Wedding planning - testimonies from women who've done it already.

Planning a cheap(er) wedding in London

I got engaged in December 2004, and married April 2005. That’s 4 months to plan a wedding – ages!

The first step for me was choosing the date, and that was dependant on the venue. Having not been to any (!) weddings in London (I was the first of my age-group to get married), I didn’t have a clue where to start. www.totallyjewish.com had a list of venues to help me get started. Someone told me about the Decorium, which wasn’t available on the day I wanted. All the hotels were too expensive and didn’t include anything. So after going to see it I chose the Kinloss Suite. At the time it was very reasonable, it’s been done up since so I don’t know how much it is now. It was lovely, had a big space for dancing and someone put fairy lights around the pillars for a different wedding so we got extra lighting free!

As for caterers, again, cheap was in. I had heard names but they were quoting prices way out of my range. Someone told me about Amor – we also wanted Kedassia Kashrut so that limited our options too. Interestingly, this hechsher means the food is cheaper? Well, there are fewer options. But everything tasted amazing and the portion sizes were great. I got the dessert I wanted too!

My mother got a recommendation for photographers and her choice turned out to be the father of the fiancé of a good friend. So that was nice! And the photos turned out great too – Itamar Engelsman. We got a DVD of the pictures and two albums full – over 500 pictures so we could distribute them amongst relatives without having to make too many copies. Also 2 big pictures and he got one in the JC.

Can’t remember the name of the video guy – my tip for future would be to talk to him beforehand to tell him no female singing on the background music, and to include the bits you want included on the video (like the sheva brachot at the end). We got 3 or 4 DVD’s I think.

The band was Danny Shine (Neshama) who was a friend as I davened at the same shul as him so he did us a deal.

We had a big issue over the benchers. My husband (fiancé at the time!) went searching in Israel but we wanted English instructions at least (you can get translation but then no zemirot) which limited us to Artscroll or the NCSY bencher – we went for a nice Artscroll one with zemirot in.

I left flowers up to my mum, and she and my dad also spent hours over the invitations (MS Word causing problems with Hebrew fonts!) with my mum sat tying small blue bows to stick on the front of each invitation! The money they saved they gave to tzedakah and presented us with a certificate on the day.

I got my dress from the gemach on Brent Street – there were SO many dresses – the deal was you pay only for cleaning and a donation for a used dress, or 400 pounds for a new one. I tried a few new ones on but preferred a used. It smelt BAD when I tried it on (as the last time it was worn was at someone’s wedding!) but after cleaning was lovely and I had a hard time giving it back. The gemach had tiaras, shoes and veils too. I chose a heavy veil as I wanted to concentrate on prayer when walking down the aisle. I was up for wearing trainers as my dress was long but needed heels to avoid altering the dress and was lucky enough to find comfortable shoes at the gemach. I had to wear a double loop underskirt (also from the gemach) to hold the dress out enough so it wouldn’t need shortening (there was a pretty trim at the bottom that would have been lost) which was fun when going to the bathroom!

Nice ideas we did – husband and I sat down and thought of 7 things we wanted for our marriage, like children, parnassah, etc. Then we individually composed prayers for each of the seven and read them as I was circling him under the chuppah.

Make up – I asked a friend whose pictures I had liked for her make up artist – turned out to be a friend of hers who was going to make up school – she was amazing, my make up was natural whilst covering everything I wanted it to cover. She cost about half of the going rate, and both my mother and I like the lipsticks she used so much we went out afterwards and bought them! For the trial, she did half my face one way and half another so I could choose. She also did my hair which was exactly what I wanted, whilst not being so much work for her as I told her in advance that my veil would be attached the whole day. I still had 80 clips to remove after the wedding!

Cars – my grandfather has a Jaguar! So he drove my sister and me there.

Flowers – we had the chuppah decorated, two pedestals, my bouquet and the chassan, my father, his father, his brothers and nephew’s lapel flowers/corsages for 650 pounds, oh, plus a box of rose petals. On each table my mother had bought a small bowl from BHS and placed inside a tea light. The bowl had to be placed on a surface to protect the table so the rose petals were sprinkled around to hide the metal surface.

My husband and I had great fun doing our list at John Lewis and we use all of it every day until today.

Howard Robbins helped us organize the day so my dad wouldn’t be stressed. I was friends with his son so he also did us a deal. Given that my husband and I hadn’t a clue what was going on his help was invaluable.