the only one i tried on - our expenses were minimal. we got spit roast catering, friend made the cake, i did all the invites myself (and they turned out fab might if i may say so myself!) - the "gift" for guests was a CD of music relevant to our relationship - which i made myself - cost maybe $2 a couple... i think all up (dress excluded) it cost us around $4000, which included $1000 over the bar, $1800 for catering (for around 115 people), gifts for everyone that helped out (bottle of wine with personalised labels), invitations etc. and was organised on a budget (DH unemployed at the time and paying mortgage/expenses on two houses for four months) from August 05 to Feb 06. it was full on, and i had to put in the hard yards on all the details myself, but it worked out really well.
if you need help with doing the "big" wedding on a budget, i'm here to help - add me on msn and ask away hun!
BellyBelly Member
Firstly, you dont need to spend a bomb or get yourself into debt to have a special wedding day. Your wedding day is what you make of it. At the end of the day, its about you & your man & the love that you have for one another and your DS.
Secondly well done for not going down the whole personal loan track, to pay for a wedding. That is such a bad move, especially for a young family. You dont need to be starting married life with a debt like that over your heads. Unfortunately alot of people get trapped.
A registry wedding to me sounds absolutely beautiful. I have heard some lovely stories. We almost went down that track ourselves, as like you we just wanted to get married, we were over the planning, cost, family input & on & on... You can make it so special.
Otherwise, I'll give you a quick run down on our plans & that could give you some inspiration. We are having a backyard casual affair. Will you have a nice backyard where you are moving, or could you use the MIL's backyard? We have organised a caterer for 60 people its just under $1000. Otherwise you can so easily cater for it yourself....so so easy I just didnt want the hassle on my wedding day iykwim. After our ceremony in a park not too far from home, everyone will rock up at our joint & we've organised party hire (chairs, tables etc) & we will dance the night away lol. Apart from food and alcohol, one of our bigger expenses has been my dress.
So onto the dress, would you consider a second hand dress? Otherwise you can get a stunning dress 'off the rack' in a bridal store, this is what I did and my dress is a couture that was marked down from $2,200 to just under $1000.
We arent using a photographer. Its a huge expense and all of our family & friends have cameras, so they will take plenty for us. We have even though of buying ourselves a new camera to use on the day & at least at the end of the day we will have stacks of pics & a camera that we can use again!!
We are also making our own cupcake wedding cake.
Another idea is an afternoon tea wedding. Pick a nice location & use a celebrant (we found a beautiful park right on the river, and I have hired it for 2 hours free of charge through the local council - there are plenty of free locations around) get married, go back to someones house & provide arvo tea foods, ie cheesecake shop, tea, coffee & nibblies. By doing it this way, its small, intimate & the budget is kept down but its still a classy wedding iykwim.
Invites, I dont know if I am allowed to mention the website here so I will FB it to you, they were $60 all up & are perfect.
What date are you hoping for? I hope you can get it to all come together for you. If you need any tips please feel free to ask me here on on FB, I've done so much wedding research I am going bonkers lol. Otherwise my wedding day is March 7th so look out for my pics for inspiration & ideas!!
At the end of the day, let me just say, my parents were married in a registry office, my dad had to borrow a smart pair of pants from his mate & my mum wore a simple dress from her wardrobe, they have one shocking wedding photo lol, YET they are still together.
BellyBelly Member
Oooh I am getting carried away now, but just to add, my cousin got married a month ago. She sent out invites inviting everyone to their 'engagement party', so everyone rocks up & they dissapear & get changed into their outfits & come out to surpise everyone & get married. I thought that was a wicked idea!!! This is a way to keep family out of the planning lol
Registered User
I don't want a big wedding. I don't want the stress or the expense. I either want a celebrant ceremony or a courthouse wedding. I refuse to have my wedding in a church.
I am thinking about dresses, and I don't want to wear white or anything similar (no ivory, no cream, no champagne...) and I don't want a formal gown. I want a simple summery style, very casual. Its so hard to find that online that isn't designer and more than $300! We don't have any savings yet, but that doesn't matter too much as we haven't set a date yet. DD's dress is easy, I can find one online very easily. DF wants a casual wedding as he's just not into suits. His clothes will probably be casual trousers that aren't cargo, and a nice button up shirt.
I was making a list, and family on my side is 21, that's grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins as well as my parents and brother. DF has probably about 20 as well. Add on some friends, another 10 people per se, and its already 50 people. Too many for a small simple wedding. So we decided on just parents and siblings, and some close friends. All of my family are interstate, except for my uncle's family of 4 who are in another part of NSW, several hours away. I have basically given up on the list. Would I offend family by not inviting them, despite the fact they're interstate? My mother's parents are so stoic they probably won't come. Since I haven't made life decisions that they approve of, ie I had DD outside of marriage.
Flowers, well I want real flowers. I want some in my hair, and I want a small bouquet, something I can toss over my shoulder. I want bridesmaids but I don't want it to get formal. So not sure if the bridesmaids would have bouquets.
Cake, well I will either make it myself, or have FMIL do it. Getting a bakery to make one, they'll charge me a fortune. Plus I'm in a small town, there aren't many bakeries.
Invitations, not hard. I can order them online or get nice paper and do them myself.
Reception, now we want a really simple one. Probably a BBQ or buffet style dinner. Not formal at all. Chairs and tables provided (either hire, or borrow from all we know) for guests to sit down if they want, but its not a formal dinner.
Drinks, well we provide food and dry bar, BYO alcohol. Shouldn't be a problem in a country town!
Argh it all looks easy, but it isn't!
Registered User
DH and I did the courthouse ceremony and we not only planned and pulled it off in under 6 weeks, but we only spent around $3000.
You can find the details on paperwork etc by googling it and finding your state's requirements, we're in QLD and all up the paperwork was around $300. You just file the 'Notice of Intention to Marry' bit with your local courthouse or whatever and that's about $275, then the marriage licence itself is another $65 or so dollars.
We just printed the Intent form, filled it out, lodged it at the courthouse and they asked us to pick a date there and then - we chose a date five weeks from that day (there's a minimum 'cooling off' period of around four weeks so we gave ourselves an extra week just to be sure we had time to put everything in place), and booked it in.
If you do it at the courthouse, they usually have special days when they perform marriages so don't worry, you won't be sitting in the lobby with a bunch of crims awaiting their turn in front of the judge!! Our court days up here are Mon, Thurs and Fri so Tues and Wed are the 'wedding' days.
You can wear whatever you want - be as formal or as casual as you like. The courthouse allows up to around 20 'guests', you can always ask if you want more people there because I'm sure they're happy to have people stand in the back (they go on how many seats they have in the particular room they use). DH and I didn't tell anybody except our parents we were getting married, our closest friends had no idea we were even engaged until we posted the wedding photos on MySpace!! So we had a total of seven guests - two parents and one sibling on each side, and my grandmother.
I bought a simple black cotton knee-length dress for $50 from a local boutique, as I was five and a half months' pregnant and wanted something I could wear again - I still wear it quite often now and it's lovely. I did my own makeup, and a friend of my mum's (who used to be a hairdresser but is now a SAHM and does friends' hair in her kitchen for a bit of pocket money) did my hair for $25. DH just wore a pair of black trousers that were his work uniform when he was in retail, a black button-down shirt, a tie that I picked up from an op shop for $1.50 (it fit with our 'colour scheme' of black, red and white) and his black Chuck Taylors. I had bought my shoes months before for a friend's 30's-themed birthday party and just wore them.
Our wedding bands cost us a little bit, DH just grabbed his out of the case and paid $140, mine was supposed to be the same price but because I wanted it in white gold and it had to be resized to fit my tiny fingers, it ended up being about $195. My engagement ring is a simple silver band with a CZ, it cost me $30 (and another $20 to get it resized).
After the 10-minute ceremony, we went around town to take some photos at some pretty locations (we have a lookout with a waterfall, and our Botanic Gardens have a lovely Japanese Teahouse and a pretty pond that looks nice in photos) and everybody just brought their own cameras to take pictures. Nothing professional, but you really don't need it unless your family are butt-senseless at taking photos - besides, you can do some amazing stuff with Photoshop and similar programs these days... It was good too because we had full control over what we wanted to do as far as posing etc, we're not the type to do all the cheesy wedding poses so all our shots are just beautiful, natural pics. Of course there were some shockers because only my dad is a professional photographer, but with six cameras aimed at us we managed to get a lot of good ones, and didn't cost us a cent bar taking the USB cards to Harvey Norman to get them printed!
We'd booked a night in a motel room to treat ourselves, get out of the house for the night, so after a quick trip home to get an overnight bag together we went to the motel and had dinner at the restaurant there. Everyone paid for their own meals and drinks (which was good because DH's parents are borderline alcos and DH's brother ordered an expensive seafood platter which he ended up eating maybe a quarter of!!), we'd ordered a slab mud cake from the Cheesecake Shop for around $75 including decorations, and that was our dessert.
We didn't have flowers, or a bridal party, or any of the trimmings that we just don't see as necessary to celebrate a marriage of two people who want to just belong to each other. It was a very fun, relaxed day with no hassles (apart from a couple of days before when my wedding ring still hadn't arrived at the jeweller's and there was a minor freakout about having it on time!! luckily it got sorted out), no *****fights, no pressure to make a big impression or impress people.. no jealousy about picking one friend over another to be in the bridal party, no extra expense of having to provide food etc for people I'm not particularly close to but felt obligated to invite (ie, we didn't invite anybody so nobody could feel left out!)... it was just DH and I, being joined together in front of our families and enjoying the day because it truly was all about US, not flowers, cakes, dresses, jewellery, or comparing our wedding to those of our friends.
I'd seriously recommend it to anybody who's on a budget or has hassles with certain friends and/or family who should be acting their age and know better than to cause trouble. Like I said, it was so much cheaper than these big weddings we see everywhere now, we didn't go into debt to put on a big show for everyone and at the end of the day, it really was just all about being married and being in love and declaring that in front of our families.
I hope that info gives you something to work with, or answers some questions you have about the whole process... if you need anything else just PM me, I'm happy to help out!
Registered User
Cost - $300 (I think). We had to put down $100 to set the date. You have to give the court 30 days notice prior to getting married.
What did you wear - A $30 dress I bought the day before!! It was a pearl colour and I wore it with a dusty pink wrap and a matching necklace. I wore little kitten heels.
Do you think it is still as special - We don't clasify this date as our real wedding date. We had our symbloic ceremony 3 weeks later in the Greek Islands which we call our wedding date. Getting married at the court house was just legally easier. DH and I both had our Hens/Bucks parties the night before so we were feeling a bit seedy. It was lovely though - short a sweet.
How did your family react - A lot of people were glad to be able to see us get married at the court house because most of those that came couldn't make it over to Greece for our big wedding.
& any other details you are willing to spill - You will have a meeting with the registrar of the court (I think that's what he was called) and they will ask you a few questions and help you pick a date. Ours was in between bail hearings. It was special in it's own way - we giggled the whole way through and there were no nerves. It's much more relaxing when there isn't a big production. Three weeks later at our "big" wedding I was a nervous wreck - and I was already married!! We didn't tell any of our guests in the Greek Islands that we were already married - we didn't want to spoil it for them! We had our official marriage certificate from the courthouse displayed in a cute little canister on our cake table at our "big" wedding.
Registered User
Your weddings sound perfect. I think I have decided to not have a bridal party, just guests, I'd probably have my close friend take my flowers, and DF can have his mate hand him the rings, or he could have the rings himself. I've decided on plain wedding bands, that's enough. My engagement ring is four figures, so that's plenty! I think we could have the reception at a restaurant or one of the really good pubs in town, and have everyone pay their own. Not sure yet. The date isn't set until December, but January or February is more likely. I'm trying to spread things out over time so its not a mad dash. We'll see how that turns out later!
Our IVF Blessing Has Arrived after 6 Cycles
Hey I may be a little late but DH and I got married in the Reg office in Mebourne which is in the old treasury building looked just as good as a chruch and we still had 50 people there. It took about half an hour and then we had our friends join us for dinner as a pressie. Also we had a good photo deal with Kate Ramsey Google her she is amazing.
PM me if you want more details
Registered User
Hi cookiemonster,
Just discovered this too and I know exactly how you feel. We got married in rush in registry, it was organised within a week. Booked Tuesday, squeezed in for Sat arvo left o/s Sunday. The registry was nice but I wouldn't recommend quite the rush. Anyway every since we've been planning the real day and its all such a fuss.
Anyway... you asked about renewals in a church later on. We're planning to do this... one day. They're called "blessing ceremonies" and its all the bells and whistles minus paperwork. I have looked at several denominations and most say that they have a requirement of having at least one person bride or groom must have been baptised in a Christian religion. So don't feel you can't approach any church.
Another suggestion we had was to just organise a big picnic in botanical gardens, I love the idea but dh has his heart set on feeding people. One day...
Registered User
My parents renewed their vows in our local Church when I was younger. They did all the bells and whistles, reception being at home for anyone who wanted to come. There was a simple slab cake and nibblies everywhere. Their wedding was in Dad's parents' backyard, very simple. I guess like what I want, but except I won't be wearing the fancy dress.
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