The Lavender Tub: Wedding Ideas

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Wedding Ideas - Part 1

I have a sweet little friend who is just getting started with her wedding planning. To help her, and anyone one else who needs a few money saving ideas, I thought a would share some of the things we did for my daughter's wedding.

My first piece of advice is to determine your budget. I don't know anyone who has enough money to spend any amount they want on a wedding. I'm sure there are those who can, but not in my circle of friends.

Once you know how much you have to spend, make a list of the things you would like to have as part of your wedding, and then prioritize them. The reason for this is that there may be some things that are non-negotiable and must be part of your celebration. You will quickly realize there are many, many things that add to your wedding, but could be accomplished using less expensive options. If a bride has her heart set on a specific dress, spend the money on the dress and save on the less important things. I think this will vary with each bride. Just take the time to decide what is really, really important, and what is not.

For my daughter, her dress was extremely important and there was no room for compromise. Fair enough. For her bridesmaids, however, we saved quite a bit by making some of the dresses. This is especially nice when you consider that fabric colors and choices are almost unlimited, while off-the-rack bridesmaid dresses are quite limited. We used 40% off coupons to purchase all of her satin at Hobby Lobby. I sewed the brown bridesmaid dresses and the flower girl's dress.

I also made tablecloths for the head table

and pieced fabric for this backdrop.

The brown sheer fabric came off the $1 table at Wal-Mart.

Since her wedding was a destination wedding, we did not have much time to set-up and take-down. Edward and I engineered this backdrop to go up in a jiffy. I will give you more details in a later post.

The fabrics we used were a good value adding a lot of rich color at an affordable price. Honestly, do you think the look would have improved greatly by using $16/yard fabric versus $3/yard fabric?

Fabric is just one tip. We have several more to share with you over the next few days. Please think about these tips in terms of your home decorating too! The same ideas apply.