Real Bride: Hazel Thomas
Our second ever Featured Bride is a fellow wedding blogger and I am very excited about this one! If you would like to check out her blog, you can do so here. Hazel blogs about budget weddings and DIY, so she fits in nicely with our little family here at Bride2BrideBlog! She in from England as well, so it's a very different wedding from what we normally see here in the US! Let's jump right in!
Your name: Hazel Thomas
Partner’s name: Steve Thomas
Wedding date: 08/10/2016 (that's UK date, so it's October 8 for us here in the US!)
City, State: Berkshire, England, UK
Tell us more about you!
How long have you been together? We had been together over 4 years on our wedding day. We've now been together over 5 years
How did he propose? (Or how did you propose!) Steven proposed on our first day of our holiday in Cyprus. Two weeks prior to our holiday we both went out shopping for holiday clothes, but went separately with a friend. Unbeknownst to me, it was that day out shopping with his friend that he bought the engagement ring. The following weekend he went on his own to see my parents without telling me. It was that day he asked my parents for their blessing to propose to me. On holiday in Cyprus on our first full day we went for a walk on the beach after dinner. Whilst walking on the beach i was walking at the shore line so my feet were getting wet with the waves when I noticed he was no longer by my side. He was a few paces behind me, bent down scratching his leg. As the concerned girlfriend I went over to check out what I thought was a bite, when he produced a box from behind his leg. With some very simple words (he isn't the most romantic of men!) he asked me to marry him. I was really pleased he had been able to surprise me and was very happy he had asked my parents for their blessing as I'm really close to my parents and their opinion does matter to me. My feminist side was happy to know he asked for their blessing and not their permission.
What was your favorite part of the wedding? Gosh, that's a hard one! There were so many truly wonderful moments about the day, but interestingly, the moment that always really stands out for me any time I'm asked about the day is when my Dad saw me for the first time. I was in my dress with my hair and make-up done. Everyone else had left the room and I was stood there waiting for my Dad to come get me. I’ll never forget the moment my Dad walked into the room. I’ve always had a very good relationship with my Dad and his reaction was everything to me. Our photographer
captured the moment beautifully. My Dad and I were both so emotional, I think for both of us it was the moment it really sank in that I was actually getting married.
What went wrong with your wedding? There were a few things that didn't go to plan. One of our day guests and two evening guests didn’t turn up on the day. I also didn’t get all of the formal family grouping pictures I was hoping to get. I couldn’t find my tiara in the morning and panicked a bit when my hairdresser was finished with my hair and we still hadn’t found it. We’d sent my sister’s boyfriend back to my house to try and find it and everything. In the end we found it in a bag in the events room of the venue! The only thing that bothered either of us out of all the things that went wrong was the guests not turning up, but even though we were upset they hadn’t been able to make it, we didn’t allow it to affect our day.
Did you find any tricks to save you money? As a budget wedding blogger I was very keen to save as much money compared to the average costs as I could. The whole wedding was done on just £6.5k (which is about $8,400 with current conversion rates).
My wedding dress was bought from a bridal shop during a sample sale. We had a two course wedding breakfast rather than the usual 3 courses. We really did shop around for things such as the suit hire for the groomsmen. I bought most of our decorations from other women who had recently got married and were selling off their decorations. We did a LOT of DIYs! … I think that mostly sums up how we went about cutting costs without making sacrifices.
If you could go back and redo it, would you change anything; and if so, what would you change? I would ask a family member to film us saying our vows to each other and I would also ask someone to film the speeches. I didn't want a whole wedding video, but I do wish we'd arranged for someone to films those parts of the day for us.
Do you have any advice for new brides? Don't do anything because someone else tells you you have to. Don't invite anyone you don't want to just because your mum or aunt or gran etc tell you to. Don't have a big wedding if you really want a small wedding. Don't get pulled in to thinking "I must have…" if you don't want to
have it or don't have the budget for it. It's your day and although you don't want to be classed a Bridezilla you also don't want to look back on your day and regret something because you felt forced into having it/doing it/inviting them.
Did you over-plan or under-plan, or was it just right? I think it was just right to be honest. Steven and I planned the whole wedding together (except my dress, that was a secret until he was me walking down the isle). We had two years from getting engaged to our wedding date for planning. We got all the big items such as venue and photographer booked early, and we set aside certain days each month for wedding planning. The rest of the time we carried on as normal. We didn't want planning to take over our lives which is why we allocated days in the calendar for focusing on planning.
Did any of your vendors knock your socks off? Our cake lady for sure! We were so pleased with what she created for us. We had 3 tiers, each with a different flavour and
she did wonderful hand decorations for us, whilst ensuring the cake was created within our budget.
Did any of your vendors disappoint? Thankfully no. We had a very limited number of vendors and all of them delivered.
What was one (or more!) special element in your wedding that isn’t in most? Hmmmm… a hand made 'Guess Who' game? I bought a Guess Who game, and then printed off pictures of important wedding guests to replace the stock images with. (Click here to read Hazel's post about it!) It went down a storm on the day.
What do you wish you’d spent more on (whether you were able to or not)? I wish we'd spent more on paying for more guests to be able to attend. Our small budget meant we had to be very strict with the guest list. Guest cost a lot!
Where do you feel like you could have saved money or overspent? I don't think there is many places we could have saved money more than we did. We could have just got a supermarket cake for our wedding cake, and I could have spent less on the bridesmaids dresses, but they are the only two places we could have saved any extra money without making the day FEEL cheap.
How many guests did you invite vs how many RSVP’ed vs how many actually came? We had 48 day guests and an extra 20 people invited to the evening. We would have had more day guests, but 2 family members couldn't make it, and one didn’t turn up on the day due to sickness. Two evening guests didn't even RSVP at all.
Wedding Venue: Donnington Valley Hotel & Spa, Newbury, Berkshire, UK.
Caterer: The venue was our caterer
Photographer: Natalie Moore
Videographer: N/A
Planner: We didn't hire a planner. Not many UK couples do. Wedding venue do usually have wedding coordinators that are very helpful. The wedding coordinator at Donning Valley Hotel was incredible
DJ/Band: The Hotels recommended DJ Dress Designer: Trudy Lee Bridesmaids’ Dress Designer: Monsoon (Highstreet shop in the UK) Menswear: We hired (rented) the suits from ‘Suits Direct’ at our local shopping centre.
Officiant: In the UK for your marriage to be legal, you either get married in a church by a register vicar etc, or you have to be married by a 'Registra' who works at the 'registry office', You can get married at a registry office, or the registra can come out to your venue. The venue though has to be a registered place of marriage for the wedding to be legal and you to legally be considered married. If you get married at a non registered venue, or you want someone other than a regitered officiant to marry you then it won't be legal. To my knowledge in the US (dependant on state) anyone can apply for a licence to marry people, this is not the case in the UK.
Florist: My bouquet and the Bridesmaids wrist corsages were made by Hazel at Love To Marry. We bought the mens buttonholes from eBay.
Jeweler: All of my Bridal jewelry was borrowed. Our wedding rings were from a Highsreet jewelers.
Hair Stylist: A lady called Katie Stevens
Makeup Artist: My friends daughter did my make-up for me. She isn't a MUA but she did a very good job.
Cake: Dawn from Delicious Dial a Cake
Invitations: We made these ourselves! Bartender: Supplied by the Hotel
