For almost all of us, when planning anything as huge as a wedding, budget is a big honkin deal! The bulk of our budget was to be food and of course the candy bar, so decorations needed to be very cost effective. Now my daughter in law Christie said something that I thought made perfect sense, “If you don’t want your reception to look like it’s in a church, don’t have it in a church!” Well we were having the reception in a church and with a tiny budget. I wanted to spread color around, have it look nice, give people good food and plenty of room to visit, so here is what we came up with.

Purple, blue and orange, those are the colors I had to work with. Emma’s new mother in law made round table cloths in those colors, then we used a sheer fabric over the top in one of the other colors, topped that with a satin square to anchor the “flower arrangements”. I don’t think the colors are showing up well here, but think jewel tones and you’ll have the gist of it. Emma had found “redneck wine glasses” at a ridiculously good price, we filled those and cheese shakers and salt and pepper shakers with sugar that we colored orange. We then arranged our button “flower” stems in those containers. The original plan was to have the stems straight but as we started we found we really didn’t like that as much as we thought we would. So Kim grabbed a stem and wound it around her finger and tada……we all liked it! It became very whimsical and so Emma like that we knew immediately this was the way to do the tables.

Next we scattered some buttons and put out a few pictures of the couple, which was one of Emma’s requests. I think the tables turned out really well.

Now I started with the idea of spreading some color around the room and thought balloons would be fun. But helium always lasts until just before the party starts, in my experience, and it’s kind of over done in our area. One day in Walmart I found these seasonal party buckets on sale, they only had a few, we got what they had and we put my sister on the hunt for more over the next month. We ended up with 9 buckets which I thought we could use in 3 sets of 3 to spread the color around the room. The original idea was to build pedestals for the buckets to sit on, cut out some wooden circles to hold the dowels in and moss cover the wood. Enter the budget, and thus we punt! We rounded up wooden stools from my house and Diane’s, we looked through Grandpa’s wood pile and cut out some stumps and thus we have pedestals for nothing. Grandpa took one look at my buckets and what I wanted to do with them and asked why we weren’t using cardboard instead of wood. So cardboard circles were cut, again for free. Emma hates the look of moss, so I started looking. Papermart.com had shredded orange paper, for a great price and that’s what we used to cover the card board.  About a week before the wedding 5 of us got together and blew up about 50 balloons, wrapped them in crochet thread soaked in liquid starch of the right variegated colors and hung them to dry. Then you pop the balloons and you are left with a fanciful thing that’s just fun. 

Now, I had no real idea of what these should be, or be called, I just wanted a way to spread some color around the room and add a festive touch. But when we started to put these together my daughter in law Shay said they looked like Dr Seuss’ Truffula trees! Well when you combine those with our fanciful table centerpieces I had an ah-ha moment and realized we had a theme! We also used some of the “balloons” to border the video screen where we were showing dozens of pictures of the bride and groom through their lives.

It was very cute, and again it was Kim to the rescue. Most of us really need a friend or family member to help us pull something off like a wedding. I need a Kim! Really everyone in the family worked their behinds off and I could never have done this on my own, but My husband Adam and his sister Kim have the amazing ability to take what I have, interpret my vision, and make it all come together like I actually knew what I was doing. It’s amazing!

Now you add to the room Emma’s swing and the family tradition of displaying some the the quilts and afghans they had been given and you have a nice little spot for the bride and groom to greet their guests.

One of Emma’s favorite things was her button bouquet that her sister made for her. We were all quite pleased with how well it turned out. Here is kind of an over all shot that shows how it all came together. It’s simple and may not look like much in the pictures but it turned out really cute. We had plenty of room for people to move around, plenty of tables for just sitting and visiting, just enough color, fanciful decorations and plenty of good food. We had all of Emma’s favorite things, Chicken salad sandwiches on her grandmothers homemade rolls, 2 kinds of cheeseballs with a wide variety of crackers, hot chocolate and donut holes, 4 kinds of miniature pies, ham and turkey stuffed rollups, pirouette cookies dipped in chocolate and rolled in sprinkles, a variety of cheeses and seasonal fruit. Everything was homemade and that takes some planning and some freezer space, but it turned out really well. But no matter how much good food you have there will always be the little grand daughter who just wants the marshmallows.

Now there is one other tradition that is more well known among us that have receptions in our church than in the general public………it’s said that you aren’t really married unless you have your picture taken in front of the basketball hoop! There’s one in every gym! Now this church is newer and has a really nice gym that we were using for the reception. I actually had to lower the hoop for this picture. It’s just a fun thing to do.

I think what really makes a good party, wedding or otherwise, isn’t so much what it looks like but how it feels. You surround yourself with people that you love and who love you, you have really good food, you give them a pleasant place to sit a spell and visit, and pretty soon you have the best party ever. It doesn’t have to be super expensive, or the most original, or even the same as everyone else. Make it your own, make it your idea of fun, don’t be afraid to try something new or completely different and don’t be so tied down to your design or idea that everything falls apart when one little thing goes wrong.

We punted over and over for this wedding. Budget was our biggest concern, and I wanted Emma to be really pleased with it all. So we used the combined talents and brains of the family to make all her wants and wishes come true in very inventive ways that conformed to the budget. Don’t blow thousands and thousands on one party just to impress your friends. If you have that kind of money make a down payment on a house! Have fun, work together, that way you’ll have not only a great wedding but tons of memories to go along with it.