Red, Black and White Wedding Ideas

While planning our wedding for this upcoming August, my fiancee and I decided to make our theme colors red, black, and white. Red for the mother's in our wedding to stand out, because they are a big part of our lives. Black and white because we decided to have a simple but elegant wedding, and those colors seemed to fit most with our personality and theme of a 1940's inspired wedding.

The 1940's was a simple time. A time for being resourceful and making do with what you had, because of the war and the depression struck economy. With that being said most of the decor at weddings were house hold items or hand crafted decorations. Inspired by this idea, I began to research table decor for our reception.

Being a simple wedding reception we didn't want anything to stand out or catch peoples eye but the bride and groom, after all they are what the whole night is about. As cheesy as it may sound, or appear when one thinks of it, black Cotton sheets, or black plastic table covers are simple, cheap and will turn out looking elegant once all the decor is put together.

Remember, the decorations and favors, table place settings and everything you put down, does not have to be expensive to look nice!

As funny, redneck, cheap, it may sound or appear, we actually found a lot of our table decorations for this simple wedding era to be found at the dollar tree.

The dollar tree online actually has some great picture place setting ideas. I found the website very useful when researching what to put on my tables, that wouldn't cost an arm and a leg and would fit my colors of black and white decor. Being that if you order online through the dollar tree you can also buy items in bulk! Finding this out was a useful tool to lesson my budget. Browsing their site I came across a ton of candle holders. My fiancee and I decided to use candles as well as flowers for table decorations. When doing a black and white wedding, with black table clothes a glass candle holder, with a water, clear rocks-stones, and a floating candle is very simple but elegant and doesn't make your table design look to cluttered or tacky!

Some couples like to put place mats on the tables for the guest. Deciding that we liked this idea as well, my fiancee and I only altered it a Little bit. Wanting to do things a little different from most, I came up with the idea of having the place mats serve as our guest book. I made a design on the computer leave a space for each guest to put their name, how they know the bride or groom and a special wish or comment to the happy new couple. Printing this in black and white will match the table decor perfectly, as well as show your creative side to your guest!

When the talk of favors for our guest came up in our conversations one night, my fiancee and I both didn't want to spend a whole lot of money on this, for a few reasons: there isn't a lot of room in our budget, spending was not part of the 40's era, and two we wanted to yet again be different. Why not make the favors your self, my fiancee suggest to me! So, that is exactly what i did. Using a template I found online by typing the word scroll into the google search engine. I copied the scroll picture into the Microsoft word program on my computer, found a poem we both liked, and printed our names and date of the wedding at the end of the scroll, printed in black and white and laminated them, and wahla our favors where born!

Creativity, resourcefulness and the want to not spend to much money is all you will need for a black and white wedding, for these colors are so simple and the decor to go along with them is endless!

Good luck with your planning, as I hope all of mine will be worth while in August!