Wedding Decoration Details: Signs & Budget Tips

Today's Wedding Wednesday post is about all the various signs we had at our DIY wedding.  We had countless signs, whether to explain a process, to direct people to different places, or just for fun!  DIY weddings I feel need to help guests have more direction than a wedding where, perhaps, the facility you are using has hired staff who can help answer any questions.  Since we didn't have any staff who could point any confused guests the right way, we used signs to help get points across, and make everything fun!

-------Side Note-------

Before we get this post started, I wanted to give a shout out to Credit Card Insider and the neat infographic and article they created to give some financial tips to engaged couples who are wedding planning!  Thanks so much to them for featuring a little bit of my advice!  You can see the infographic and read the article here!  (My quote is actually found under my business name, Love Coffee Darling instead of the blog name Let's Drink Coffee, Darling...just in case you couldn't find it!)  I think much of the advice left by other brides is very great advice!

One thing that always threw me off are those "average" wedding costs you always see in wedding statistics!  I would like to add on to that while those may be the "average" wedding costs, you can still have a great wedding without spending anywhere near that amount of money!  Actually, I don't even understand how those are average, because I know for a fact I've never been to a wedding that cost that much!  If you have any questions about how we managed our wedding budget, please feel free to email me!  I am always happy to talk to other brides about our experience!

-------Now back to our regularly scheduled post-------

Signs for Food

We decided to make several signs at the wedding to either clarify what should be happening or what type of food or drink should be served.  Most of the signs were hand painted or drawn, as well as crafted by me.  Some of the smaller details were printed.

S'mores
This sign was made for S'mores after the cake part of the reception.
It was made with cardboard, paint pens, a dowel rod, and the base of a trophy stand.

And yes, I did use real fire to burn the edges of the sign.  The smoke detector almost went off a few times. ;)

Cupcake Flavors

"Coffee on the Rocks"
I made this sign with foam board, cardstock, grass, pebbles, a dowel, a marble trophy stand base, and a tile.

This sign was made to go by our "signature drink" at the wedding.  We had some basics as far as drinks went: water, tea and lemonade...but the coffee was "us."

I broke the trophy base while trying to force the dowel in (it was just slightly too big).  I didn't have another one, so I just glued it back together, glued decorative grass over the crack, and glued the tile under it for extra support.  The moral of this story is...even if you break it, there's still a way to overcome and use it!

And here's the sign in action at the wedding...

Large Cooler Signs
Because we were using large coolers for the majority of drinks we offered at  the wedding, and since coolers aren't generally that pretty or see through, I made some signs so guests would know what drink was inside, as well as to make things a little cuter.

 Decorative/Informational Signs

We had other signs around the wedding that were purely for aesthetic or informational purposes.  Some were used to direct traffic, others just for fun!

I made this "All You Need is Love" sign from some pages in a catalog for wood flooring.  Just glued them onto foam board, and painted the quote on.

My friend Veronica made some pallet board signs for my bachelorette party and gave them to me.  We used them in the wedding too!

She also made this "All you need is Love" sign.  Apparently we were thinking the same thing. :)

We nailed this sign to two boards to make it stand higher and used it to direct traffic to the right location.  Our wedding was in an odd location, so we needed a way to let guests know they had made it to the right location.  There aren't any pictures of it from the wedding, unfortunately!

I made signs to cover the conventional bathroom signs at our wedding as well.  Read full post on these HERE.

Pebble Girl Basket
We wanted our Pebble Girls to do something a little different than traditional flower girls.  While one of them carried my beloved stuffed animal Maggie with her, the other threw pebbles and carried this basket.  You can read more on our reasoning for that and for more pictures HERE.

Wedding Decoration Details: Flowers & Vases

Having had a budget wedding that was a mixture between rustic and chic styles, I decided to hand craft the majority of my table centerpiece flowers.  I used fabric, ribbon, and pinecones for the flowers, and old food jars and bottles for vases.  This is an extremely budget concious decorating option for brides who are interested in rustic or chic wedding styles!

Handmade Flowers

Burlap and Lace Flowers
Back when I was just beginning my wedding planning, I saw a really cool tutorial for making a burlap flower table centerpiece.  I was inspired, and from there my wedding decorations progressed.

I started by copying her tutorial in burlap and lace...

hers look better than mine, but my excuse is that I made a lot of flowers with limited time per piece.

Ribbon Flowers
After I had made a lot of burlap and lace flowers, I thought of a new idea.
Use ribbon.

This was a lot easier to do than the burlap and lace, and I LOVED how chic they were.

Pine Pebble Flowers

buy these here

Long after I had been making burlap, lace and ribbon flowers, I was experimenting with pinecones.  I came up with the pinecone boutineers that our groomsmen and family wore at the wedding, as well as the pine-pebble flowers.

Vases

We recycled for pretty much every vase we had at the wedding.
Instead of going out to buy tons of jars, or identical vases, we used recycled glass jars that once stored food.

These are a bunch of jars that I had just cleaned to start the preparations to make them cute vases for our wedding centerpieces.  Some are the Starbucks Frappucino bottles, some are pasta sauce jars, jelly jars, glass pop bottles.  We collected many of these ourselves, and many friends donated their jars to us as well!

This is what I did with the vases.  I didn't want to stick to doing just one particular thing to them, so I made their decor unique - just as each bottle was unique.  To keep with a theme, I used only burlap, twine, lace, pearls, and ribbon as my materials.

The End Result

The flowers and vases together.

I also mixed my handmade flowers with cheap acrylic flowers.  I wanted to have the chic look off the handmade flowers mixed with the springy colors of the acrylic flowers.

Besides the artificial flowers, we picked some wildflowers from behind the lodge to fill some empty vases.  Some might just call them weeds, but I think they are gorgeous!

I also turned this log into a wedding decoration.  My cousin had brought it to a family cook out, and I saved it from the fire because it was awesome and had a hole in the middle.  After filling it with styrofoam, I filled it with the handmade flowers and some acrylic flowers.

My favorites of the ribbon flowers were the little pink ones made out of the ribbed ribbon.

And those were our wedding flowers!  Nearly free, besides purchasing the ribbon and eating food (to get the jars)!

Oh, and friends are super helpful in obtaining empty jars!  Thank you, lovely friends!

P.S.  While I am not actively trying to sell these flowers or vases, I am very open to working with anyone who would like to.  Just email me or request a custom order through my Etsy shop.  Please remember if you would like to purchase these for a wedding, it is quite a time consuming process, so I will need plenty of advance notice.

Bride and Groom Shots: On Dry Ground

We really took a ton of portraits - which is great with me since we have a lot of great pictures together and a lot to choose from for albums and picture frames around the house.  But for the same reason, I'm splitting the posts on portraits into two parts...so if you missed the "Love in a Canoe" segment of portraits - go check them out!  They are our favorite group of pictures from the day!

A big thanks to Birds and Coffee Design for each and every one of these portraits!

Love everything about this one except I look mad at Tyler! haha!

Really loved how this filter she added captured the light in the background and brought out the brooch and dress detail.

Pretty sure we look exhausted in this one!