Unique Weddings for Any Budget

Today's brides want unique and customized decorations for their weddings. When shopping at traditional web sites and stores you run the risk of your wedding looking like any other wedding. To set your wedding apart turn to handmade sites like Etsy or Artfire for unique items.

Both sites offer everything for your wedding from centerpieces, favors, invitations, even wedding gowns! You can type "wedding" into the search and spend hours browsing all of the great things available. If you know exactly what you want you can narrow down your search by using keywords for color, style, and even narrow further by price. Etsy does require an account to purchase items, but Artfire does not. Both have quick and easy checkout and you can pay most sellers with Paypal or a credit card through Paypal with no Paypal account.

What sets Etsy and Artfire apart from mass produced merchandise is the ability to have your items personalized or request custom orders. If you see a set of table card holders that you love but they aren't the right color you can contact the artisan to see if your color choice might be available. Etsy has Alchemy (the "custom" tab at the top of the page) for placing a listing of exactly what you want and the price you'd like to pay. Artisans can bid and show their work and you can pick who would be the best match for what you need. Artfire has a similar feature called Forge. You can also contact an artisan to ask for a custom request. Not all shop owners will do custom orders, but as long as their shop policies don't say they don't do custom orders it doesn't hurt to ask.

Handmade goods are higher quality and you are supporting an artisan or crafter rather than a large corporation. However, this does not mean that handmade items can't fit into a wedding budget. There are treasures on each site that are made better than their commercially made counterparts yet are lower in price. Small businesses have less overhead and you are not paying for a nationally recognized brand and their large advertising budget.

To give you an idea of what is available on the site, Artfire has a wedding shopping category. Etsy also has their own category for weddings. Sellers tag their own items to be included so there are a lot listed, so grab a hot cuppa and sit down and relax and get some great ideas.

Today's brides have some very unique ideas for their weddings from custom guest books to non traditional favors. You can use the contact artisan or Alchemy or Forge to find an artisan to collaborate with. With your ideas and their creativity, you are sure to come up with something unique for your special day.