Wedding decoration ideas

The summer wedding season will soon be here and this year our son and his fiancée are planning to be married. With their wedding budget not being as big as their plans, they have asked us to help with decorating ideas that are low or no cost.

The colors they have chosen are green, silver and white. We have started going through our craft supplies that we have collected over the years and putting all possible materials into a large box. Collecting crafts and craft supplies seems to be one of our hobbies, more on that in another column.

After looking through past ideas and the craft supplies on hand we came up with several ideas to start with. The first was large fans made out of wallpaper and decorated with ribbons, flowers, lace and trims. These can be hung on the walls of the reception hall along with other decorations, such as paper lace heart-shaped doilies and garland.

The partial roll of wallpaper we have on hand from the last time we made these fans is white, silver and light pink. This wallpaper roll is 21 inches wide. To make a fan we folded the paper back and forth, making the folds about 1-inch wide. It took about 56 inches to make a fan. There was enough on this roll to do three at this size. About 5 inches from the bottom we wrapped a twist tie to separate the upper and lower portions.

With the leftover we made one smaller fan, folding the paper the same as the large fans and then folding it in the middle. We lightly spattered green paint on the fans to make them have all the wedding colors. Along the top of each fan we hot glued silver trim. Ribbons, greenery and flowers complete the desired look.

To have enough fans to balance the look around the room we decided we needed at least three more fans. On our next trip to town we visited several thrift stores to look for another suitable roll of wallpaper. At our second stop there was one for $2.50. It was an unopened roll with a background of white and light green with silver and tan embossed leaves. We spattered it with green and silver paint to complete the look we wanted.

The next project idea was favors for the wedding guests. We came up with candy kiss roses with a note attached thanking the guests for sharing in the special day.

Each rose is made with two candy kisses bottom to bottom, wrapped in cellophane with a 9-inch floral wire stem. To hold it all together, it is wrapped with floral tape. A leaf is added to the stem as it is wrapped. Just below the leaf we tied a ribbon bow, some with silver ribbon and some with white. Below the bow is the “thank you” note.

The colors of our roses are silver kisses with clear cellophane. The leaves we had on hand are light yellow, white, dark and light green.

Another idea came from an ivy plant we have. We trimmed it and placed the cuttings in small jars of water to root. After roots formed we planted them in small pots, placing about five or six cuttings in each pot. We ended up with eight plants. They have a little over three months to grow and fill out.

This is just the start of our ideas and plans. We are on the lookout for more ideas as we also need to plan decorations for the church.