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Guides
The questions with no good answer online
Ten guides to the parts of a wedding that are genuinely confusing, written in plain English. Every claim links either to an official page, a piece of research, or the forum thread it came from. No invented statistics, and no averages we cannot stand behind.
Money and the law
The paperwork, the deadlines and the costs nobody quotes you.
- Banns or giving notice — which do you need? Church of England weddings usually need banns. Almost everything else needs notice at the register office.
- Do you book the registrar or the venue first? The registrar, or at least a check that one is free. The venue does not always book them for you.
- When should you get wedding insurance? Before the first deposit. Three timing traps, and the credit card protection that covers the gap.
- The wedding costs nobody quotes you Service charge, VAT, corkage, cakeage, delivery, alterations, cleaning, and the fees you pay whatever happens.
- What does a wedding cost per head? The calculation rather than an average, and why the guest list is the only lever that moves everything.
Planning the day, or the days
Who is responsible for what, and what changes when a wedding runs longer than one day.
- Who does what on the wedding day? The ten jobs that end up belonging to nobody, and how to hand over the information as well as the task.
- How do you plan a multi-day wedding? A guest list, a budget and a runsheet per function — and the part that hurts people, being invited to one event and not another.
Culture and customs
Cash gifting, honestly sourced. Customs vary by region and family, and we say so rather than inventing a rule.
- How much sagan or salami do you give at a wedding? The amounts ending in one, the five competing explanations for the extra pound, and the ledger families keep.
- How much do you put in a wedding hongbao? Lucky eights, avoiding four, and why no honest page can give you a pound figure for a British wedding.
The research
What we found reading thousands of public posts by people whose weddings went wrong.
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