Tori and Richard didn’t have lots of extra cash to drop on their May wedding, so instead of going into debt they simply decided to make peace with it and to plan the wedding they wanted within their £4500 means. They sold things they no longer needed (like fancy silverware that they NEVER used or even looked at) in order to raise the funds they needed (“It transpires we wanted a wedding DJ more than a canteen of fancy spoons!”) We are ALL about this attitude here at Rock n Roll Bride by the way!
They were wed at the Mercure Bradford Bankfield Hotel on bank holiday Monday. “Since we had no idea about a theme but were trying to wrangle dinosaurs and space together as things that represented ‘us’, our theme kind of became Interstellar on a budget!!” said the bride. “I looked at Pinterest, saw some projects and thought ‘This must be how you theme a wedding in 2019… with rose gold dino toys’ because everyone else was doing it. Cue three days of haunting toy shops before we abandoned that idea and decided to do it our own way instead. Richard had started to look at wedding stationery, saw some great customisable star designs on Vistaprint and that ended up being what we went with because it just felt right.”
Although the bride wore a traditional dress (bought as an ex-display on eBay), and their venue wasn’t that ‘out there’, the couple still wanted their wedding to feel as non ‘weddingy’ as possible. Tori continues, “I planned to not having a big white dress… that was until I tried one on. However I was still unable to escape the draw of chunky, neon bling and an illuminated bouquet so I added those to make my outfit feel more like me. My mother-in-law is a florist so I asked her to show me how to make a bouquet after buying a load of fake flowers from Country Baskets. I was pretty terrible at it so she ended up doing it for me! Richard gave her some LED lights to entwine in it so I had a really cool illuminated bouquet”.
Their legal ceremony was held at the registry office the week before because it was the cheapest way to legally do it. That also meant on the day itself they could have complete control of the ceremony. “Having booked a cheap wedding date (Monday 27th May) we found out that to have a registrar at an ‘approved premises’ on a bank holiday was around £500, but getting legally wed at the registry office on any other Monday was only £50. As our friend was doing the ceremony for us it seemed better sense to get legally hitched the Monday before our big day.”
“We had a friend, a comedienne, perform our wedding ceremony dressed as a nun, so it would be just the way we wanted it – funny and a little surreal. That was really important to us. We wanted a traditional, recognisable structure with a celebrant, congregation, aisle, readings and singing – just without the religious bits.”
“We also hired a Star Wars Stormtrooper to be our usher at the ceremony and celebrate our love of sci-fi. There was a singalong in place of where hymns might normally feature in a church wedding. We sung Queen’s Crazy Little Thing Called Love and It Must be Love by Madness. Our guests did an impromptu musical flash mob which we knew nothing about but found hilarious; our vows were preceded by us performing a musical duet.”
This budget-savvy couple have plenty of brilliant advice for those of you planning a similarly thrifty day: “Try not to get hung up on little things and keep a sense of perspective”, Tori advises. “You care about using just the right font but no one else does. Know when to quit Pinterest – there is such as thing as too many ideas and once you get an idea that works for you, more ideas can actually be really counterproductive. Don’t feel bad if there are things you can’t afford or don’t get done professionally – your homemade DIY can still look wonderful and can inspire awe in others. Do things your way, it’s your wedding. If you don’t have a theme just go with what you like and it will probably work out just fine.”
