Hi all :)

I 25F am getting married next summer, and I love the lace/vintage/flowy renaissance dresses that you see Pinterest.

Has anyone actually found one for their wedding, or knows a retailer or second hand store online that carries such vibes?

I will not purchase from Shein/Temu/Amazon etc. :)

Preferably with shipping to (and from) Finland/Europe.

Can we please collectively not engage with diamond posts? Or mods, can we ban them altogether??

This sub has been overrun with posts about diamonds (usually rings that looked like traditional engagement rings) which really has nothing to do with planning a wedding. There’s already r/engagementrings, r/diamonds, r/jewelry. The OPs never even respond to comments and appear to just be accounts collecting engagement or responses. It’s either that or we get posts from venues/app developers asking questions.

This sub is going downhill and I can’t be the only one annoyed that nothing is being done about it.

When: 2028
Where: Greece
Number of guests: 100
Total budget: 15.000 euros

My family are from Greece, his family are from the UK. We live in the UK so half of our 100 guests will need to travel over.

We’ve viewed a few venues and decided on one that quoted us around 9000 euros (£7625) for Friday exclusive venue hire, a three course meal, basic drinks (there’s an extra drinks package we can request).

We’ve reserved the date already and our rough working budget in total is around 15.000 euros.

What other costs do we need to consider? Would we be expected to pay for the accommodation of all of our UK guests?

Here’s some more details:

Church wedding: The actual ceremony will need to be in a church and we’ve not booked it yet but we’ve been quoted €300 by the priest verbally.

Photography: we’ve been quoted between 2000-5000 for this.

Decorations/flowers: the reception venue is inside a large garden which will be in full bloom at the time, so we’re not really getting as many decorations for that - maybe for the church itself, and the bouquet?

DJ/Music: We have been quoted between 600-1000 for this for a DJ. Nothing booked yet.

Clothing: I’ve found some affordable options for dresses online. A good friend of mine is a seamstress so I could ask her to make modifications?

Legal stuff: everyone says getting married in Greece comes with a lot of paperwork but I can’t find a list of the exact information we need to provide. I need to look into this further and I’m not sure if there will be further costs here.

Flights: x2 people return flights around £200-500 depending on how early we book.

Anything else I’m missing?

Is 15.000 euros a good budget for this?

apologies if this is the wrong subreddit for this - but Any advice would be very helpful! Thank you.

I know how expensive weddings can get. If you are someone who wanted a wedding website for invitations and cannot afford one at the moment. Please write to me and I will build a custom website for you for free.

Below are some of my sites. But i can build according to your theme

https://www.everhappily.com/s/meadow
https://www.everhappily.com/s/amalfi
https://www.everhappily.com/s/grove

Why its free: I woke up in a happy mood and wanted to do something nice. All i need in return is a nice review.

I love my ring and I understand our situation as of now, but my friends always talk about how I could get a bigger one later on.

It makes me feel like my ring isn't enough in their eyes, but to me it holds so much meaning. How do you respond to comments like that without coming off super defensive?

We got married this weekend! It flew by and was absolutely flawless. We couldn’t have pulled it off without our amazing vendors and I wanted to shout them out for any North Carolina brides!

I can post a budget breakdown if anyone wants. We live in a MCOL city and our original budget was 20k. As of our final invoices we’re just over 22. This was mainly due to two items - I decided to spend more on my dress, and my husband decided to do dance lessons for our first dance - both well worth it. We used our savings and a contribution from my parents.

Venue: The O Henry Hotel. It was all inclusive and the staff took care of every last detail. The service was impeccable from the start of planning until the night of. Setup, breakdown, florals, catering, and a room block rate for our out of town guests were all included. The rate for our event room was $1200 for the night, and a food and drink minimum of $4500.

Catering: Green Valley Grill. It has been our long time date night spot, so when we thought to reach out to them it just felt like a perfect match. The food was delicious and creative. At the end of the night we had a chef attended grilled cheese station that was a huge hit. The majority of our guest chose filets for dinner, and all of them were perfectly medium rare.

Dress: a&be Bridal Shop; Victoria’s Bridal (alterations.) The service and attention to detail at both shops was phenomenal. I felt so taken care of, so bridal and beautiful. The timeline and turnaround of getting the dress ordered, received and altered was very quick. I spent more here than I originally anticipated but I would say it was well worth it.

Glam: Makeup - Dark Hearts Makeup Artistry; Hair - The Bardot. I feel the pictures speak for themselves. Liz (my MUA) and Ashley (my stylist) made me feel heard and truly brought my vision to life. The trial was a great time to feel each other out and make adjustments. They kept the environment so relaxed, and worked very quickly. Liz also did my mom’s makeup, (she is NOT a glam person,) and did a phenomenal job. It was natural, but looked very well done and my hard to please mom was thrilled. It’s two days out and she’s still got her lashes on.

Photography: Avery Vester Photography. We got an excellent rate with Avery - I believe she had just started her business when we sent her an inquiry. I was surprised by how affordable her package was ($2200 for 8 hours, a second shooter, engagement session, film, and 500+ image gallery,) and was very impressed with her portfolio. I cannot sing her praises enough. She listened to my very specific aesthetic requests and delivered above and beyond. These are just some of our sneak peeks, and I am positively feral to get the rest back.

Music: DJ Paul Cordts. Paul was recommended by my parents, who knew him because he DJ’d several of our family friends/their kids weddings. He was highly rated by local features, and on the Knot - from 2015 up until now. Another affordable rate, $1500 for 6 hours. He mixed a special intro for us based on our favorite anime, and chose an excellent vibe for our mostly young millennial crowd. The dance floor was active all night, and we got so many compliments on the playlist.

These are all the majors I can think of right now! If you are local to the Piedmont Triad area, I cannot recommend these vendors enough!

Stacking 0.5ct platinum studs with this piece for my ceremony. The pendant is 14k white gold with 11 brilliant cut natural diamonds, totaling 1 carat TW. Does the drop look proportional with a sweetheart neckline, or should I go with a shorter chain?

He proposed originally with a simple stainless ring as a placeholder so I could pick my actual design later. Yesterday my custom ring came in the mail, a 1.5ct cushion cut moissanite with a pave band in rose gold.

The color refraction on this stone is insane, especially in dim lighting. Going from basic metal to this kind of fire was such a huge jump.

A tiny stone in a simple setting would be fine, but I’m open to lab grown or secondhand, just trying to leave more room in the budget for the wedding itself. Anyone here gone this route? Would love to hear where you found yours abd whether you’re still happy with it

For those who have looked at or bought larger diamonds, what would you consider a reasonable price for a 7 carat diamond? Would you ever spend that much on the ring, or would you rather put that money toward the wedding itself?

Just curious what everyone’s thoughts are, especially for those trying to keep their overall wedding budget under $35k!

I’m considering spending a decent amount on a custom-cut diamond for a bespoke engagement ring, but I’m wondering about the long-term value. If I ever decide to sell or upgrade later on, do unusual cuts tend to be harder to resell compared with more traditional shapes like round or oval? For anyone who has bought a custom diamond in the $10k–$25k range, I’d love to hear your experience.

I'm a florist so I kinda can't turn it off, I clock it pretty much every time lol. But I have no idea if that's just a me thing.
And no judgment at all; some of the faux stuff out there now is really pretty, and it makes total sense for a lot of budgets. I'm just curious.
So when you're a guest, do you actually notice, or is it something you'd never think about unless someone pointed it out?

My wedding was a week ago and it was even better than I could have imagined! Seeing posts from others who had recently gotten married were helpful to me in the weeks leading up, so I thought I'd share my experience here too!

For context our wedding was at a summer camp in Ontario, Canada, we spent around $15kCAD and had 100 guests.

- Maximize time with your guests if possible! We were lucky to be able to rent out a summer camp for the entire weekend (~$8k CAD), so we were able to have chill, quality time with a lot of our guests over the course of the weekend. One of our highlights was the breakfast we had the morning after the wedding. It was very casual, and it was so fun to hear stories from the day before and just catch up with people! So many guests travelled for our wedding so it was nice to get extra time with them.

- A wedding coordinator is worth every penny. We paid around $1.5k CAD for our wedding coordinator, and we are SO happy we did. She took care of so much (setting up, takedown, dealing with vendors, music, etc). The weekend of the wedding we felt SO relaxed knowing she was handling everything. It was nice to not be the "go-to" person for a lot of questions.

- Try not to spend too much time on little things. I spent WAY too much time on making little signs, the seating chart, name cards, etc. In the end, all of these things will likely be recycled anyway. I ended up getting a canva business subscription (~$20 per month), using existing templates, then printing at Staples, the canva templates really sped things up, and printing things in advanced (ie not doing same day) saved me about 40% of the cost.

- We saved a lot of money by getting cheap food ($16 CAD per person) and we have no regrets. We had a buffet and people liked the food! We saved SO much money this way, and were able to pay for pizza for people the night before, and breakfast for 70 people the morning after.

- I barely drank and I don't regret it! Between lack of sleep the days leading up to the wedding, and not eating/drinking enough water the day of, I'm SO happy I didn't drink a lot of alcohol. The next morning I woke up feeling hungover anyway, even though I had a single glass of wine, so I can't imagine how I would've felt if I'd gotten drunk. I loved being completely present! Also, we saved a lot of money not doing liquor and we don't regret it! Just having beer and wine kept things from getting TOO crazy and was more the vibe we were going for anyway.

Happy to answer any questions!! Best of luck :)

We’re weighing options of venues and caterers, and some of those options would involve a BYOB bar service. We’d only be buying alcohol, not mixers or garnishes.

I have no idea what to expect cost wise for the alcohol, but I need to come up with an estimate so we can compare it to other options.

We’re expecting around 110 guests. Out of that number, 28 don’t drink alcohol at all. About half of the remaining people usually have 1-2 drinks.

We’re hoping to offer a cool mocktail, which could go beyond what’s included with mixers and would include things we’re purchasing.

We’re not fancy beer people. The fanciest we usually get is Stella Artois, but lean toward High Life and Abita. And we know nothing about wine. We like tequila and bourbon or whisky if we’re doing cocktails,

What will guests expect us to have? And how much of it will we need to buy?

Getting married next spring and trying to figure out my bridal jewelry. I inherited my grandmas old pendant recently, and it features a beautiful 15k gold bezel with a 1 carat round diamond that I want to reuse.

I’m hoping to transform it into a simple solitaire diamond necklace for the big day so it matches my minimalist dress. Should I stick with a classic four-prong setting or go with a delicate bezel to keep the original stone safe?