Wedding Bells Are Here Again!
It seems like only yesterday we were busy with the details of the wedding of Firstborn Son and New Daughter. Little did we know another wedding day would soon be on the horizon! After a precious courtship, Daughter said yes to a terrific young man and so our wedding planning has begun!
So for the next two months my life story could be called, “How To Have A Frugal Wedding For Five Hundred” (A true challenge for any frugalite.) We are off and running as Daughter has already found her gown and wonder of all wonders, we believe a church has been found that can seat all our guests at a reasonable cost. Our church is too small for all that will be invited.
Details are floating through my mind at all hours of the day and night. Fortunately, Daughter and New Son-to-Be are overseeing many of the decisions to be made and friends and family are graciously offering their help. What a blessing to be part of a church community that seeks to bless each other!
We have our budget and know exactly what our costs need to be. Now the fun begins. How to best allocate our funds is our goal. Food and decorations are the next items on our list of things to do. The reception will be held in the church fellowship hall and we need to be creative. Our plan is to provide a simple meal and so will need to provide seating for our guests. The tables are a mixture of round and rectangle with three different styles of seating. One group of chairs are of a bright orange color, not exactly Daughter’s favorite.
I know of no better place to come for advice than to you, fellow frugal hackers. Any past experience or creative thoughts will be appreciated. Recommendations regarding food, decorations or otherwise will be greatly appreciated.
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11 Responses to “Wedding Bells Are Here Again!”
December 30th, 2010 at 1:50 pm
A lot of places will rent slip covers for the bright colored chairs. Or you could wrap the chairs in some crape paper to make them match.
Congratulations on the new engagement.
December 30th, 2010 at 8:44 pm
Thanks Roxie for the idea about using crape paper on the chairs. That just might work!
December 30th, 2010 at 9:53 pm
If crape paper is too thin and weak to hold up, try some ribbon. Some of the ribbon out there can be cheap to buy but would hold up more than the crape paper.
When my son married at home we rented chairs and I added bows to the chairs with ribbons.
My son was married 15 years ago to a sweet girl right here in our home. My smallish house had more than 50 people in it. It was nice though. I love that he married here in this room I am sitting in right now. I can still see their happy face in my mind’s eye.
December 31st, 2010 at 8:26 am
I wrote a very lengthy article on having a wedding on a budget for my blog. I’ll be posting it soon, but I could send it your way if you’re interested in reading.
Have fun!
January 1st, 2011 at 7:41 pm
I have attended several weddings where the wedding cake was actually cardboard boxes that were frosted and stylishly decorated. The “topper” cake was real cake, allowing the bride and groom to cut the traditional first piece to feed each other. Guests were served from large sheet cakes that were simply and elegantly decorated. As multi-tiered wedding cakes range from the hundreds to the thousands of dollars, and sheetcakes are inexpensive and serve large crowds, this could be a frugal opportunity for your wedding planning. Congratulations and best of luck!
January 2nd, 2011 at 12:28 am
I highly recommend printing your own invitations. I got mine at Michael’s (using their 40% off coupon each week) and printed them off at home. They came with a template, and it was sooo easy! It came to about $0.50/invitation this way.
January 5th, 2011 at 1:50 am
if the crape paper is not strong enough and ribbon out of budget how about paper bags? Cut apart flip the store logo to the inside, glue or tape back together and decorated.
January 6th, 2011 at 1:11 pm
I have really appreciated these ideas! When I reread my post, I realized the title may have been a bit confusing. It will be a frugal wedding for 500 people, not $500.00! We do need to be very careful with our budget, but fortunately have a bit more to work with than $500.00.
January 7th, 2011 at 1:40 am
We did two weddings in 11 months, both girls=)
We especially like little white lights, like for a Christmas tree, for decorating. I found more of these than we ended up using- a thrift shop had a great sale (and they all worked) and then friends loaned us some.
These lights with a lot of frothy tulle make lovely decorations, and we used a forty percent off coupon at Jo-Anne’s and just bought a full bolt of tulle i the color we wanted.
Flexibility- for one wedding my husband got a great deal on almond rocha, and it was wrapped in colors that matched the wedding colors. We’d intended to go with a different small candy, but this was a better bargain.
This year, if somebody was getting married, we’d use a lot of smoked almonds because *that’s* the deal he found recently.
With one daughter’s reception we decided to focus on her colors and not have each table be identical- we had a lot of little bits of china, bric-a-brac, and pretty little things in her colors, and we made a different centerpiece for each table using what we had on hand.
For tableclothes we just bought bolts of very inexpensive fabric and dyed it in the color we wanted (we dyed it in the bathtub)
One of her colors was dark green. We planted wheat grass in shallow containers about a week before the wedding. It was lush, green, and lovely just in time. A horticulturalist friend told me she thought that sounded really weird when I mentioned it, but she actually loved it and found it lovely.
Favors- I have seen packets of local wildflower seeds used, and these are so sweet. We did votive candles and matchbooks with the married couple’s names, the date, and a claddagh ring on the cover (that’s what their wedding rings were).
January 18th, 2011 at 3:35 pm
Just stumbled onto your blog, am enjoying reading and gleaning tips. Weddings can be so costly, here is a tip that saved us a TON when we got married and has been one of the best stories to tell as well. I wanted a black Limo for our wedding party to ride around in, but there were none to be found, only white, with enough seats for everyone. On a whim I called a funeral parlour.. they were more than happy to rent their limo / driver for the evening at over 60% savings compaired to the limo company. The driver loved it.. said that we were happiest clients he had ever had the priviledge of driving.
January 19th, 2011 at 7:07 am
Di
This is “classic” frugality! Thanks so much for sharing this!
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