The Little Details: Centerpeices

Okay so let's be honest. Weddings are super expensive. When we first got engaged one of the very first things we did was decide on a budget. Luckily, very luckily we had a huge amount of help from my parents, but living in NJ where weddings seem to be more expensive than purchasing a car or even a down payment on a small house...we needed to do some creative money saving.

One thing we did to help out with the budgeting process was to choose 2 items to "splurge" on. Meaning, 2 of the most important aspects of the wedding that we would spend more money on and then figure out how to save money in the other areas. For us, photography was among the most important items and the venue which included the food/cake & location combined. My parents fortunately forked the bill for the venue, but we had to come up with the means to afford most of the other aspects of the wedding. 

One of the ways we saved the most money was with our decorations. I  was surprised to find that flowers/decorations are often one of the most expensive bills for the wedding! To me this was ridiculous considering that flowers die. Sure, you have pictures with the flowers and centerpieces (sometimes) in them, but for several thousand dollars I wanted to do my best to save a buck or two. 

Photo courtesy of Kara Loomis Photography

Ofcourse, I did find an excellent florist willing to work with us within our budget (that I will share was exactly $1,800 for all flowers in ceremony, reception, and wedding party). We used flowers that were in season as well as lots of greens and large blooms so we needed less stems to make big impression.

Gig Morris Florist: yellow daisies, green & white hydrangeas, white peonies, green hypernicum berries,  yellow freesia & plenty of greens
Photo courtesy of Kara Loomis Photography

In addition, we did a lot of the decorating on our own. The biggest cost cutter was doing alternating centerpieces. Every other table had the beautiful centerpieces the florist designed:

The florist used the same flowers in the bouquets and used a navy/white striped ribbon to adorn a simple glass cylinder vase.
Photo courtesy of Kara Loomis Photography

The other centerpieces were large hurricane glasses we purchased at Michael's for $7 each using a 40% off coupon each time to save even more money! We filled each hurricane glass with sand we purchased in bulk at Lowe's and wrapped an ivory rope around the base to give it a more nautical feel. My mom twisted the rope and glue-gunned the ends to make sure it stayed in place. We purchased navy pillar candles online to put in the center. 

Each centerpiece cost approximately: $11 including the hurricane glass, candle, sand and rope.

Photo courtesy of Kara Loomis Photography

As an additional touch to this super inexpensive but classy centerpiece, we added small tealights in simple glass holders we got from IKEA. The glass holders were $1.99 for 12 and the tealights were $4 for 100. 

Next time I'll share more details on the stationary, place cards & table numbers.