In terms of keeping costs down, timing is important too - so later in the day you would probably get away with only feeding people once (or even not at all, bar nibbles) - anywhere close to lunchtime and you’re going to have to factor in a lunch and food later on.
your photos are always amazing, you’ll do a brilliant job
just don’t forgot to enjoy yourself on the actual day cos it will go really fast!
Main tip: when getting people to pose for photos, don’t say “say Cheese” but instead say, “Can I get a yeehaw 
”
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If any of the other attendees has a good camera and/or an interest in photography you could recruit them to help out with general photos of the day to take some of the pressure off you - that’s what my aunt did at her wedding
I would really hire a photographer if it can be afforded. A good one will cover the whole day not just the ceremony etc, and nobody actually involved in any way with the proceedings can possibly do that job. Plus professional photographers are better than the best amateurs.
If you can ,get a relative to make the cake. My niece made ours and it was fab.
But never lose sight of the fact that it’s supposed to be fun for everyone and if any part of the planning starts looking like a chore that’s a sign of something that needs binning
Congratulations and I’m a massive fan of what you did there as ours was v similar apart from party at a bar afterward rather than the pub. Minimum spend arrangement with them probably cut traditional wedding costs in half.
Spent the money on a honeymoon instead, wheeey.
We’re in the planning planning planning stages of ours at the moment. We’ve got a lot of advice from people who are in the biz or have just got married themselves recently and that’s been very helpful. One thing we’re struggling with particularly tho is a DJ, how the fuck do you know who is good and will do as they’re told? Most common complaint I’ve heard from people is that their DJ just did whatever they wanted and they ended up with a mid dancefloor, and yeah a wedding where the DJ is good and gets everybody dancing is the best. My sister said her DJ ruined the evening for her by playing indie rock all night and none of the songs that she’d given the DJ like “these are the songs me and my friends like, this is what they’ll dance to”, and then afterwards my sister was like “what the hell, why did you ignore my songs?” and the DJ was like “I was playing the stuff that the people dancing were enjoying, none of your friends were on the dancefloor” and she was like “yeah! Because you were playing the fucking Kooks for like 6 pissed lads to enjoy”
Yeah getting a good DJ tips if you have any?
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I went for someone i knew would play a load of cheese and wouldn’t try and look cool at all. Someone that does weddings/60ths/christenings the lot
Or just get the guests to build a playlist borrow a pa and chuck it on spotify on shuffle and get a mate to do the mcing bit of the buffet being open and save yourself a couple of hundred quid
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I got profk to make a banging playlist to play on shuffle. Then forgot to play it as the ceilidh band were incredible and played all night.
I would quite like to do the playlist but people keep telling me it’s a bad idea because if the vibe sours on the dancefloor then you can’t pull it back. Couple of my friends have said they wanted to do it and the venue has told them it always goes badly when people do that, but maybe they’re in the pocket of Big DJ.
Somebody who’ll play the cheese is what we want, but like will take a few instructions, like we’ve all had enough of Single Ladies at weddings, please play these 5 songs at some point, yes we know you’ve never heard of them but this is the big floorfiller to about 30 of our guests.
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Speak for yourself.
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Where in the UK will the wedding be? I used to do a fair bit of DJing and still have some contacts that night be able to help…
Feel free to PM if you prefer
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Gonna be near Clitheroe if you know anybody who considers that their catchment are?
That’s not the catchment area for they guys I know directly but I have a guy in Manchester who might be able to make a northern based recommendation. I’ll check for you.
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I never updated this lol the wedding was huge in a nice hotel went well, and they (thankfully) hired a proper photographer, the photos i took were shite
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Didn’t realise there was an existing thread for this - been thinking of starting one as the TV and I are getting married next year. Looking at doing away with a chunk of the formalities (multiple speeches, cake cutting, first dance) and focus on everyone just having a fun time.
Initially we were going to just have the two of us, the kids and one witness each so six people total - currently the invite list is around 120 
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Yeah absolutely fuck this. Looks unbelievably awkward
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The only thing I genuinely feared first dance. Our DJ was a dick, the guy that we hired bailed on the day of the wedding “cause he was ill” but he had a mate who could do it. Guy was a massive wanker kept asking “how we wanted it to end” I don’t know, stressed wife out though, also we just told the original dj to play mainly soul music cause everyone likes soul music and it doesn’t cause naff singalongs like wonderwall, the new guy embraced the naff to the point it was annoying. Got some money off cause it was the Midlands dj don’t think they were impressed at all.
On the playlist front, my sister did it and it worked really well. She let people request a song but ignored most of them for what she wanted. Curated it a little to have the early stuff to get family members up before switching up. Everyone was there til the end despite the mismatch, never thought I’d see my nan on the dancefloor to Insomnia…
Only issue was timings for playing things out, had to take over that as it was running over and wasn’t fun trying to make the call on the last few big songs. Otherwise it was great fun music wise. I’ve had two others do it but they were small ones with similar tastes so worked well.
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