Gabrielle and Russell’s perfect pink wedding 24.12.20

Gabrielle and Russell
24th December 2020 | Castlecary Hotel, Glasgow

We’re back with another real wedding and this time we have a dreamy perfect pink wedding on Christmas Eve. How magical?! Gabrielle and Russell are another couple who were sadly effected by Covid restrictions but turned everything around to have their perfect day to end a terrible year. I think you’ll agree that they pulled off an absolutely stunning wedding on a small budget an we couldn’t think of anything better than ending 2020 with a Christmas Eve wedding. We hope you enjoy reading Gabrielle and Russell’s story from how they met right through to their wedding day. There’s plenty of photo’s too (that pink dress *chefs kiss*) and a full budget breakdown as it’s always good to see how these beautiful weddings are achieved on small budgets. Here’s Gabrielle to tell us all about it.

How we met

We would love to tell you that we met in a bar like in the good old days.

We did not, we are indeed another one of those couples that met on Tinder. Russell will tell the story that he ‘thought he had completed Tinder’ and came out unscathed…..until Gabrielle’s picture popped up on his screen.

So we matched on Thursday, 11th August 2016 and Russell, not being one to hang around, planned the date for Saturday, 13th August, just two days later. We met that day (I was late, I’ll never live that one down), went for dinner and drinks and the rest as they say is history. Oh I should mention that Russell in his first ever message to me, sent me a red rose, it’s become a bit of a thing with them. He even brought one along on that first date, old romantic that he is.

Things just progressed from that day, Russell and I moved in together a very short 5 months later and we realised we were clearly onto something when we didn’t want to kill each other after discovering each others quirks and annoying habits (Russell squeaks his plate and chews ice poles EXTREMELY loudly and I fidget way too much, coining the nickname Fidget from Russell, and my incessant crying would be enough to drive most men insane.)

The engagement

We had planned a weekend away with our friends in Colchester (you’ll meet them, Alex is the best man), however I had to work on the Friday so it was a late departure after I returned from work. I got home around 4.30 on Friday 5th July 2019 and immediately started to get things organised for the trip down south. I was pottering about, folding laundry, packing clothes for myself, and finally going to the kitchen to collect bowls for Tico (he’s our grey parrot). Whilst in the kitchen Russell came in and offered a hug (as he always does when I’m getting in a bit of a flap about making sure I have everything) which was gratefully taken. Then mid hug, Russell broke away and proceeded to go down on one knee, whilst producing a ring from his pocket. There were tears (I’ve told you about the incessant crying) and more hugging, this time with Amelia joining in.

Russell says he would have strung it out a little longer, although he didn’t think Amelia would manage to keep it secret much longer, she had been jumping about signalling behind my back the whole time I was pottering about whilst singing ‘if you like it then you should have put a ring on it’. Says a lot about me that I didn’t even notice this. I was clearly too involved in my flapping about!

Obviously I strung out my answer and left Russell waiting, oh wait, no I never! It was a resounding ‘of course’! That made for a very interesting car journey to Colchester, I spent most of the time messaging everyone I could think of telling them the exciting news, in between pinching myself and gazing at my beautiful engagement ring.

The first stages of planning

So, from the ‘Yes day’, I immediately got my planning head on (I’ve been know to love a bit of planning). The venue was agreed on VERY quickly, as both Russell and I knew we wanted it to be local and relatively low key (i.e. not a insanely expensive popular hotel). So we popped along to the Castlecary Hotel, a local venue. Here we met Fiona, who was a total delight to deal with, and no matter what was asked or requested, nothing was too much bother.

From speaking with the venue, to agreeing it was the right place, to then having to agree on a date from the dates they had available in 2021, giving us the 2 years to plan and save. We settled on the 2^nd July 2021, a Friday, meaning that the price of the package* was marginally cheaper at £4k for 120 guests for the full day. We were in agreement; this was an absolute bargain and came in within our budget of £6k.

*Package included drink on arrival, 3 course meal, table wine, toast drinks, DJ.

The planning process was in full swing!! Next up was colour scheme, this one was a relatively easy decision as I wanted the colours to work alongside Russell’s kilt (which he owns, saving us a nice little sum right there). As such the greens and pink colour scheme was agreed on. (I totally lucked out on the colour of Russell’s kilt, as pink would have been my colour of choice anyway.)

Mood boards (don’t ask Russell what these are, he wouldn’t know where to start) were created. Ideas were being bounced about. Suppliers were being contacted left, right and centre. I soon realised that if we were to come in under budget, or anywhere close to budget I was going to have to get my craft on. Honestly, the word wedding seems to just inflate the prices of things the second you say it!

July to December 2019, was just a nice wee bubble of agreeing on the bridal/groom party, going to wedding fayres to try some free samples, and basically just enjoying the whole ‘we’re engaged’ little bubble. With absolutely no idea of the sh*t show that 2020 was scheduled to become.

Roll into 2020, where all things were still in the nice little bubble of popping money aside every month, saving towards our day. Wee chats about what we expected of the day, sorting out who we would like to be there, but nothing overly too active in the planning stakes, as with us both working full time, and having a teenager, life was busy.

Fast forward to April 2020, where we were all stuck in the house, together, with little to no escape. (I was still working from home, and Russell, as a key worker in a school, was called in a roughly once a week on a rota).

This was the catalyst I needed to get my craft on, all this extra time in the house, nowhere to be going, what else could I do? First up, the guest list. This was worked on and agreed on and save the dates were sent out with a year to go. (Simple save the dates from Amazon – total £15 – pre printed with guests names added. Nothing special). Next up, I started the hunt for my dress.

Now, anyone that knows me knows that I don’t like to pay over the odds for anything, that wasn’t going to change when it came to finding my dress. I found a wonderful little Facebook Page that sold dresses and at a fraction of the cost. Looking one day, there was the dress, it was meant for me, it truly was. It was pink, it was A-line, it was my size and it was a total steal at £150. Needless to say it was snapped up in a heartbeat.

So up to this point we have the venue, the save the dates and the dress all in the bag, so to speak for £4165. Dang this doing a wedding on a budget isn’t too difficult after all!

Next up, were the flowers. I knew I wanted artificial. Getting married in July, with Russell and his chronic hayfever, real flowers were never going to be an option. So, the research and requests for quotes began. Holy moly, here we went again. The prices for flowers are insane! We don’t want to belittle anyone’s talents, but honestly, we were receiving quotes of £600. That’s when we thought “surely we can do the flowers for less than this can’t we?” So, the search for flowers started. I think this is really the only area where we wasted some money, buying some bits from places to see the quality. It turns out artificial flowers vary in quality massively. Eventually we found the perfect flowers, so we bought all that we needed and some extra, just in case (Flowers from TKMaxx and greenery from Dunelm Mill).

All in, on the flowers, the greenery and the added bits and pieces needed for the bouquets and buttons holes and centrepieces (ribbons, pins, cable ties, glue gun ) we spent £180 give or take a few pennies. At this point we had a lovely bundle of flowers and no clue where to begin. After spending a few nights looking at inspiration photographs it was time to get going. It turned out I was quite able (or at least we think so) and the bouquets and button holes all looked fabulous and we had a load of flowers to spare. Result! I then went on to use these extra flowers to create our welcome board (blackboard from Amazon – £25)

Next we moved on to the confetti. Once again, I looked at the cost of dried petals but it they came in at quite a bit more than I was happy to pay, and so the tissue paper confetti started to take shape. We selected biodegradable tissue paper, and a heart stamp and got busy. Amelia enjoyed this bit of the process, at least to start with, teenagers definitely get bored easily.

So by this point, we have the below sorted:

Venue – £4000, Photographer – £800, Dress – £150, Save the Dates – £15, Flowers – £205 (including the welcome board), Confetti – £22 for tissue paper and heart cutters, Celebrant and marriage license – £520, Kilt – grooms own, no cost so £5697 in total.

With the total at this point being under budget, we decided to sort our bridesmaid dresses, with 6 bridesmaids, this was proving to be expensive. We settled on the Maya bridesmaid dresses, and originally wanted them in the mauve. However, best laid plans and all that, the mauve came and clashed horrendously with Russell’s kilt but it turned out, the Maya dresses came in a beautiful sage green colour. So they were bought and they were the most beautiful match. It also turned out that the sage green complimented my dress beautifully on the day too.

A change of plans

We are now in September 2020, Scotland has been hit with another lockdown, nothing seems to be showing any sign of getting better, and we can’t see an end in sight for any of the restrictions. We have a bridesmaid, 2 flower girls and a lot of family travelling from Australia for our day. We had to have a sit down and make some serious decisions about what would happen if our day couldn’t go ahead the way we were planning. Do we go ahead planning for the 120 people in July 2021, knowing in reality this wasn’t going to be very likely, and face disappointment, or do we postpone our day until a date further away, not something either of us wanted.

We spent the best part of a week going over our options. In the end, we decided that what was most important, was that we were married, and not the party or the extensive and expensive guest list. This is when it all got interesting. We decided that 2020 had been such a rubbish year (albeit we were luckier than lots) and that we should do something worth remembering to round it off. We made the unusual decision to pull our wedding forward to the 29^th December 2020 providing of course the venue agreed. Cue a wee meeting with our Wedding coordinator. Again, the venue were incredible. They were more than happy to accommodate us on the 29^th December, numbers would be limited to 20 people, including myself and Russell and including our photographer. So this allowed us to invite 17 people, well 16 really, as Amelia was obviously a definite. This immediately cut our venue charge down to £1200 for 3 course meal, welcome drink, and wine with the meal – RESULT!!

So now it’s the end of September and we’re getting married in 3 months time. EEK! At this point we really needed to start thinking about invitations and how to break the news to all those who received a save the date that the wedding they were originally being invited to was no more. Turns out a Facebook post explaining our decision was enough to let everyone know that they were no longer invited to the wedding next July, and 99% of the guests totally understood and actually congratulated us on making the difficult decision of pulling it forward. (Thankfully we were able to return the bridesmaid dresses that weren’t needed so didn’t lose out there).

Now with only 10 invitations to send out, and all the money we had saved on the venue, we thought about paying someone to make the invites for us. But I had got a taste for wedding crafting so I thought I’d give it a go myself. We used card that we already had and the Cricut machine that we already had to make our pocketfolds. Zero cost. Russell then used his Photoshop expertise to create and design the inserts for the pocketfolds and we printed them off at my mum’s house onto linen card we already had (zero cost to us, as mum offered and we didn’t then need to buy ink). We then decided that we needed a little something to finish them off, so bought a packet of vellum paper on Amazon to create the belly bands. We printed Russell’s tartan on the paper and cut it into strips. The only cost to create our dream invitations was for the vellum paper (£3 on Amazon) and for the envelopes (£4.99 on Amazon). We did add to these, our wax seal, which was a rose and in total, with the wax cost us £11.99.

At this point our budget was showing as the below:

Venue – £1200, Photographer – £600, Dress – £150, Save the Dates – £15, Flowers – £205 (including the welcome board), Confetti – £22 for tissue paper and heart cutters, Celebrant and marriage license – £520, Kilt – grooms own, no cost, Bridesmaid dress – £89, Invitations – £19.98, Gabrielle’s denim jacket – £21, Amelia’s denim jacket – £15, Converse for Amelia and Gabrielle – £50, shoes for Gabrielle and Amelia – £40 and make up for Gabrielle, Amelia and Wendy – £105 so a total of £3051.98.

Everything was moving along perfectly at this point, all the preparations were done, few wee final bits and pieces to iron out, but nothing that was going to impact the budget too horrifically, so we were feeling pretty pleased with ourselves and all was moving along nicely.

Third time lucky?

On the 19^th December Nicola Sturgeon made the wedding shattering decision, that Scotland was going back into lockdown on the 26^th December. This was totally crushing all our plans for our day on the 29^th. How unlucky was that?! 10 days until our day and it was all looking to be swept away from us. However, never ones to be beat, Russell and I hatched a plan.

First up we contacted the venue, we were worried that at such short notice they wouldn’t be able change the date but it turned out they could! Next up was the celebrant. Now this one was a little trickier as he had another wedding that afternoon but as we had planned on an early ceremony, he reckoned he could squeeze us in so it was another yes. Then it was on to the photographer who happens to be a family friend (although a professional photographer) and it was a yes from him too. Lastly was the MUA and we got our final another tick! We couldn’t believe it was actually happening.

On the 21^st December we had to contact all our guests and spring on them that Nicola’s announcement wasn’t going to affect our day as we were pulling it forward to the 24^th December. Only a blooming Christmas Eve wedding! Could it be any more perfect?

On the day we got married at 10am, well 10.20 by the time I turned up. We said our vows, had our handfasting ceremony and our quaich drinking ceremony, which led really nicely into our lunch. We had our photographs and a bit of a quiz and all was done for around 4.30 – 5pm, allowing people to get back home and enjoy their Christmas Eve with family. Such a relaxed day, with our very nearest and dearest and it was literally perfect. So far removed from the original day we planned, however it was exactly what it should have been. Oh and as a lovely little bonus as we had saved so much from our original budget we were able to cover the cost of the bar so no one had to shell out for drinks. We don’t regret a single thing from the whole day.

When everyone else looks back to 2020 as a year worth forgetting, we are looking back on it as a year that we beat all odds and ended it on the happiest way we possibly could. Married!

Final budget breakdown

Venue – £1200, plus £350 for drinks
Photographer – £600
Dress – £150
Rings – £200
Save the Dates – £15
Flowers – £205 (including the welcome board)
Confetti – £22 for tissue paper and heart cutters
Celebrant and marriage license – £520
Kilt – grooms own, no cost
Bridesmaid dress – £89
Invitations – £20
Gabrielle’s denim jacket – £21
Amelia’s denim jacket – £15
Converse for Amelia and Gabrielle – £50
Shoes for Gabrielle and Amelia – £40
Make up for Gabrielle, Amelia and Wendy – £105 
Cake – made by Amelia – £25
Total £3627

How magical is that? Going against all odds to have a Christmas Eve wedding. We love it. We absolutely adore that Gabrielle and Russell completely turned their plans around to have their special day and although their wedding wasn’t what they had planned we think it sends a strong and positive message that they were able to say it was exactly what it should have been. A gorgeous, festive wedding all for under £4,000.

If you would like your small budget wedding featured on the blog then drop me an email at hello@thethriftybride.co.uk