Dreaming of a fancy wedding despite a small budget? We’ve got good news for you. With a little creativity, you can make your wedding look like a high-end event without breaking the bank. Here are five tips to help you start planning:
Decorating A Wedding On A Budget: 5 Tips
Start With The Location
How much you’ll spend upgrading your space will depend on where you decide to host your wedding, so make the location a priority. A church hall, the sort that often doubles as a gym, is an affordable venue but will, of course, be much harder to decorate than a more costly, elegant hall.
Often the best compromise is somewhere in the middle. Consider a local park or bed and breakfast, places that have natural charm, and build your theme around that. Small town venues are also typically more affordable than urban ones.
Decorate Naturally
Parks and other natural locations are great wedding venues because they’re affordable to decorate, just play up nature! Decorate with river rocks, feathers, or curly willow branches, and don’t forget the flowers.
Skip the costly florist arrangements and instead grab loose bouquets from the grocery store or clip flowers from your own garden. These arrangements can be equally beautiful and tend to look more organic than stiff, professional designs.
Let Light Set The Mood
Lighting is a powerful tool from a decor perspective, and it can upgrade a casual setting and create an ambiance that brings people together, but fancy lighting can come at a price. Cut costs by investing in decorative, battery-operated candles, whether in the form of flameless lanterns or tea light clusters and special event decor.
You can even get special battery-powered outdoor lighting so that you can decorate wherever you choose to host your wedding. Clustering candles, in particular, can make simple table settings look elegant and will make your wedding an event to remember.
Stock Up On Seasonal Supplies
Choosing a seasonal wedding theme is a great way to cut costs; seasonal flowers, for example, are generally cheaper than out-of-season or exotic blooms. If you want to reduce expenses even more, though, consider a just slightly out of season theme, like a wedding that utilizes Valentine’s Day colors in March or April.
What’s great about this sort of post-season color use is that it won’t seem cliche and all of the decorations will have hit the clearance racks in stores, so you’ll get them at bargain-basement prices.
Store Bought Is Fine
Finally, as you plan your wedding, it’s important that you take your capabilities into account, and don’t get sucked into the DIY whirlpool of Pinterest. That’s not to say that Pinterest doesn’t have great ideas, but you’re going to have a lot on your plate and most of those ideas are much more expensive and time-consuming than they look.
Often, taking the Ina Garten-approved approach that “store-bought is fine” is cheaper, looks better, is a better use of your time, and it’s easy to upgrade those store-bought items. Giant balloons can become a creative photo backdrop and square paper fan pop-ups can be reshaped into a big heart. Buy the basic decorations and then use your creativity to take them to the next level.
Planning and decorating for your wedding should be fun, not stressful, yet too often it feels like a burden. And remember, a perfect wedding will blend into all the rest. It’s okay if there are flaws and quirks to your event because that’s what makes this wedding uniquely yours.
