You don't have to make your decorations!

Early on in the wedding planning process you have to pick out colors and a general theme. With a early fall/late summer wedding, I knew I wanted turquoise, but didn't want to pair it with brown or coral. I saw some pictures of a turquoise and orange wedding on pinterest and decided to roll with it!

Obviously we were going to for a rustic feel, which, according to pinterest, can go several ways. Some different things I saw were chalkboard, burlap and lace, mason jar, barb wire, lanterns, real flowers, dried flowers, wine bottles, hay bales, old windows...the list goes on and on. Pinterest can get you into trouble if your not careful!!


I originally planned to make the decorations myself - I had thrift store vases that I was going to paint to match our colors and then put babies breath and wheat in them, was going to paint cowbells and wrap wine bottles in rope.


Then I found these super cute bells on the rruffledblog.com/recycleyourwedding for like $12. (That site is really great for finding anything wedding related - from decorations to dresses and everything in between!)


I found 25 jars with barbed wire in them for $25 on Facebook. (see top photo) The horseshoe candle holder jars I found on Craigslist for cheaper than we could make them before investing our time. Our table runners, backdrop and table skirt all came from people on different Facebook groups.



Another place I found some of our decorations was Etsy (it's addicting. Just search wedding) My garter, the cake topper, the pretty Bride hanger, our invitations and all of our dried flowers came from various Etsy shops. I picked up all the metal letters we used at Hobby Lobby on sale. Most of our chalkboard signs were dollar store frames that we painted with chalkboard paint, and one of Jay's sisters wrote them for us.





Life lesson learned? You don't have to DIY your wedding decorations, but they don't have to be a huge part of your budget. It takes a lot of time to make them all and can get expensive - and chances are someone else already made the decoration you want or something similar and wants to part with it! (Since we had a set budget, it was important to me to not break the bank decorating). I sold most of our decorations within a month after the wedding for what we paid for them, and put that money away to spend on our honeymoon. I think by the time all was said and done, we spent maybe $300 on decorations for the wedding and reception, and got most of that back selling things after the wedding.

We did DIY some parts of our wedding - and will blog about that later!! Did you find it easier to DIY or buy for your wedding??




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