wedding plans

I mentioned a few weeks ago that Rob and I went to look at a wedding venue/location. It's safe to say we loved it, and I already started planning it out in my head like you do.

I have never been the type of person to dream about getting married, I didn't have a dream wedding planned in my head, and I certainly didn't have any budget or different wedding scenarios  (ie Monica from friends and her wedding book...) I was actually fairly cynical of weddings until recently, not really seeing the point of them, and didn't think they really mattered to a relationship. Which is fine, some people don't need to be married to be happy with each other or raise a happy family, and I like that too. But I think since meeting Rob, and knowing that I don't want to be with anyone else, and that I finally feel settled has changed something. Plus bringing Theo into the world made me want to take that step towards commitment and to becoming a little more secure and rounded, if that makes sense. This is just for my family alone, this doesn't mean that if people aren't married they are less of a family than those with married parents!
I had a really good conversation with one of my dear friends Anna, who felt the same way about marriage and it felt good to share these thoughts with her, I can't imagine having this same conversation with her 5 or so years ago, but how things change ay?

Anyway my main reasons for wanting to get married are to celebrate mine and Rob's relationship, and to share a special day with our closest family and friends. To be able to get everyone who we hold dear to us for one day would make us both so happy. To make a vow and commitment to each other that we will always try and work at our relationship no matter what life throws at us, that we are there to support each other through the good and the bad. I want to make these vows in front of the people I love too. I want to set up our family for the future, and for things to be a little more concrete. And I want to have a good old party!

When Rob proposed last year it was as a commitment, and there was no plan to be married in the near future. But slowly as the year has progressed, and we have attended a few weddings, mainly my Mum's and saw how beautiful and meaningful they can be, it made us want to start thinking of our own. I had a few things in mind about how I wanted it to look and where we wanted it to be, but we had no idea of budget or anything. I read somewhere that the average wedding in the UK costs around £20,000. £20,000?! are you kidding me? There is no way in hell that Rob and I have that kind of money, and even if we did, I couldn't justify spending that much money on one day. But after starting to look for wedding venues it seems almost impossible to do a very cheap wedding, exactly the way you want to do it. In my head I just want to be able to be outside (weather depending) in a pretty garden or field, where we have enough space and not too many restrictions, for under £1000. Unless you have friends or family who have the type of land, it seems impossible to find somewhere cheap.

But we did find somewhere that ticked pretty much all of our boxes, but was a little more expensive than we planned, but even so we were pretty much ready to book it, when we decided to have a serious talk about the dreaded money. The thing is, is that we have decided we kind of need to move again. I know I know, we are obsessed with moving, but I don't feel like we've found the right place yet. We found the right house, but it's not in the right place. We want to move back over to near where Rob's parents are, and my friends are, and lots of the places I go with Theo are. Also thinking about the future we want to be near good schools, and this area has quite a few. So we needed to seriously weigh up our options and put our priorities in order, and we can't do both. Moving and being settled in the area we want, near good schools is the most important thing. This made me really sad to think that we couldn't get married in this pretty much perfect place we found.

But then I read Janet's story of her wedding, which looked beautiful and so much fun, that it sort of changed my perspective on things a little. Yes it would be amazing to have the perfect wedding venue, and it look like something off of my pinterest wedding board, but if it's not attainable at the moment, then what is the most important thing: getting married in a pretty location and it looking good but costing more than we can afford and therefore putting it off for an unknown amount of time, or choosing to do it sooner, at a not as perfect or pretty location but it being affordable, but still end up having a great day (fingers crossed)

So I think we've come to a conclusion, I think we're going to simplify it a lot, and go for something a lot cheaper for the venue, and try and keep all the other costs down too (I know there will be some hidden costs we didn't expect along the way!) and still plan for next September (and try and save as we go!)

This post is really long, and probably not of that much interest to a lot of you, but I needed to get a few things out of my head about it. So if anyone has any tips of planning a very very budget wedding then please send them my way!