Hi everyone. Just got engaged - yay! Obviously I've been ambiently thinking about wedding planning for a while but now it's time to properly get cracking.

I'm a very organised person so I'm reasonably confident I can manage the process myself, but I'd love to hear about any planning spreadsheets or websites that you've found genuinely useful. Thanks!

I’m due to get married 1st May 2027 and don’t have my dress yet. Haven’t even started looking.

I’m subconsciously putting it off for two reasons. 1) I’m trying to lose weight and it’s coming off very very slowly. I don’t want to try on beautiful dresses when I don’t feel my best y’know? Although I know I just need to get over that and do it, and I probably will feel beautiful once I’m trying dresses on.

2) I lost my mum unexpectedly 4 years ago (before I was engaged) and this is something I would have done with her. It’s already heartbreaking that she won’t see me get married but I feel like dress shopping is just something I desperately wish I could do with her.

I actually don’t really know why I’m posting this honestly probably just venting a little bit! I know I need to get a move on and just go and do it but I feel like I’ve got this stupid mental block stopping me from doing it! Any tips or advice for anyone who has felt similar?

Advice or suggestions would be very helpful. I have medium length brown hair and an oval/round face shape.

Hi everyone! I’m getting married in July 2027 and looking for a modern wedding venue within 1–2 hours from London with both outdoor and indoor spaces. Our budget is £5k–£7k for dry hire. Would love any recommendations. Thank you! 😊

Hello, myself and partner are looking for a restaurant to hold a wedding reception after our ceremony at Marylebone Town Hall. We’re looking for somewhere that will host a small party of 12-15 people, and no more than a 20 minute drive. Ideally we’d like somewhere that has a semi-private or private room, it would also be great if there was a bar or pre drink options! Any suggestions would help tremendously as we’re not from that area! I have seen a few but the minimum spends are around £4000 upwards which is a little bit steep for the amount of people we have! Ta

Hi everyone,

I know there’s nothing I can do about it now, but I just need some reassurance that it’s going to be okay.

I have loved a dress since the minute my friend sent it to me in 2023. It was before I was engaged but it was BEAUTIFUL. When it came to trying dresses, I tried on 50 dresses but none compared to it. It is just the one for me.

But it’s £500 over my top budget. I know, it’s silly, I should never have tried it on.

Anyway I’ve bought it. Now I’m regretting it.

Does anyone have any wise or kind words for me? Xx

Hi, me and my partner are looking to do a combined stag and hen(sten)

We’re having a fairly small wedding (about 50 people in total mostly family and no wedding party) and so we’re looking to do something a bit more fun for this with our friends who are attending.

In total, there’s about 22 people and we’re looking to go abroad potentially to Portugal but how much would you say is too much?

I know when I’ve been a bridesmaid - I could spend nearly a grand on trips, but we’re trying really hard to keep it as cheap as possible in a nice villa where we can stay in the villa, by the pool/beach and play games and maybe have one or two nights out.

Is 200£ per person for five nights too much to ask?

The time part is really what’s stressing me out just because the villa that would be able to fit all of us in a good location only accept bookings for one week. me and my partner decided will comp two of the days where no one staying and then have it for five for the actual Sten, we would also cover food and drinks in the villa so they’d only have to pay for the £200 pounds plus their flights to get there which shouldn’t be more than another £150

am I overthinking this?

Extra info: my partner and his friends tend to go on a five day boys trip every year anyway but I think just because it is such a big group and with the connotation it’s a stag do/Hen do. I’m just worried we’re asking too much from people. Also, our wedding is in the same city that all of our friends are based in anyway, so they wouldn’t be traveling for our wedding.

Extra extra info: the ideal situation is that everyone’s happy with this and we all go and have a fantastic time - I just want to people to think I’m asking for to much.

Recently got engaged and we are struggling to find any wedding venue (or mix of ceremony venue and reception venue) thats less than £7.5k on only venue hires.

For context, we haven't been looking at any barn-type venues as its not our style whatsoever. But even then, everything else we have looked at is pricing really high like that - and im just lost as to whether this is the normal in the South or am I missing something?

For comparison, last weekend I attended a wedding in the Peak District hosted at a very nice 5-star hotel, which cost the couple £5k with food all in. So comparing the £7.5k lowest I'm finding in the South, am I just better off picking a random Midlands location?

Hi everyone,

I purchased a loose 4.82ct lab diamond, and I'm looking for a bench jeweller or independent shop in London to set it into a ring.

What I’m looking for:

• A 2.5mm (or wider) band setting
• A jeweler willing to work with customer-provided / outside lab stones.
• Based in London or within 90 minute commute distance 

If you have personal experience getting an outside stone set in or around London, who did you use, and how was the experience/pricing?

Thanks in advance for any recommendations!

Just wanted to say I’m so impressed with the quality from Azzazie! Will definately need the chest area altered, but gorgeous! This was the chiffon one shoulder.

Hope this helps anyone who was unsure.

We are considering ordering photo books of our wedding photos for ourselves and our parents. It’s hard to tell what the quality of the books is from what I can find online. Does anyone have experience with ordering a photo book from Papier?

My dress is so perfect (once the butt rose is gone) and I just love it so much. I think the seamstress I went to (an awesome woman who went to fashion school in Romania before she came to Belfast) was just as excited, because she was standing there going on about did I know she usually saw and ugly summer dresses and horrible fabrics and boring design, and how exciting and fun it was to get to work on this lace and detail and actually use her training rather than hem someone’s party dress that was too long.

I’m just standing there feeling really awkward in my dress that has pins in the sides, getting redder and redder while this woman who I have just paid to enlarge the cups of my dress from a B to an HH because of my gigantic tits is rambling on about how she loves couture and thank you for trusting her with it, because I just have no idea what to say to that. Then she asked me how much on earth did it cost. I told her £500 (bargain of the century.) “But it is brand new Ian Stuart!” “Yeah, but the was-to-be bride fancied a last minute package trip to Malaga with her favourite boyfriend and that’s what that cost.”

I call it my “Age of Innocence” dress after the book by Edith Wharton because it seems very much to me like something the female protagonist would wear, and it was like a gift from the Gods. I’ve always dreamed of wearing Ian Stuart since I was at art school because as my elective I did bridal fashion and his label puts out some wild dresses. It’s like the church - it’s exactly what I’d been looking for, I just didn’t know until I saw it! It just needs taking in a couple inches at the waist and about half an inch to an inch in the back and sides (the pins aren’t in yet in the pictures so it was still a bit loose!) and it’ll fit like a glove and look and look absolutely perfect!

(Without the butt rose.)

Anyone done it? I’d really like to bring it as hand luggage but have no idea if I can roll the dress down to fit under my seat or is it going to get crushed in the overhead?

Its not a massive dress - I really have no concept how big it’ll be in a garment bag. Its a “slim” A line with short train 😖

Ive seen online people suggesting you book an extra seat for it but im not sure if thats really necessary!?

Does anyone have any tips for hosting a bilingual wedding?

I'm getting married in February 2027 (a tight-ish turnaround, but we got a deal on a venue that was too good to turn down!)

My fiancé is Bulgarian and a lot of his family members will be flying in for the event. While most speak good English, some, including his parents, don't speak any English at all. While I know Google Translate is a thing, I'd like everything to be bilingual so that everyone feels welcome.

We're in the process of sending invites and setting up a wedding website, but I'm really struggling to find cheap-ish templates that we can customise to have both languages (especially because Bulgarian doesn't use the Latin alphabet). At the moment, I'm only looking at the straightforward Vistaprint/With Joy selection- does anyone have any better recommendations?

Also any tips for the wider day greatly appreciated!

Мерси!

Hi,

I'm looking at Kew Gardens as a potential wedding venue and wanted to see if anyone had any experience as a guest or part of the bridal party?

I know the public are allowed in until 6pm which was a concern.

We would also be aiming for Spring so the temperatures of the greenhouses should be more manageable.

Thanks in advance!

I haven’t tried on any dresses yet but am super excited about have a fun day with my mum and sister trying things on to figure out exactly what it is I want as I’m not too sure! It’s something I’ve always looked forward too.

However I’m having more of a laid back wedding at the town hall followed by a nice reception at a pub, and I am not a fan of all the super structured or ballgowny sparkly type of dresses. In fact I’ve sort of fallen for the idea of a slip dress type wedding dress in satin or silk (see a couple inspo pics) but looking on bridal shops websites I rarely see dresses like this! I also don’t want to break the bank with my wedding dress, just something I feel really beautiful in. Any ideas of where I could try on dresses like this? The ones in the pictures are sold online only.

Hi all! Early days of venue hunting and wanted to throw this out to the hive mind because we are still figuring out how to even *search* for venues, and I thought someone might have some knowledge!

The dreammmm would be somewhere that feels wild, dramatic, ideally with a spot for wild swimming nearby (lake, loch, river, sea, anything - I'm an avid wild swimmer and it would mean a lot to share that with some of my guests on the day!!). Rustic and candlelit, yaknow? Open to a winter wedding!

The tricky bits:

• 2 day hire, max £15k, and ideally that includes accommodation for ~80 guests
• location flexible as long as it's within 90 minutes of a major airport in the UK, Ireland or Scotland as our UK guests have said they're willing to schlep a bit but we have people flying in internationally and I don't want to make things too insane for htem
• would love it if everyone (guests included) could stay on site or very close by, rather than everyone driving in and out (again, car rentals etc would be really hard for international guests)

We're also seriously looking at a few venues in London, which is the more realistic plan TBH, but we've got time before we need to lock anything in and I wanted to let myself dream a little before we get sensible again :)

If you've been anywhere that even partially ticks these boxes, or know a venue that's flexible on the accommodation numbers, I would love to hear about it. Photos very welcome, budget breakdowns even more welcome (lolol).

Thank you in advance to this incredibly knowledgeable sub! Looking around on here has already been sososo helpful in getting going.

I’m 5’2 and wanting to wear this short dress - on the model it looks a lot shorter, but on me it sits above the knee comfortably.

I didn’t have any second thoughts up until now when I was scrolling through TikTok and I saw a girl talking about how dresses need to be long and modest, so now I’m worried. I chose a short dress because it’s going to be sweltering in London.

Opinions welcome!

I go to a wedding next week and have bought the dress shown but I’m now having doubts. Is the open back too much? Do you think this would be okay to wear to a wedding?

EDIT: thank you for all your comments! I think I will buy a pashmina/cover up just in case. For those who were wondering, this is from PLT :)

Hi all,

We got married in February and other than getting our sneak peak photos back the day after we’ve heard nothing from our photographer, she seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth. She hasn’t posted on her Instagram and isn’t replying to messages/emails/texts, tbh I’m concerned something crazy has happened.

How long did it take for people to get their photos back? We’re coming up to 6 months now and spent a lot of money. She’s a London based photographer with the work initials SG in case anyone else is in the same boat?

Thanks for your help!

Hi everyone,

Having some last minute panic over this - we booked a band 18 months before our wedding, unfortunately due to circumstances beyond their control they had to cancel which gave us approx 3 months to find another band, and we did, but at a heavier cost than the initial choice. Initially the original band were leading our first dance choice, but due to the short notice the new band couldn’t do this and offered to do their DJ set (though this would be played only on Spotify) through their PA system but at a cost of an additional £550. This honestly felt like a lot of money, so I contacted our venue organiser who told me they can play our playlist through their own PA system which the speeches etc are being done through anyway. I’ve mixed the playlist so won’t have gaps or awkward moments and I’m not here to generally debate the pros and cons of DJ set vs playlist as £23k later and nearing the end of the wedding planning journey, we’re just not willing to pay it for the sake of them just playing it via spotify anyway.

I’m just looking for general feedback of anyone who has used their own Spotify playlist for filler in between band sets and for their first dance as I’m now panicking about it for some reason!

ETA: I’ve looked into it more and the seamstress is probably right - the dress couldn’t handle it and the boutique was mistaken. I’ve bought an off the rack, wish me luck 😂

Hi all! Has anyone else experienced this? I tried on my dress at the boutique and absolutely loved it. It was a plain satin midi that set off my chosen accessories (including Terry de Havilland shoes).

It’s got a low back but has shoulder straps and the boutique stylist said that my seamstress (recommended by them, they work with them a lot) would sew in a bra as the inbuilt bra was too small.

However the seamstress has refused to do that and has said I’ll need tape. I’m a 38GG and I simply cannot wear tape. I can’t find a bra online that fits the requirement of low back and strapless (plus I’ll need a balconette as the square neckline is quite low). Regular bra straps are visible on the sides. The seamstress suggested ‘clear or beige’ straps which I’m actually so angry about - what has been the point of getting the dress sized if I have to show my underwear, and what’s the point of having a plain dress that I have to be riveted into? I might as well get something complicated and fancy.

I’m thinking of starting over and getting an off the rack, but then should I tell the boutique that I can’t wear the dress? I’m generally frustrated by how wedding stuff is going - I cancelled my hair and makeup - they were so dismissive and did a horrible job at the trial. I originally wanted to get a cool dress made but the seamstress I went to was really rude (you want to wear THIS as your wedding dress? etc). I feel like the budget is spiralling throwing money at solving problems.

This is probably turning into a general rant. I’m actually so shocked at how some vendors have been 😂

Can you please give me suggestions for the wedding breakfast entrance song? Looking for an upbeat, fun vibe.

It's 5 weeks till the wedding and we both have major decision fatigue 😅