Wedding Wonders With No Wonga

Published in Issue 20, December 2012

Written byKerry from Scrapbookerry

http://www.scrapbookerry.com/

Wedding Wonders With No Wonga

Mr L proposed, I said yes and now we are trying to get the wedding of our dreams with the least amount of money possible. Some things we are making ourselves, some things are being given to us, others we are getting through hard labour and lots of rooting around for bargains and other things just can’t be budged. So we will try some haggling instead.
If you are interested in helping us along the Wedding Wonders with No Wonga journey then please do contact us at weddingwonderswithnowonga@gmail.com

Centre Pieces Centre pieces can be very simple or really elaborate. They can range from the traditional to the quirky and even to the slightly insane. They can be
handmade or they can have a lot of money spent on them. But one thing is for sure they are a bit of a minefield to be honest.

We have been looking for centre pieces for a while now and we are in a land we really don’t understand. We want something that caters for both of our tastes but also will fit in with our wedding. It doesn’t necessarily have to fit in with our theme of Vintage Tea Party but it does need to work with us and how people know us.

Traditionally and most popular for weddings centrepieces are flowers, and we have seen some beautiful ones. They have ranged from very expensive and elaborate displays, to the very simple and easy to do. You can have low displays or high displays, ones just in tin cans or jam jars and others in fabulous displays that cover the whole middle of the table.We have also seen unusual flower displays, with flowers around fish bowls, or a couple of lilies stuck in a box of elegant stones. All of these are beautiful and they are lovely but we are not really flowery people.

The only flowers we would be tempted to use would be lilies and these really are not cheap flowers when trying to do something on a budget.
We have seen some lovely candle displays, some with just candles in a row,
some with candle floating in bowls and others with the more traditional candelabras. These are all lovely and we could buy the candles in the exact colour scheme of the wedding, (which has actually changed from cream and brown to aqua blue and brown) which would be lovely.
However safety could be an issue and as we have a lot of children on our wedding list and potentially could have some very small children attending the wedding, neither of us think the candles, however lovely, are really the best idea for us.

We have considered using sweets. We have been to a few weddings which have had bowls of retro sweets as table centrepieces, and we both love this idea. But again we have to consider the number of children attending and we don’t think it would be such a good idea to have a massive bowl of sweets on the table, especially when they should be eating their dinner. We are going to have sweets but we think it will be best to have a specific sweet table, rather than sweets as the centrepieces, as then they don’t have to all be put in one bowl and we can separate them into different old glass jars and that way people can see what they are taking.
After looking around for a while we seemed to come up with an idea that we both really wanted as centrepieces. Mr L really wanted something fun and silly, a small game or something for people to play with while sat at the table, as he really is a great big kid and it shows his personality.
While he wanted something silly, I really wanted something sentimental, specifically something to do with paper, as everyone knows my love for scrapbooking. I want to keep as many things from my wedding as possible and I would really like to include the centrepieces if possible.

We have come across a couple of game ideas, e.g. having Scrabble in the centre of the table, and using the word boards for the guest’s name places. Or having Jenga in the middle and getting all the guests to write their own wedding messages on the wooden pieces for us to keep a very sentimental Jenga game for life.

Then Mr L came up with the idea of Lego! He decided that it was the play thing that both adults and children would love, and that he wanted a huge bowl of Lego on each table for everyone to be able to make their own Lego piece.

It has been discussed in length with his Ushers and Best Man and it seems that he is set on the idea of Lego. It is original and something that we can add to gradually as the months go on preparing for the wedding. So unless his ideas change, it looks like he will be having Lego!

 

I was still set on my idea of having some sort of Scrapbooking sentimental items on the table as well as Mr L’s silly play things. I have been finding lots of different things which would fit into this category. I have thought about giving all guests a little accordion book, but then decided that this would be too big for each individual.
Then I found a perfect idea! We had no idea for what to do for our Table Numbers until I came across this idea of using books with the table numbers on. We can decorate the books by putting the table number on the cover and then every person on that table writes a message with advice on how to cope with that year of marriage. So table one writes advice for the first year, Table two writes advice for the second year. Table three writes advice for the third year, and so on. It means that we can keep these books throughout our marriage and can always look back at the messages that our friends and family have written to us.
So it seems that we have two ideas that we both really want, Mr L with his Lego and my Table Number advice books. I think both of them will make the tables a little bit different to anything else that we have seen, but will also completely work with our personalities which is just we want.

If you are interested in helping us along the Wedding Wonders with No Wonga journey then please do contact us at weddingwonderswithnowonga@gmail.com

Photo Credits
Tin can flowers http://www.marthastewartweddings.com/231015/50-great-wedding-centerpieces/@center/272419/youre-engaged#103584

Fish bowl with flowers
http://www.wedding-flowers-and-reception-ideas.com/fish-bowl-centerpiece.html

Candles http://www.marthastewartweddings.com/231015/50-great-wedding-centerpieces/@center/272419/youre-engaged#177196

Jenga http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenga 

Lego http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego