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Archive for May, 2006

Moved at last

May 30th, 2006 at 01:55 pm

We are in the new house at last, and it hasn't been a cheap weekend. Between our first grocery shop (fortunately I have been saving my customer reward vouchers from the store for this) and paying the rent and deposit I am now spent up until payday.
Have spent my lunch break wrangling with various utility suppliers to find out who supplies the propertyand get the bills into my name. It's a good thing I arrived at work an hour early today and can afford a long lunch break! (I totally misjudged the traffic coming in from the new house)

Giving notice - and frugal fun

May 23rd, 2006 at 04:24 pm

Yesterday we went to see the registrar who will marry us, and "give notice". This is where you give all your details (name, address, age, occupation), and declare that you're free to marry, so they can put the date of your wedding up for anyone to see in case there are objections. The registrar was really nice and really helpful, but he still relieved us of £60, and reminded us that there will be £300 more to pay on the day. It was nice to be able to go and do that together as until now, I have done a lot of the planning on my own. We had a fun time looking at all the other declarations on the notice board too - if I was going to write a novel I would definitely go to the registry office for inspiration! It's amazing how much of a backstory you can make up just based on those bits of information.
Edited to add - the registrar talked about readings too. I'd love to hear about all your ideas for wedding readings! We're not allowed to have anything religious because it's a civil ceremony, but we're open to ideas!

Still no move

May 16th, 2006 at 01:56 pm

Our new house won't be ready until the weekend, but at least the tenancy agreement is in place. This month already looks like being an expensive one, as we are trying to get fiance set up to drive my car - I need to add him to my insurance, but we also need to pay for lessons and his driving test as he needs to get a UK licence within 12 months of moving here. We could do without the lessons, as he can already drive and passed a test in his own country but certain things are different here (like using the handbrake) and I think it'll work out cheaper for him to have a couple of lessons and pick up on things like that than to have him resit the test. I can cover it all out of this month's wages though. I got paid yesterday, and had £170 left from last month's pay to go into my wedding account. (I normally pay into my savings at the start of the month, but anything left over gets added to the wedding account too) Maybe I should start some kind of log for exactly where I'm up to with my wedding account. Something to think about...

April's total

May 8th, 2006 at 08:59 am

I have just checked my spreadsheet and realised that my total expenditure last onth was £475.81, not whatever I posted it as. I had forgotten that I would have to pay to park at the airport when I went to pick fiance up. In the first week of May I have spent £96 - over what it normally is, but that includes filling up my car after the trip to the airport.
I am almost over the stress about the wedding now, because we seem to have found a few places that have not increased their rates. They are closer to where my parents live than the city centre (where we are actually getting married) but that's ok. Fiance is now getting stressed out though because he feels personally resonsible for checking out the hotels our overseas guests plan to stay in.
On the bright side, it looks like we may be able to move into the new house this week, and my parents will be able to pak their car in their garage again because all my stuff will be out.

Surefire wedding budget breaker

May 5th, 2006 at 02:06 pm

We were doing quite well at planning our wedding on a budget. The venue we found was a bargain, and I made all my own invitations, save-the-dates and favours. We bought the champagne for toasts from a warehouse store on a greeat deal. The dress, well I've got to admit that noone could call it frugal, but it's covered (maybe I'll write about this some other time). We know that all the people coming from abroad will have to spend money on flights and stuff, so we've said we don't want gifts because we'd rather just have them there. And yesterday, fiance phoned a hotel, researching somewhere for his family to stay, and they said "Sure, we have rooms but our rates have doubled that weekend, because there's a major political conference in town" Booo! I booked my wedding way before they booked their stupid conference! And now, hotel prices have rocketed, we'll struggle to find a place to hold a rehearsal dinner, and noone will be able to get a cab to the wedding venue, because they'll all be busy!
I suppose a way of looking at this would be - if people can't come because they can't get a hotel room, I won't have to pay for as much food! Somehow, that doesn't feel like a major consolation.

Here at last!

May 2nd, 2006 at 01:13 pm

Fiance arrived on Saturday, so I haven't been here much. But I am so pleased to have him here at last! We spent a relatively frugal weekend, which is good, because the gravity of supporting another person on just my wage has hit home. I know we can do it, but it's going to be a struggle until he can finally work in September. Need to buckle down and do my books for last month - I've been letting them slide.