Excellent Ideas

I have a few suggestions for elegant yet inexpensive decorations for wedding receptions. For starters, in the spring or summer it can be very beautiful to have the reception outside taking advantage of the flowers that are abundant this time of year. If your own, or parents' yard isn't very well landscaped ask a member of the ward with a beautiful yard if it could be hosted there. Or, local parks often have rose gardens or other areas that can be reserved. 

If there will be tables for guests to sit at there are a lot of inexpensive yet beautiful ways to decorate them. For example, this time of year lilac are blooming. They smell heavenly, and look so elegant in clear, white or silver vases. They can be placed on top of a mirror (round wall varieties work for this...its ok to have different ones at each table) and have confetti or more single lilac blooms sprinkled over the mirror. My sister loves the ocean and wanted to incorporate that into her wedding reception theme. For each table she put flat decorative bowls (10-16"diameter) filled with white sand. Then she put small fish bowls with the fluted top that you can get cheap at Wal-mart on top of the sand. She put glass beads in the bottom of them, filled them with water, added 2 goldfish (who later went back to a friend's fish pond) and put a floating candle in the top of them. Then she put a couple of sea shells in the sand of the bottom flat bowl. Also, she took some of the larger, taller baby food jars, put sand in the bottom, and a votive candle and hung them from the Mimosa tree and around the basketball court (it was an outside reception). Or, for a winter wedding you can get the unused leftover pine trees cheaply (or free!) and decorate them with white lights and pine cones that are spray painted the wedding color, white, or gold, or silver. Poinsettias are beautiful table decorators or have an ice sculpture. If you're willing to put in the time and thought it is possible to have a lovely, yet less expensive wedding reception!

Wedding receptions are definitely a personal thing! My sister-in-law-to-be wants to serve brownies at hers!

I hope that these ideas are helpful!

Maria in Oregon

Funny Story

My name is Jennifer and my husband is Steve. We've been married for 4 years. During our reception, the guests were busy decorating the car of course.  Well little did we know his sister was planning a bigger scheme! When we run out of the building everyone is throwing birdseed at us and we can hardly see to tell what's happening. We're almost to the car but, the doors were locked. His sister and a few other gals grab me away from him. A couple of his friends grabbed him away and literally threw him over his shoulder. It was a big guy! Well they ended up taking him to play basketball for a few hours and I got to go to our bishop's house:) Later on, they dropped us off at the movie theater and we saw a movie. We didn't check into the hotel until 11pm and I made him get up and go to sacrament the next morning! We also learned that this trick was also pulled on his mom and dad by some of his dad's friends when they got married!

Jennifer

(Editors Note: We don't recommend you try this one yourselves!!!)