Our invitations- FINALLY DONE

Designed by Red Toad Media, my amazing mother, she wanted to have the coffee water mark and postage stamp because of my love of coffee and my infinite postage stamp collection.

It is a post card invitation, with a pre-post paid RSVP card to make it easier for people to reply immediately since we are getting these out a little late. 

I found THE Dress!

http://www.modcloth.com/shop/dresses/gilded-grace-dress

Kyle is not allowed to click the link! I am soooooo excited and we got it for a bargain. It's perfect and under $200. Now we are looking at facinators for hair and shoes.

The frugal vase

I happen to recycle and collect recyclables for our eventual earthship, and so we have a crap ton of wine bottles and other oddities that I think we can put to use for the table settings. I hope the illusion of alcohol doesn't upset anyone though!

The great benefit- 
-customize your vases
-save money
-two bouquets, or maybe even one, would go a long way in these small vases.

They are covered in yarn!

1cent paper doilies

I will probably pull out the cork and use it to hold the table numb

                                                        twine!

glitter!

Other awesome substitutes for floral table decor!

I found the following items listed on ebay for a steal of a price. It would greatly reduce the cost of flowers, while still being fragrant and beautiful.

Dried oranges

Cinna sticks

throw a few dried flowers into the mix adding a nice complimenting color

pinecone flowers

seed pods and assorted dried mix

throw some pumpkin pods in the mix

$10/100

Why didn't I think of this sooner?

DRIED FLOWERS!

http://www.ebay.com/sch/Dried-Flowers-Plants-/160648/i.html
This works perfectly for my needs, and they look great, I don't have to worry about kids spilling water from the center pieces or keeping them alive, because I have a really bad habit of killing plants the way my mom kills cars :p. I guess I will find out now if my mom actually reads this blog. JK mom!

Hats hats hats!

I am on the hunt for the fancy, the frugal and the.. large in quantity. 

It hit me that I went to a new years party that had cool hats, so I found some party hats online!

I have no idea if we will have them at the wedding, but it would be nice to have a few around for pictures, for the people who don't dress up. 

$4.97

$2.07

$3.70

$1.00

Who needs flowers, when you have feathers?

Who needs a few thousand dollars worth of flowers?

FEATHERS are much cheaper. When combined with  a few bouquets, they can be quite striking.

100 peacock feathers can be found on ebay for $10

                I love this for fall, combine the feathers with pine cones, and the pin cones look like flowers and the feathers are the colorful leaves. This is pure brilliance. 

 

If I had a little more money and time I would totally do this for my female favors, 

Also, if your guests don't own anything vintage for your wedding, get them some feathers, and a color palette, and show them how a little feather can take a look back in time, but not in style.

Do not pay $20 for this pen. Please just buy the feather and some cheap pens, and a white craft fabric tape. $20 for a pen is an insult. 

Goose feathers! (Don't pay more for swan feathers, they look exactly the same.) then go call them swan feathers of course because it sounds more romantic. 

stain, paint, dip, sparkle, or add a variety for a more personalized version of this look

No one will know that you printed your own invitations if you add a feather.

I was looking for affordable flowers when I came across this image that my friend had shown me a while back, 

the source is dead, and leads to a post on a facebook album in a foreign language. 

So I naturally went to Etsy to see other similar creations, hoping to save money ideally, however I couldn't have been more wrong in this thought. 

Apparently these little beauties, even the simplest paper flowers are radically more expensive than a flower bouquet. I could not believe my mind. I think people automatically jack up the price if the word "wedding" can be used in combination with decor. How much do you wanna bet that if my feather bouquets get popular, the price of feathers with triple? yards of fabric at the fabric shop are already much cheaper than burlap, and burlap was a cheap alternative at one point. 

SO my most impact-ful piece of advice at the moment is to find things that are off beat and not currently in style. Find out what basic materials are cheap right now, like feather or pine cones, and design around those elements.