kate with a twang posted: " In honor of our one year anniversary today (12/4/22, wedding on 12/4/21), I wanted to share a few quick tips for a budget-friendly wedding! #1: Decorate your own grocery-store cake. We went to our local Food City and ordered a full sheet cake," Kate with a Twang
In honor of our one year anniversary today (12/4/22, wedding on 12/4/21), I wanted to share a few quick tips for a budget-friendly wedding!
#1: Decorate your own grocery-store cake.
We went to our local Food City and ordered a full sheet cake, half white cake, half chocolate. We asked for it completely plain - white frosting with outer edge piping in white only - no other decorations.
I purchased a cake topper online; for our December wedding in the foothills of the mountains, we chose a natural-looking wooden topper. We added fresh flowers, using a seasonal bouquet from the same grocery store on the day we picked up the cake. I carefully arranged the flowers around the topper the night before the wedding and stored it in our venue's kitchen fridge overnight.
I think this looked absolutely beautiful, and it cost us less than $100, counting the topper and floral pieces.
Also - a full sheet cake was MORE than enough for our reception, which was under 60 guests in size. We probably could have done a half sheet cake, but we wanted to be safe and went with the bigger size.
#2: Use grocery store flowers for DIY centerpieces.
We used wood slices (purchased online), mini lanterns (gifted by my sister filled with remote-controlled faux candles we purchased from Amazon), table numbers (written on mini chalkboards), and wine bottles (emptied and gifted by my mom and my "extra mom" Angi). The night before the wedding, we purchased a couple bouquets of red roses from the grocery store when we picked up the cake.
We did do a slightly different centerpiece for our table, which was a sweetheart table with our son added with us. We used two white roses and one red rose at our table and a wood slice sign I made that had our last name and year of our wedding instead of a table number.
These turned out beautiful! My father-in-law helped us set up the night before and because they sat in the water overnight, they had opened up just slightly, as photographed here, and looks beautiful the next evening by reception time.
Pro Tip: Don't order your flowers from Sam's Club online if you need them in a specific color. We attempted to order carnations, but they arrived in the wrong colors and we punted to the grocery store roses, which ended up working our way better! We did find a use for the Sam's Club carnations - we used them in our morning-of rehearsal breakfast in the centerpieces and then some by the guest book in the church narthex. They were beautiful and fresh looking, but just the wrong color. (If you are using lots of colors or aren't picky about the color, these would probably work for your event. They were cost effective but just came pink instead of burgundy/red.)
#3: Make your own favors.
Because we had a December wedding, we decided our favors would be Christmas tree ornaments! I ordered small wood slices online, drilled holes, and used an Etsy-ordered stencil with our last-name monogram and wedding date.
I hand stenciled each in a deep red/burgundy color to match our wedding color. For an extra bit of flair, I put them in coordinating organza bags.
We also added Moon Pies to our favor bags to fill space and offer a little East Tennessee treat for our guests.
I put our ornament on our tree this year, and it made me want to scroll through all of our wedding photos again! (Perhaps I owe this blog idea to the ornament stirring up the memories!)
What other tips and tricks for a beautiful, but budget-friendly event do you have? Share below in the comments section - I'd love to hear from you!
Since it is our anniversary, I also wanted to share some of my favorite photos from our day, exactly one year ago! Big thanks to Kayla Williams Photography - one of my besties - who captured our day for us.
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