Lights

One of the areas we're trying to skimp on for the wedding is decorations. With an outdoor cocktail hour, ceremony location and who the f knows what for a reception venue already decorated reception venue it would be impossible to compete with nature. And we don't have the budget for crazy uplighting and draping and chandeliers and extensive centerpieces.

The reality is, I don't really care about any of it. No one ever divorced because they didn't have uplighting at the ceremony.

Decorations for the cocktail hour are the flowers we planted over Memorial Day. My mom and grandma have pots of flowers going for ceremony site decoration. We're doing super minimal centerpieces... which is a big step from my previous declaration that we wouldn't be doing centerpieces.

I did want to do something though. I initially wanted to hang paper lanterns around the house, although unlit, as we'll be at the house during the daylight hours:

And I found some reasonable places to purchase them... but... I didn't want to spend over $100 on paper lanterns (that wouldn't be lit!). So... off in another direction I went.

DJ and I already have a lot of Christmas lights, so using them would be free. So do my parents. I use Christmas lights to decorate around Christmas, but also in the summer for nice mood lighting on the deck. And Michaels was having a 50% off sale on their spring silk flowers.

So last night, I watched Peggy Sue Got Married* while pulling silk flowers off of plastic stems, and sticking them onto Christmas light strands. I finished two strands, and still have over 70% of the silk flowers left to use on the other strands that I and my parents have.

For free Christmas lights and $26 in silk flowers, I can creat 6-7 100 foot long strands of these:

Since the silk flowers have some color, you'd be able to see them as a garland in the daylight. Then at night they'll be colorful and festive. We'll wrap the railing of the deck at the reception venue (restaurant? marina?) so that they'll be visible at night. We'll also wrap the railing of the shack, and maybe the posts under the deck. Simple, and cheap.

*WTF with Nicolas Cage in that movie? He's so weird...