If you missed the first 50, you can find them here:

101 Ways to Save on Your Wedding: 1-25

101 Ways to Save on Your Wedding: 26-50

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51.    Search the internet for DIY videos done by other people. You can find them for everything from bouquet arrangements to cake baking. DIYnetwork.com is a good place to start
52.    Grow your own flowers for your wedding. If you start early enough, and grow flowers native to your region, you should have plenty to use in bouquets or centerpieces
53.    Use fruit as centerpieces. Apples, Oranges, Pears and Lemons have good color and are far less expensive than flowers. Plus, what your guests don’t take with them, you can donate to a local food bank
54.    Search etsy.com for handmade goods that are unique and customizable. Some items are just as expensive as mass made goods, but if you do a little digging you can find some good values
55.    Watch wedding related forums and message boards, especially those local to your area. People will often post about their good experiences with little-known vendors who offer a really good deal. Theknot.com and partypop.com are good places for this
56.    Stay on top of your budget. Keep all your contracts in one place so you know exactly where they are if you need to refer to them. Question every line item to be sure it’s something you should be paying for
57.    Keep a spreadsheet or use software to manage your budget. Know exactly how much you owe each vendor and exactly when that amount is due
58.    Sew your own garter
59.    Rather than pay someone you don’t know to officiate your wedding, ask someone close to you to become ordained. You can do so online without much trouble.
60.    Instead of hiring a and or a dj, enlist the help of a friend and use your iPod to keep the crowd entertained. Create your playlists beforehand and have your friend keep an eye on it.
61.    Plan your wedding yourself. Wedding planners are nice when you can afford them, but if you’re working with a tight budget, you can take on the role yourself.
62.    Be willing to compromise on the food you serve your guests. Lunch is always cheaper than dinner and buffets are generally cheaper than plated meals. Work with your caterer to find the best balance between your ideal situation and your budget
63.    Everyone wants whiter teeth for all the pictures they’ll be taking on their wedding day, but instead of splurging for zoom whitening, use a drugstore kit. It may take a little more effort, but the results should be comparable
64.    Find non-bridesmaid dresses for your bridesmaids. Just because they’re not labeled as such, doesn’t mean they can’t be worn as bridesmaid dresses. Shop department store websites, where they’ll usually have a decent amount of stock and in many different colors. And chances are if it doesn’t have the bridesmaid dress label, your girls will be more likely to wear it again.
65.    Ask only your closest friends to be your attendants. The more attendants you have, the more you’d spend should you choose to give them gifts.
66.    If your ceremony or reception venue are already very ornate or make a statement by themselves, go light on the décor. Years from now, no one will hardly remember what your centerpieces looked like
67.    Use address numbers from the hardware store for your table numbers
68.    Use saveoncrafts.com for DIY supplies
69.    Keep all your receipts for everything you buy. You may not use something and need to take it back. You’ll want to get back every penny you can for it.
70.    Shop Black Friday sales the day after Thanksgiving in brick and mortar stores for deals on things like craft supplies, dresses and shoes.
71.    Shop Cyber Monday the Monday after Thanksgiving online to find deals similar to those on Black Friday
72.    Take advantage of free shipping for anything you order online, even if it means you have to wait a little longer for it. Patience is a virtue
73.    If you have a vintage feel to your wedding, visit antique stores and flea markets to find deals on décor. As a bonus, you can use the pieces in your home after the wedding.
74.    Use a site like bagborroworsteal.com to find jewelry and other accessories for your wedding day that you might not be able to afford otherwise.
75.    Use a wholesale club like Sam’s Club or Costco to purchase flowers for your DIY bouquets and centerpieces

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• 4, 3, 2…. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days! (oops – this was drafted 1/19/2011)

Technorati Tags: Bridal, Candleholders, Candles, Detroit, Florist, Flowers, fonts, Hair, hairpiece, Headpiece, Invitations, letterpress, Makeup, postcard, Save the Dates, Shoes, veil, vendors, Wedding

If you missed the first 25, you can find them here:

101 Ways to Save on Your Wedding: 1-25

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26.    Sew your own veil with tulle from the fabric store
27.    Create your own hairpiece from silk flowers and feathers from the craft store
28.    Send postcards as Save the Dates and save on postage and paper costs
29.    Avoid letterpress printing for your invitations. Although it might be one of the nicest printing methods, it’s also one of the priciest.
30.    Use construction paper as one element of your DIY invitations. It will add lots of texture, with only a little expense
31.    Avoid hiring a calligrapher and use a computerized script font instead
32.    Limit the number of pieces in your invitation suite and save on postage, since it’s based on weight
33.    Use flowers that are locally grown and in-season and avoid the cost of flying them in during the off-season
34.    Use a storage or organization box or basket for your card box that you can re-use in your home after the wedding for storage
35.    Befriend someone in the event planning industry. They often have access to discounts to wholesalers and rental vendors
36.    Do your own makeup, hair and/or nails
37.    Have your hair, makeup and nails done at a cosmetology school like Aveda. The cost is lower and the results are usually just as good
38.    Design your invitations yourself and have them printed by a company like gotprint.com. Once you get them, add a little interest yourself either with embossing or a similar technique
39.    Serve cupcakes instead of cake. Cupcakes are often cheaper and can help you avoid a cake cutting fee that most caterers will charge
40.    Depending on your décor, you may be able to find some things at a site like Oriental Trading Company. While most of the items aren’t necessarily for a wedding, you might find a diamond in the rough
41.    Watch sites like craigslist.com and freecycle.org for free and inexpensive items that people are just looking to get rid of.
42.    Repurpose mason jars as candleholders
43.    Shop the brick and mortar outlet versions of your favorite stores like Crate and Barrel, Pier 1, and Pottery Barn
44.    Get your wedding shoes from the clearance section. This is easiest to do when they’re off-season, but make sure you check the clearance area often as the selection often dwindles quickly
45.    Support local business. They are often more flexible and willing to work with you to achieve your goals
46.    Barter services. If you happen to be a talented computer progammer, offer to create or update a website for a vendor in return for their services
47.    Let vendors know when you’re dissatisfied. They’re often willing to accommodate you and knockdown the cost, rather than risk a bad review or unhappy client
48.    Look for your honeymoon travel on sites like priceline.com, cheapcaribbean.com, travelzoo.com, and farecast.com
49.    Travel during the offseason for your honeymoon, even if it’s months after your wedding. Rates will be cheaper on airfare and your hotel
50.    Dafont.com and 1001freefonts.com offer a range of free fonts that you can use for your invitations and any other paper projects

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Technorati Tags: Bridal, Candleholders, Candles, Detroit, Florist, Flowers, fonts, Hair, hairpiece, Headpiece, Invitations, letterpress, Makeup, postcard, Save the Dates, Shoes, veil, vendors, Wedding

1. Hold your wedding on any day other than Saturday. Saturday’s are priced at premium rates so try a Friday or Sunday instead
2. Negotiate with your vendors. They might be willing to cut the rate if you’re willing to go without some of their services that aren’t essential
3. Share décor/supplies with another bride
4. Provide liquor yourself from a wholesale store, like BevMo, Sam’s Club or Costco
5. Purchase a used dress from a site like OnceWed.com, PreOwnedWeddingDresses.com or the WeddingBee.com Classifieds
6. Purchase a bridesmaid dress as a bridal gown
7. Create your own bouquet with store bought flowers. Check out DIY Instructional videos like this one here
8. Get ready at home and don’t pay for a hotel room
9. Drive your own car and don’t rent a limo
10. Get married at a public place with little or no rental fee like a local community center
11. Shop for décor at the dollar store. Just be aware that they might have a better in-store selection than online
12. Wear borrowed jewelry from a friend or family member to add a free personal touch
13. Wear shoes you already own
14. Don’t use flowers on the reception tables. Use other items that are less expensive but that have just as much character, like feathers, moss and books
15. Don’t give out favors. Guests usually throw them away anyway, making them a general waste of moneyDon’t rent chair covers. Use the chairs that come with your venue. In most pictures the guests will be sitting in the chairs anyway
16. Don’t rent chair covers. Use the chairs that come with your venue. In most pictures the guests will be sitting in the chairs anyway
17. Skip the aisle runner
18. Buy Christmas lights on clearance after the holiday and use them to set the mood at your wedding
19. Use weekly coupons mailed from craft stores like Michael’s and Jo-Ann Fabrics. Each one is usually good for about 20% off
20. If you’re purchasing the flower girl dresses, look for them during or right after the Easter holiday for deep discounts
21. Instead of expensive gifts, give your attendants handwritten notes of thanks
22. Put the money you don’t need right away in a CD to allow the money to grow for you with little effort. Check rates on a site like bankrate.com
23. Purchase décor from an auction site like ebay.com
24. Visit sample sales at local dress boutiques to find your bridal gown
25. Instead of buying bridal magazines, check them out from the library for free

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Technorati Tags: Bridal Gown, Bridesmaids, Budget, Caterer, Decor, Favors, Food, Venue

Because I love you guys and I’m not selfish, I’m pointing you in the direction of a contest I just found out about.

The full rundown can be found on their site, but I’ll give you the rundown here.

• Host: 100LayerCake.com
• Deadline: May 1st, 2009
• Instructions: Email them pictures of your DIY project along with a description
• All the other details: here

May the best bride (or non-bride) win!

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Technorati Tags: contest, DIY

You might remember my first bouquet trial. That one was mixed and was red, yellow and orange.

This time around, I did a trial with all white carnations. I’m leaning toward the idea of having an all white bouquet for myself and the mixed color bouquet for my girls. The carnations were pretty cheap. I got 2 dozen for $18 from a wholesale flower distributor. I took basically the same steps as with the first bouquet:

• Strip all the leaves
• Bunch the stems together and secure with floral tape
• I didn’t use a cardboard wrapper around the stems this time, but I should have
• Wrap the handle in ribbon and secure it with pins

The good thing about the carnations is that they’re very durable and very forgiving even at the mercy of my novice ability. I felt like they looked pretty good. My main concern is probably the fact that the stems are jointed so they snap pretty easily at the different joints in the stem. Other than that the were pretty easy to work with. If I do decide to do this, I might add one more dozen to make it a little fuller.

I’ll try and post some better pictures over the next few days, but I think you get the idea.

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Technorati Tags: Bouquet, Bridal, Carnations, Cheap, DIY, Florist, Flowers, store

Since we can’t afford fancy letterpress invitations and because we’ll be diy-ing them ourselves, they’ll likely be offset printed on some kind of cardstock. So we need some visual interest and texture. I think we’re going to emboss some element of the invitation.

Of course I wanted to do a trial run-through, so I rounded up a trusty assistant and we got to work. My trusty assistant was my enthusiastic and supportive sister, Blue, of Pompous Apparel fame.

First, the supplies:

• Rubber stamp – $0.75 from the clearance bucket
• Pigment ink pad – $3.99
• Cardstock scraps – free, from an old project
• Heat tool for embossing – free, borrowed from a scrapbooking friend
• Embossing Powder – ~$5, I don’t remember exactly. But there’s probably enough of it to do at least half my invitations
  

  

After trial and error, here are the steps we suggest:

Stamp the cardstock with the ink in a randomish pattern.

Before the ink has a chance to dry dump a good amount of embossing powder over the ink until it’s completely covered. Give it a few seconds to adhere.

Dump the mounds of excess powder onto a holding sheet and move your cardstock to a clean sheet of paper.

Hold the the heat gun 2-3 inches from the paper, but keep it moving. If you leave it in one place to long, it could burn the paper. You’ll know when it’s done its duty in a particular area because the design will go from looking grainy and powdery to shiny and raised.

Rinse and Repeat.

Lesson’s Learned

• Make sure you use pigment ink. If you don’t, it doesn’t work.
• Use cardstock that is smooth, not textured. Our embossing powder got stuck in some of the crevices and we ended up with embossed texture in some places where we didn’t want it.
• The stamp looks kind of cool when its hanging off the edge of the paper. Like you meant it to be that way.
• Make sure you ink the stamp well and press it down hard every time. Otherwise you get an uneven print that you can’t go back and fix.

The Fruits of Our Labor

Why, bookmarks of course! Look close at the red one and you can see our errors that you should avoid.

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Technorati Tags: DIY, emboss, Invitations, stamp, trial

You may have noticed we have an undercurrent of Detroit running through our wedding. From the Save the Dates to the possible favors to the location of the event, it’s definitely present.

Here’s another idea.

Use the major streets, or those that mean a lot to you as names for the tables. So for us, we might use Woodward, Grand River, Michigan, etc. Or maybe its the street you grew up on. You could take pictures of the signs and use photo clips to hold them.

Source: Jena D Events

Or, you could try to DIY some street signs. I imagine it would go something like this.

Ingredients:

• Wood skewers or popsicle sticks
• Pail, glass, or jar
• Pebbles or sand
• Corrugated cardboard from old boxes or foam board from a craft/office supply store
• Green paint
• White paint or letter stickers

Judging by my list, you probably know where I’m going with this.

Cut out your signs from your cardboard or foam board. Paint them green. Write on them with paint or use your sticker letters to give them their street name identity. Glue the signs to the wood sticks. Anchor the signs in the jars with the pebbles or sand or some other filler to keep the signs stable. Simple enough. And cheap.

Obviously I haven’t tried this myself yet, but if one of you is willing to take a leap of faith and DIY this yourself, let me know and I’ll post the pictures here.

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Technorati Tags: Decor, Detroit, DIY, project, Reception

This post was taken from the pages of craftstylish.com. It’s a DIY project that I LOVE. I don’t think I have anywhere to use it right now, but I might just have to find a place for it.

The original post can be found here: http://www.craftstylish.com/item/28838/how-to-make-a-snowstorm

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A friend of mine visiting from the tropics wanted, more than anything, to see snow. Unfortunately, he was visiting during the Thanksgiving holiday when snow in New York (while not impossible) is unlikely. Not wanting to disappoint him, I set to work on “approximating” the effect. As is my rule around the holidays, the project had to be simple, inexpensive, and fun.

So, this week, in contrast to last week’s chandelier post, I offer a low-skill, high-impact project sure to surprise your guests (and your family) and help put you in the spirit of the season (regardless of whether the weather is cooperating with you or not).

Simple labels (1-inch circles) and some dental floss is all you need to make a winter wonderland.

Attach the dental floss to the adhesive side of a label.

Place a second label over the top of the first, sandwiching the dental floss between the two.

Randomly space your labels along the length of dental floss to give your finished snowstorm a natural look.

Hang finished strands in front of windows using small pieces of masking tape affixed to the tops of the window frames.

The slightest breeze will cause your “snowflakes” to move, which will will subtly animate a room—especially a dining room in candlelight.

Hung in a bedroom, this snowstorm cannot fail to bring a smile of surprise to the face of any guests.

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Technorati Tags: Decor, DIY, Idea

Now, I’ve seen other people do this, so I figured I’d try my hand at it.

Disclaimer: Never mind my hair or my t-shirt. Neither were prepared for this picture.

My DIY hair flower took me about 20 minutes to make and cost less than $5.

My supplies:

• One fake white rose (hold the dew drops please)
• One red and brown feather accent
• One button
• Needle and thread

First, I deconstructed the rose. This always seems to be the first step in other tutorials so I followed suit. It came apart pretty easily just by pulling the pieces. I was left with five individual layers of petals. Now that I had the extra plastic pieces out of the way, I re-layered my petals leaving them light, fluffy and open instead of tight and closed like they were at first.

Next, I took out my handy-dandy sewing bag. Now, I’m nobody’s domestic goddess. I don’t whip up full outfits in a single day, nor do own a sewing machine. I just happened to amass a large amount of random buttons, thread and needles and they’ve all ended up in this sewing bag. Anyway I used my white thread and just sewed all the petals together. It’s not a very neat job, but it doesn’t matter much because the thread is the same color as the flower and it’s very well hidden by the fluffiness of the petals.

Also in my sewing bag, I found a couple different buttons that I liked, but opted for the rhinestone button. I was a little worried that it would flop to much because the opening for the thread is only on the back side. The other buttons had true button holes where the thread would go all the way through and the button would lay flat. But I liked the look of the rhinestone button better so I went with it.

Since I’d already sewed the petals together, I used the same thread to sew the button into the center. I just made sure to pull the thread as tight as I could so the button would flop as little as possible.

After I had the flower and button assembled, I sewed on a feather accent I got from Michael’s. There has to be a better way to describe it besides ‘accent’ but I can’t think of it right now and that’s what it says on the tag anyway.

I used the same thread and attached the feather. My flower instantly went from sweet and feminine to a little edgy and feminine.

All in all, I like how it turned out. I do have one thing I might  try later though. My petals at the back of the flower are a little to loosey goosey and could easily get all tangled up if handled too much. I don’t have any on hand right now, but I think I might try some sort of fabric stiffener spray.

Who knows if I’ll actually end up wearing this flower (I’m constantly changing my mind these days) but it would nice with a birdcage veil. Just sayin’.

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Technorati Tags: DIY, feather, flower, Headpiece, veil

Heads Up!

If you’re a DIY bride or even a wannabe like me, head over to Project Wedding where they’re hosting a DIY challenge. All you have to do is create a wiki article, which is probably much easier than actually completing the project.

I know the prizes range from $250-$500. You’ll have to check their site for all the fine print though.

After you’ve created your wiki page/entry, post a link in the comments here so the rest of us can have a look-see.

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Technorati Tags: contest, DIY, project