♥ Our Fabulous Frugal Wedding ♥

Those of us "Frugal" chicks know how hard it can be to plan and execute a wedding as thrifty as possible. And let me tell you it's no easy task. We literally planned, bought, arranged, set-up and tore down EVERYTHING for our wedding ourselves. And although it cost us a pretty penny, it was well worth it and I'm sure we saved quite a few $dollars$  doing it ourselves. I'm going to show you some of the stuff that I made or bought at a bargain price for our wedding that I am quite proud of :)

We were lucky enough to have our wedding at a beautiful beach side house thanks to my wonderful aunt and uncle who graciously allowed us to celebrate our special day with them at their home. 
Since the house was tucked behind a security gate, I knew I had to make some signs directing our guests where to go. So I came up with these.

I put the "Wedding" sign outside the front gate, and the "Reception" sign at the top of the hill pointing to the staircase that led to the beach where the ceremony was.

For these signs, I bought 2 pieces of rectangle wood from Michael's, brown, pink, and white paint, letter stencils, and a print stencil for the swirlys.

I don't have step by step photos for this because I didnt think of it at the time, so I will do my best to describe how I made these.

1. I painted the wood brown

2. painted the swirlys using the stencil I picked out

3.  traced the letter stencils onto the sign and painted it in white

4. drew an arrow and painted it white (for the reception sign)

It really wasn't that hard at all! And they turned out BEAUTIFUL!

For the stakes, I went to Lowes and bought a long piece of wood, brought it home, took a saw to it and cut it in two. Then I cut the ends at an angle to make it easier to push down into the grass. To finish it off, I screwed the stakes to the back side of the signs.

 I would say at the most these were about $20 to make. Not bad :)

The next thing I reallllly wanted needed were parasols. I did a lot of research on weddings and came across some beautiful photos that incorporated parasols. So I decided to get some to enhance our pictures. 

I searched and searched online for the best deal and came upon a website called Oriental Trading. We ended up getting a lot of our wedding decor there because the prices were just too hard to beat. We ended up paying $30 for 12 parasols. It was actually a GREAT deal. And we had a few left over for some of our guests to enjoy. Here are a few of our favorite photos with our parasols :)

This was supposed to be one of those cute/funny mid-air photos...who would have thought jumping all at the same time could be so difficult HAHA!

This is one of our favorite pictures from the whole wedding :)

This is how you take the picture. Place the parasol in front of your faces while giving each other a big smooch, have the sun behind you to help create the shadow that you will get on the front of the parasol, and SNAP! you've got a beautiful photo!

This one didn't involve the parasol but it's a great photo op. Place the veil over your hunnies head and give each other a kiss. This is our all time fave pic!

For our ceremony we lined the isle with tiki torches. They looked so cute and beachy. The only downside to this was it was too windy to light them...oh well...they still looked adorable :)

I believe we paid about $15 for like 12...not bad

Our best man and Maid of Honor. You can see the tiki torches on either side.

Yes...our dogs walked down the isle. They're our babies :)

For our reception centerpieces I bought 8 large hurricanes and filled them with sand, shells and a candle. Perfect for a beach wedding and it added to the ambiance of our twilight reception. Plus it became a keepsake for some of our guests to take home. Why pay $150 for flower centerpieces that will wilt in a day or two!

Total for each: about $25

 

The best keepsake from a wedding is a signiature mat, but have you ever priced them before? MY GOODNESS! So...I made ours!

I bought a large piece of black posterboard, a photo border mat, silver permanant sharpies, a couple starfish, and bling stickers to spell out our names. It was so easy to make and it looks AMAZING! Plus our guests had fun signing it too :)

Total for this signiature mat: about $15

Everyone knows that card holders are handy for the wedding gift table. But I couldnt find any that I liked. So I bought a basket that came with a pink and brown damask liner. PERFECT for our wedding since those were our colors :) So I took the lining and put it on the outside of the basket instead of the inside.Then I took a wooden plack and painted it brown and added pink stickers to spell out "cards" then added some starfish. It turned out adorable and it was quite handy ♥

  

Total for this card holder: about $10

To help make our wedding more beach festive, we decided to hand out pink leis and bamboo fans to the ladies and shell leis to the men.

I bought bamboo fans online.Then I took pink ribbon and tied a bow around the bottom. They turned out so adorable, and they came in handy for those who got a little warm down on the beach.

I paid about $10 per dozen for the fans. About $10 per dozen for the pink leis, and about $8 per dozen for the shell leis.

Who could forget about the yummiest part of a wedding?? The CAKE!! For our cake we wanted something simple yet chic for our topper. I searched and searched and finally found one that I fell in love with. I ended buying it on E-Bay for about $15. And it turned out beautiful.

The cake was so yummy I just had to smoosh some on my hubbys face :)

And last but not least, you can't have a wedding without a hoopa! My grandpa is a handyman when it come to woodwork and building things. So I deligated this his task. And let me tell you he didn't disappoint us one bit! He bought 8 pieces of bamboo and cut them to fit the sizes we needed, then used screws to hold them all in place. I think we decided to make it 8ft tall and 6 ft wide. Then I went to Joanne's and bought two looooong panels of white sheer fabric to hang over it. This was quite costly. But well worth it. We paid about $80 for all the fabric. We layed the fabric across the top and then wrapped the remaining fabric around the bamboo due to the wind.

Thats it folks! Thanks for reading this looong blog.

Remember, just because you are on a low budget doesn't mean you have to sacrifice what you want on your special day. I hope I've inspired you to make your dreams a reality without breaking your bank :)