Wedding Wednesday: Tablescapes & Decor

Heather at Saving Money Living Life, recently devoted Wednesdays to post about Weddings. If you know me you know I'm always talking about writing a book due to my experience with being in 8 weddings, 9 if you count mine. So instead of writing a book.... each week Heather will guest post on planning a wedding on a budget. Thanks, Heather I was already getting writers block.

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Recently, Aileen emailed us to ask if we would blog about ways to save money on weddings. Of course, we eagerly are taking on the challenge. However, we decided as two newlyweds we have too much to say to put in just one post. So, for the next few weeks we’ll be having Wedding Wednesday where we highlight different topics related to wedding planning on a budget. Still feel free to comment or email us with additional ideas and photos though, we LOVE hearing from our readers!

To kick off this series, we decided to talk about tablescapes and décor. Of course, when you think about this, the first thing popping into your heads is flowers, right? Flowers can be very expensive. However, there are ways to cut costs even in this arena. Here are our top tips for cutting costs on flowers:

• Make sure the flowers you choose are in season. If they are in season, this can lessen the price by up to half.
• Don’t be afraid to do DIY flowers. Feel free to dig into flower magazine’s archives for DIY ideas. Thisis a good place to get started.
• Real Simple Magazine also has a great feature on turning grocery flowers into bouquets- check out the pictures here.
• If you like the look of big, tall centerpieces, do ¼ of the arrangements at your reception like that while the rest are smaller and reflecting the same colors. See examples here from Jessica's wedding:
  
• Have your florist use the bridesmaids’ bouquets at the reception for décor as well.
• Use one big statement centerpiece at your wedding ceremony, that way you don't have to do a ton of smaller arrangements. You can see ours below.

Images from my wedding via Plus Bob Photography
Consider using markers on the aisles for just the family rows vs. all of them, like we did at our wedding.

• Use a small, less grandiose bouquet for the traditional bouquet toss, or just use one of your bridesmaid’s bouquets.
• Charley, one of our readers, sent this picture showing you can use baby’s breath attractively to get a lot of bang for your buck.

image via Ann Wade Parrish Photography

• My husband and I used banners with our new initial on them for the front doors to save on cost.
• The biggest thing you will find to be helpful, most likely, will be a flexible florist who is eager to work within your budget and be suggestive as to how to make what you like being reflected at a lesser cost.

I used Candy’s Fantasy Weddings for our Birmingham wedding and Jessica used Bill Wilson for their wedding in Jacksonville, FL.

Another option is to use candles or another type of centerpiece to cut down on cost, and DIY! However if flowers are important to you, make that be a larger cut of your budget.

via Wedding Bee

via Sky Flowers

It’s all about you and what you find to be important to making a fun and splendid wedding day! You may also want to check out My Scoop, who is having a heavy wedding focus for January and February.