Decorations for your reception venue are always a lovely touch to enhance your wedding theme and to create a romantic, colorful and relaxing backdrop to wow or welcome your guests. However, not everyone can afford the costs of wedding balloon centerpieces or fancy ready made options from a supplier so money can be saved by creating and installing your own decorations. Here are some handy tips to get you started:
- Check with your venue as to what is allowed: some venues have restrictions in respect of pinning things to walls, which might require you to think freestanding for decorations, whilst other venues have facilities that will help you to plan, such as a nets or piñata hooks.
- Similarly, check with the venue to find out when you can access it to put out your decorations. If it is the day or evening before, you will have much more time to assemble and organize your displays in-situ, whereas if it is on the day, everything must be prepared in advance and just placed on the day, to save you time. This can make a real difference to what you choose to do.
- Map out your venue layout in advance, taking advice from the venue’s administrators as appropriate, to ensure that you can plan confidently where decorations can go without, for example, being in the way of the caterers, or obstructing the guests’ view of the top table.
If your own ideas are limited, check out display images from wedding decoration designers, search engines and wedding catalogs to find inspiration. Then break down what you see into the component parts and research the costs. You will usually find that even the most elaborate display can be made quite easily and at a fraction of the cost.- Consider fun ways for the guests to D.I.Y as well. Some specialist balloon shops will supply you with the balloons of your choice and the helium cylinder for filling them. If you have a lot of children coming to the wedding, it might be a nice idea for a sensible designated adult to fill the balloons of choice for the children and ask them to hand them out or decorate chairs. This can be a useful ‘filler’ activity for between the post-ceremony and evening receptions. Children themselves often have great ideas and can create imaginative do it yourself centerpieces for you!
As with all essentials for your wedding, do shop around to find the best deals and be sure of the amount that you need, so that you can request discounts for bulk purchases, to save you even more money!