Mother of the Bride on a budget.

As my regulars will know my middle daughter got married last month. It was a beautiful day with the bride in a white dress, four bridesmaids and a flower girl in a lovely cornflower blue, and most of the men and the ushers in kilts. Now on my income I could not even begin to dress comparably to the other  guests at the wedding, but his did not worry me. After all I had the pleasure of being Mother of the Bride and that was honour enough for me.

First let me tell you apart from uniform for work my normal attire is jogging bottoms, t-shirts and trainers.This is how I feel comfortable. If I am going out out I will pop on a pair of black trousers that I bought to start collage in thirteen years ago or my burgundy jeans and I have a choice of three or four tops  that go with either pair and a pair of burgundy boots that are past their best, which incidentally have now gone in the bin because I found a replacement pair in a charity shop the other week. I do not buy dresses and will not be seen dead in a skirt.

I am a lover of charity shops, they can offer some great bargains, and many people will buy a new hat wear it for a wedding once and hand it in. So a few weeks before the wedding the bride came down and we set off out  to buy what I needed for the day. I had set myself a budget of fifty pounds.  Don't get me wrong had I asked my daughter to help out and buy she would have done but I am not a believer in expecting other people to spend money on me.

the dress

Last year I got the pleasure of choosing a dress I really liked from Bonmarche a dress I actually feel comfortable in.  So we decided to use this as our starting point. I was adamant a hat was a step too far in poshing me up and so we started off looking for a fascinator but these just looked really silly on me. But the first shop we tried had a good range of hats and I surprised myself by finding one I really liked and that looked good on. So hat bought for change out of a tenner we moved on. I was looking for  lightweight jacket or shawl for round my shoulders and we found one that I liked for ninety nine pence. We actually picked up a second one in another shop for twenty five pence to compare them both on. We decided the second one pulled in the colour of the hat better.

the hat

shoes

I had an idea of what sort of shoes I was looking for, flat ballet type in a coordinating colour but we could find right colour wrong style, right style wrong colour, but having trailed all the charity shops in both Prestwick and Ayr I was beginning to despair. We went for something to eat and started again, this time trying shoe shops. Eventually I found a really nice pair that pulled in all the colours in the sale for less then ten pounds, I was on a roll. Sadly as it turned out these were a big mistake as they rubbed my feet to blisters with the first hour and I changed them for a flat black pair that I borrowed from my older daughter.

bag

So shoes in hand I remembered a gold coloured handbag we had seen in one of the shops, so my bag was bought for two pounds.

necklace

I am not a jewellery wearer either but again some occasions need dressing up and this was one of them. I managed to pick up a long necklace for a mere pound that looked really good on, but was struggling to find a bracelet.

bracelet

Then later on I bought a really nice necklace, bracelet and ear ring set in the sale in Debenhams as it was cheaper for the full set than I had previously seen for just a bracelet. I only wore the bracelet as the first necklace went better and my daughter got the ear rings as I do not have pierced ears.








While we were there my daughter decided to buy her tiara and the accessories for the bridesmaids hairs. The girl in the shop was amazing, so helpful, so friendly and a real joy to be served by, a real asset to the shop.

So that was us foot weary but feeling good as mission accomplished, and all in all it came to thirty five pounds, a very frugal Mother of he Bride I would say.

on the big day