Planning a Simply Elegant Wedding For Less
by Ronda Asta - rondaquilts@bellsouth.net

Description: How to plan an elegant wedding on a budget.

Last month I promised I'd write an article on planning a simple wedding. However, unless the bride and groom just show up on a pre-planned day with two witnesses and stand before the minister, who says traditional vows, I've decided there is no such thing as a simple wedding. Let's change it to say unless they elope.... This wedding, though labeled "simple," was far from what I was thinking as simple. It was lots of hard work...but oh so worth it. It was a beautiful wedding and cost probably less than $1,000, which included the cost of the dress, tuxes and the gorgeous three-tier cake on a pedestal with a working fountain. This allowed the newlyweds to have more to spend on their Mexico honeymoon. This is a great opportunity to pool friends and relatives talents and gifts. The three of us working on the wedding, the bride's two sisters and I all work to get the best bargains we can everyday. So off we start and remember we only had once month from the announcement to pull this together. First we got together and decided what the bride wanted to have for the reception. Simple meant cake, nuts, mints and punch. We then proceeded to make a list of other ideas she had. We wanted to make this a dream wedding for her. We started by making a list of the brides' desires and went from there. Our list included:

• The wedding color, which for us meant what color the bridesmaid was wearing. This was a little difficult because she was coming from out of state and we wouldn't see the dress until the big day. There are lots of shades of purple so we accented with pink.
• The bride needed her dress which she found on clearance for under $300.
• The bride ordered the cake from a fellow Church member who gave her a wonderful price.
• Flowers cost retail, but one sister who is a gifted barterer was able to BORROW a trellis and three rolls of white mesh netting (tool, as florists call it) from the floral shop to decorate the church at no additional cost. We purchased silk hanging flowers for the trellis and intertwined it with the borrowed white netting. Beautiful!
• Our Church has seen many weddings and we've footed the bills for many, so over the years we've acquired lots of silk plants, flowers and various wedding decorations. One talented former member made bouquets and hair rings, which we've used over and over and used one more time for this wedding. A little soap and water will clean silk flowers inexpensively and easily and they can look as good as new. Another member of the Church whose daughter just got married let us borrow two large trash bags of large white bows. All this cut down on expenses. We used pieces of all these plants, flowers and decorations in the Church and reception hall.
• The bride always wanted an oute-mail box every Friday wedding so we did the next best thing and brought the oute-mail box every Fridays to her. One sister has a beautiful fountain in her yard and disassembled it and brought it into the front of the sanctuary. Picking flowers from her garden we used those on the bride and groom table and floated some in the fountain. What an awesome addition, with the running water, so peaceful.
• The reception hall needed decorating. If you read last month's article I explained the food table. I did the same thing for the reception but the table was twice as long even though we still had simple food. We had a castle made from styrofoam and painted white, which decorated up nicely. We used the bottom of two planter pots and made a drawbridge go from the castle over the two pools of water. It's so hard to describe and make it sound as beautiful as it was. The table was decorated with various items I picked up from my house and items the church had. We used pink to accent the table. The walls needed lots of help. We used white plastic diamond-shaped skirting we had on hand nailed loosely to the wall that we strung with white netting and flowers. So simple but so elegant. It added just enough.
• One additional touch was lots and lots of candles. We did rent 2 tall candelabras and decorated them up with white bows, netting and simple flowers. We have two friends who are PartyLite Candle consultants and they loaned us boxes of holders and candles to use. It was a candle light service if I ever saw one and just what the bride wanted.

The bottom line on pulling together a great wedding at little cost is to make a list, assign tasks, follow-up weekly to see where you are, pool all your resources, borrow and barter as much as possible and pray that it all works out. No one, especially the bride, was terribly stressed over the whole thing. She took things in stride. We were all exhausted, learned a lot, were blessed beyond imagination watching it all happen and would do it all again, we just hope it's not too soon in the future.

Copyright 1999, Ronda Asta.

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