Frugal Wedding Ideas

Within the last year our two eldest daughters married wonderful young men within 11 months of each other. Their courtships were quick (they had known one another for years), and we had little time to plan or build up a savings account to cover the costs. We did not need to take out a loan, however, and here are some of the frugal methods we used to make lovely, personal weddings without breaking the family bank.

With the first wedding, our daughter chose a very simple tea length dress based on a favorite dress she already owned, and her very talented seamstress sister sewed it for her.

The bridesmaid dresses were velvet skirts and matching shirts purchased from an online department store- they truly can be worn again (and have been).

For the second wedding, the bride found exactly the dress she wanted at a thrift shop- she just looked in on the off chance there would be something she liked, and there was something she loved. Turns out, it was half price, so it was only 20.00. The veil was loaned to her by a friend, but until that friend offered her veil our plan was to cut a long bit of pretty tulle and add a scalloped lace fringe by hand- we had coupons for the hobby stores where we planned to buy those things.

One daughter's ring is a family heirloom, and the other daughter's ring was designed by the groom and then commissioned from an artist at Etsy.com. Etsy is a wonderful place for beautiful, unique handcrafted items at good prices. Before her groom went this route, he asked me if his beloved felt strongly about gold and diamonds, and I said yes, she felt strongly that they were not necessary. It is beautiful, unique, deeply personal, and far less than he would have paid for something impersonal, glitzy, and more reflective of a successful marketing campaign by the DeBeers at a soul-less brick and mortar jewelry store.

Tablecloths- We went to a fabric store where fabric was one or two dollar a yard. We bought acres of it. We bought a shade slightly lighter than we wanted because that was what was available, and then we dyed it to a darker shade.

I personally do not feel that it needs hemming, but if you do you can:

Iron a fold along the edges- it only has to stay in for an afternoon

Hem it

use masking tape or iron-on tape

sew a pretty border fabric along the edges (increasing costs, but still cheaper than tablecloths)

sew or iron on binding tape

After the wedding, wash the fabric well and add to your sewing stash- use it for quilts, ornaments, cloth napkins, bonafide tablecloths (though it is rather thin fabric)- or pass it on to somebody else to use.

Some possibilities for flowers:

Grow your own- we decorated for one wedding with a lush array of vines, african violets, and wheatgrass grown in shallow ceramic containers matching the wedding containers, all from home.

Buy them online for the bouquets

Do without

Grow shallow containers of wheatgrass for centerpieces on the tables

buy carnations, which are much cheaper than roses, and pull the petals out and scatter them over the tables.

Use houseplants and vines (sweet potato vines are gorgeous)

Weeds. The colors for one of our daughter's wedding were dark purple and green, and I picked up half a dozen deep purple pots for .50 at an end of season sale, and filled them up with some deep green vines of gill-over-the-ground that I dug up from our own woods.

If you don't have a green thumb, compare the time of your wedding with the sorts of flowers and greenery that would typically be available that month. Wait and buy the plants the week of the wedding. Spraypaint clay pots the color you want and transplant the flowers just a day or two before the wedding. That way, you don't have time to kill them before the wedding.

Fabric flowers using scraps, bits of old clothing that you are broken-hearted to see go.

Other decorations:

Calligraphy (or printed in a pretty font) quotes on love and marriage scattered over the tables at the reception.

Cover large buckets (five gallon buckets are free from bakeries) with wrapping paper that fits your theme, fabric sacks tied on with ribbon, or paint them. Fill with sand, put shepherd's crooks for hanging plants in them and hang plants or wind chimes from them.

We used shepherd's crooks with wind chimes to line the path from the parking lot to the front doors of the wedding location.

A friend of ours made hurricane lamps like these for the tables, and then gave them away as favors.

I spent months collecting small frames from the thrift shop, where I could find them for fifty cents or less. Then I spraypainted all the frames the same color and used them to hold love or marriage related quotes printed in a pretty font, or pictures of the wedding couple and placed these around the reception tables. You can also use them as place-cards (you could make the place-cards small dry-erase boards), or use them to hold quotes or cute pictures of the wedding couple as children (or their engagement pictures if they're being fuddy duds about the cute baby pics).

Strands of lights are very popular, of course. We picked up ours from the thrift shop (tried them out first to be sure they worked), and then some of them can be given to the couple to start their own Christmas decorating. Wrap them in Tulle, use wreath hangers to hang swags of tulle along the backs of a row of chairs.

We did think it would be fun to have small bowls of goldfish on the tables, and give them as wedding favors, but the logistics of safely transporting bowls of goldfish in a cool midwestern fall seemed daunting, and then I thought we'd almost certainly lose one. A dead fish, while memorable, is not exactly a great wedding centerpiece.