Sorry if this turns into a bit of a rant but here goes....

We'd agreed and signed our contract with the venue in January, and paid the £500 deposit...then got thinking,

As we are on a budget we thought about saving money by cutting out the dessert for the wedding breakfast and serving our wedding cake instead, this would save us about a fiver a head if it was okay'd by the venue. Then we thought about the evening buffet and we weren't really happy with the £14.50 p/head choice we had made and could see a lot of waste - therefore we thought about a much simpler (and cheaper) option of just having bacon rolls and mini fish & chips on offer instead - which we know will go down a storm.

Emailed our venue to ask about this yesterday morning and to ask for the amended cost and had a reply this afternoon, saying they would need our menu choice for the wedding breakfast to see if it was feasible and would fit into our plan?!?!

Anyhoo - got discussing the menu earlier on with H2B and we've now increased our numbers from 40 to 52! WTF?? How did that happen? Thought we were saving money? - I've emailed this to the venue asking for the cheaper options but that we now want to have 52 in the daytime. If it's all agreed we'll spend about £500 more on the whole day with the extra drinks and chair covers and favours etc.

THOUGHT WE WERE DOING IT TO SAVE MONEY?!?!?!?

Sorry for the rant - I needed to vent!

It is crap when that happens. I guess that is why they always say that you should always allow 10% of your overal budget for things like this. It really is pants.

Hopefully on the bright side of things there will be other things that you can claw it back from.

flowers should be pretty simple to save on - I've been visiting florists this week for prices to get an idea. Decided that they were such ridiculous prices for what I wanted (simple gerbera handtieds) that I'm going to buy the flowers from a florist and make them myself. Can get everything I need for about £50 for me, bridesmaids, centrepieces etc instead of paying them £70 just for mine! Have a shop around, its easy to save if you've got the time to do bits and bobs yourself. I've also just pinched Jo's idea and bought some chocolate moulds from the bay of e and am going to make my own chocolates as favours :o) xx

well depending on what you want the bouquets aren't difficult to do. i bought a couple wedding flower books to learn the basics and its dead simple. Although to be fair, I'm only having 7 big gerberas in a handtied and same but smaller for bm's and centrepieces so mine is about as simple as it comes! xx

Know the feeling, you think you save in one area and then it gets eaten away but double somewhere else. :-(