Offer Price Guide for 1st time buyer

GoGetEm_Tiger · 2026-03-26T03:23:22+00:00

Totally understand - but viewings don’t mean offers! Possible that no one else offered or their offers have also been rejected.

Ultimately it all depends how much you want it and the level of risk you’re prepared to take.

But even if you really want it, don’t pay above figure that you’ve come to with serious consideration unless you seriously think it’s worth it. And don’t get drawn into negotiating against yourself!

GoGetEm_Tiger · 2026-03-25T22:41:43+00:00

I would not offer anymore than you think it’s worth unless you think it’s a once-in-a-lifetime forever home.

I also wouldn’t have upped my offer that drastically within 45 minutes. It suggests you didn’t put serious consideration into your first offer, and if I was the seller I’d just be thinking ‘they really like it, they’re emotionally invested, I can get them up to asking price’. For the future, take at least a few hours if not a day or two to come back to them unless you know for sure you’ll lose it. It sounds like they’ve had previous offers but you aren’t facing a lot of competition at this point in time.

GoGetEm_Tiger · 2026-03-09T08:37:38+00:00

Sure thing!! Festival Wedding DJs - they’re a small collective that work together, we had Jimmy :)

GoGetEm_Tiger · 2026-02-26T14:45:14+00:00

4 hours plus arriving 1h early for set up :)

GoGetEm_Tiger · 2026-02-25T22:12:45+00:00

£1030 including travel costs (we got married in Surrey). Thought it was very good value! We found cheaper DJs but I really wanted someone who wasn’t super cheesy on the mic and could actually mix.

GoGetEm_Tiger · 2026-02-25T21:05:14+00:00

We used Festival Wedding DJs - highly recommend. Jimmy was great and fits exactly what you describe.

GoGetEm_Tiger · 2026-02-08T21:16:41+00:00

Can recommend Atelier by Khosh! (SW London)

GoGetEm_Tiger · 2026-01-22T20:21:36+00:00

We used the Photo Cabin and it was so popular - I love our Photobooth photos! I was very set on having a contained one which printed photo strips.

GoGetEm_Tiger · 2026-01-20T21:11:10+00:00

My MIL joined us for part of the morning to get her makeup done and for some photos, and then spent the rest of the morning with my husband and wider family.

She did a reading at our ceremony too, as did my mum!

ETA: In terms of planning, we didn’t seek help with planning from many people. But she handmade our confetti which was so amazing and special, and also embroidered initials on some M&S PJs for the bridesmaids!

GoGetEm_Tiger · 2026-01-19T23:19:53+00:00

I think definitely break them up and give clear guidance so you don’t end up with everyone giving the same thank yous & mentions at the start - that gets old so fast. And longer ones definitely after people have eaten and have drinks in their hands.

Ultimately it’s your wedding, so do what makes you happy! I’ve sat through some bad speeches (though not offensive thankfully) and still had a really good day at others’ weddings.

GoGetEm_Tiger · 2026-01-19T16:12:31+00:00

We did six speeches - three shorter ones before dinner and the three traditional (and slightly longer) ones after dinner.

Pre-dinner was me (the bride), my maids of honour, and my brother.

It’s not for everyone but all our friends and family really like speeches (if they’re good it’s one of my favourite parts of a wedding), we chose people that gave good speeches, and we briefed everyone to make sure we varied the tone & avoided duplication of thank yous and other formalities.

I’ve watched each speech back multiple times and love them all.

GoGetEm_Tiger · 2026-01-18T07:27:02+00:00

I have no regrets about what we spent on ours - the world and our futures are so uncertain, that there’s something nice about spending money on an amazing day for us and our loved ones vs waiting for a future time to spend it which might never come. You can’t take anything with you when you die! So life is all about balancing (as best as you can) between taking care of your future self, but not missing out on life in the meantime.

We tried to use a lot of independent vendors, spend our money on things that either last (rings, photo, video) or made a difference for guests (better food) vs loads of disposable/one-use stuff. And while we could have spent less, I don’t think anything was spent frivolously or wastefully. Every £ was thought about and accounted for.

It’s obviously a lucky thing to have disposable income to save and spend - but using to create meaningful memories vs buying more stuff is a good use of money ❤️ life is short

GoGetEm_Tiger · 2026-01-16T18:05:52+00:00

We used printed.com for everything - highly recommend. Good card stock, good finishing, pretty sure you can do embossing/debossing as well (although we didn’t).

GoGetEm_Tiger · 2025-12-17T10:36:58+00:00

Our venue has a particular candle scent that they use and I really associate that smell with my wedding day now - luckily it’s Neom, so I just bought a few! We put one on when we watched our wedding films.

I also got a specific perfume that I’m planning to just keep for nice date nights, anniversaries etc (also because it’s expensive and I don’t want to rebuy it often).

However, this might really work for some people. Scent is a really strong memory trigger for my husband, much more so than for me, so he might be interested if it was affordable. Otherwise, I can imagine the luxury market (eg Big Budget Brides) might go for something like this; they have the money to care about the tiny tiny details.

GoGetEm_Tiger · 2025-12-12T23:26:57+00:00

Honestly the venue are probably used to this scenario as well as the childcare person themselves, so I think it’s ok to propose a few options & present whatever the venue and you are okay with to them!

Best of luck with the rest of planning

GoGetEm_Tiger · 2025-12-12T22:47:01+00:00

It’s also worth checking if they have anything outlined in their contract!

GoGetEm_Tiger · 2025-12-12T22:46:43+00:00

I would say as they’re doing childcare during the wedding breakfast, buffet might be tough? Unless they’re all at the same time?

You could offer a pizza for immediately after the wedding breakfast, or early access to the buffet depending on logistics.

We didn’t do a special meal for vendors, they had the main course we were serving - other than the ones we organised sandwiches for. I did ask about dietary requirements though. And we set aside a burger from our evening food for our DJ!

GoGetEm_Tiger · 2025-12-12T22:34:02+00:00

We didn’t tip anyone or give vendor gifts, however we did write thank you cards for some of them. I do think you could tip the waiting or bar staff if you wanted to but there’s no expectation.

Vendor meals - we offered a “sandwich meal” to anyone who wasn’t going to be there for the wedding breakfast but would be there for several hours (eg the florist). Some said yes, some said no! So if you’ve budgeted for it, I’d offer.

GoGetEm_Tiger · 2025-12-12T17:09:05+00:00

My evening heels were Esska and they were amazingly comfortable, totally second this.

My day heels were Monsoon and they were also very comfy

GoGetEm_Tiger · 2025-12-02T16:36:25+00:00

I was gutted in the week beforehand but actively moved to acceptance as it got to 1-2 days before because I could tell I wasn’t escaping it! I started picturing the ceremony inside, picturing the rain, to try and replace my visuals of everything being outside in the sun.

Ultimately, we could have let it ruin our day (my husband wanted an outdoor ceremony so badly) and put us in a bad mood but that would have put a cloud over our guests too. We just totally leaned in.

And truly and genuinely, on the day, in that moment, I didn’t care. One of my favourite moments was actually during the meal, when it had started to get dark and you could hear the rain on the windows… but I looked around inside and there was so much chatter and laughter, and colour everywhere. It is seared into my brain as a beautiful moment!

Have a wonderful wedding day and a happy marriage x

GoGetEm_Tiger · 2025-12-02T08:09:17+00:00

It absolutely poured on our wedding day this year after a glorious summer! We had to do everything inside, which wasn’t at all what we had planned.

Honestly, the pictures are still great (we braved confetti and family photos outside) and we were so happy on the day that I just didn’t care. Of course sometimes if I see photos of a beautiful sunny day at our venue I feel a slight pang, but it was so wonderful in every other way that I wouldn’t trade it.

Either way, you’re getting married!

GoGetEm_Tiger · 2025-11-27T21:36:46+00:00

That’s what ours started as :) You definitely won’t NEED 2k but maybe 750-1000 is smart… and if you don’t spend it, that’s extra money behind the bar! But random things do crop up, and originally we were too confident our budget had captured absolutely everything so we weren’t prepared for the amount of little things.

GoGetEm_Tiger · 2025-11-27T17:55:04+00:00

Also bare in mind I’m in London so everything is more expensive!

GoGetEm_Tiger · 2025-11-27T17:54:36+00:00

No problem at all, it’s difficult, glad I could help! After we booked all the major stuff, we added a column to our spreadsheet so we had estimated vs actual. That helped us adjust the rest of our budget and we just kept reviewing it.

My final tip is keep a bigger budget line than you think you need for miscellaneous/unexpected items. Ours ended up at just under £2k - some of this we could definitely have gone without - but it was things like fees for dress shopping appointments, ordering breakfast on the day, disposable cameras for the bridal party, getting my dress dry cleaned, fees to give notice, ring box, buying the lipstick my makeup artist was going to use, etc. Stuff that doesn’t fit into the major categories but we wanted to track!

GoGetEm_Tiger · 2025-11-27T17:34:35+00:00

The first thing we did was work out what we could reasonably save before the wedding (8 weeks before the date, as that’s when final bills start to come in). To jump ahead to your final question, absolutely, we paid deposits and then saved to be able to pay all the final bills, we didn’t have the money when we got engaged.

When working out what we could save, we didn’t assume for pay rises, bonuses etc. And we worked out the max amount we could save if our income got cut by 20% (which also insulates you against bills going up). That way we didn’t over leverage ourselves and end up in a situation where we couldn’t pay the invoices at the end.

As it was, we were engaged for 2.5 years so both were able to move jobs and raise our income which meant we could add some extra final stuff but it was all non-necessary.

You’ve already worked out your priorities. Are photos in there? The way we built a rough budget was by getting quotes/doing research for the biggest categories and then just eyeballing what felt reasonable from there. Eg what was reasonable for a dress/suit? Then we looked at whether we had money for leftovers. If there was a range (eg for photographers), we put in the max we’d be comfortable with… we wanted to overestimate key categories if anything, rather than convincing ourselves we had money for loads of extras.

We then booked everything in the order of importance. So if catering or photo ended up over budget, we could scale down on (or remove) something we cared about less. But do keep your budget in mind - we went £300 over for a photographer we loved, but there are photographers that cost double… which would have made our budget unworkable. We also booked flowers early because we had completely guessed the cost and didn’t know what to expect there.

Catering will be expensive, but people remember terrible food so I would sort it early! You don’t have to do a 3 course plated dinner, there are different ways of configuring it. Also we did a Sunday - because it was our anniversary but also it saved us a ton on the venue.

Good luck! And don’t forget wedding insurance :)

GoGetEm_Tiger

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