wedding favours/flowers and reception ideas, please!

[lacrimosa]

Hi there! I hope everyone is well, not posted for a while, but was wonderin if you guys could give me some home made or non expensive ideas for my wedding reception. All ideas apriciated. xx

[harsh but fair opinions coming up]

Favours are a waste of money.
If you want people to have a lasting memento of your day get the best pic of you & dh put onto cards thus and use them for your thank you notes.

If you wanted favours so people have chocolates or sweets to eat with their coffee just get a job lot from a wholesaler and serve them on plates or on the coffee saucers, no need for fancy boxes etc.

Flowers are always going to be expensive but if you go for things that are in season and aren't too specific (eg 'white flowers' rtaher than 'I only want white roses and lilies') you'll often find the florist will know what's cheapest.
We moved the two big arrangements from the ceremony into the reception venue to get our money's worth.
Also look at online florists who do wedding 'packages' - we used one of these and even with delivery it worked out about half the price of doing everything from scratch with a ocal florist. It does depend on your area though - we live in a very pretentious town.

If you fancy doing flowers yourself, potted flowering plants, pots planted with bulbs, rustic arrangements in jam jars, twiggy things in glass vases etc needn't be hard to do if you've got the time, but beware costs of materials.

Have to agree - favours are a waste of time and I think the photo on the thank you cards is a great idea.

I went ot a wedding once and when we relpied to invites we had to send a photo of eveyrone invited.

When we got to the reception, they had been put in little cheap pastic frames and used instead of place cards to show where we were sitting.

I thought it was nice and I still have the photo frames somewhere, so sort of a favour as well....

Thanks! We were thinking about sending the flower girls around with old fashioned sweets in a basket each instead of favours, but do you have any idea about decorating the reception area, (we are getting married on a river bank) so no decoration needed for the ceremony x

At one wedding we went to our place names were small glass tea light holders with our names written in silver pen, these Ikea ones. 9p each!

That reminds me! I went round with the sweets in a basket at my wedding - so I made sure I chatted to everybody.

where's the reception happening? Marquee? Village hall? Function room in hotel?

Yes a reception at the inn by the river bank! My friend just e mailed me a pattern for origami flowers! I think i will give that a go! I love crafting and do calligraphy for friends and family so I have already made all the invitations(scrolls) thankyou cards ect so I really like the idea of making the centre pieces also!

We had a marquee on a lawn at my parents (big house subdivided) so we were able to do our own thing.

The flowers were done by the ouncil's own "gardens" deppartment and were brillinat- and much chepaer than a florist. They did the bouquets, buttonholes, as well as floral centrepieces for all the table (into which I put cheap church candles), two flower arrangements at the church - which we brought down to the marquee, plus some hanging flower arrangements. Everything was beautiful.

We didn't do favours either - and no-one seemed to notice the lack of them.

Place names were done by my aunt, who used a gold pen to write names onto large ivy leaves picked from the garden.

We printed off our own menus, and then rolled them up and tied them with a piece of purple and green tartan ribbon and put them at each place (purple and green was the colour theme).

What with wine glasses, linen napkins (hired in!) and the floral centre peice (a simple "ring" of flowers with the church candle in the middle), there really wasn't a need for much more decoration.

A friend of mine and myself both made our own cakes using Delia Smiths's fruitcake recipe (mine was a two-tier one). Everyoen commented on how delicious it was and it cost about £50 in total, including icing and fresh roses to decorate, compared to a starting price of £250 to get one made.

Otherwise, I got some plain name tags and red ribbon and wrote the place names. The venue then tied the ribbon around people's napkins and it looked really nice. Dh insisted we pay about £100 for balloons which I guess was worth it and that was about all the decoration we had...

Re: flowers, the venue provided the table centre pieces and candelabra's, but I was lucky and had a family friend who did the flowers for the wedding itself - she does flower decoration for the Versace shops in Italy so they looked fantastic!

Yes- my Mum made the cake and then got someone to decorate it.

She also made my dress! (which was also lovely! )

For table decorations I bought sma;; juniper bush tree things and my friend decorated them withdiamondy things and roses like the ones you put on cards. then covered the tubs with crepe paper.
Then at the end of the day, family got to take a tree home each to plant tin their gardens as a memory of the day.

Allbuggiedout - when I think about it, years ago that's what every bride did with favours. She took them round in a basket so she could speak to everyone. Favours then were the silver decorations off the cake.

friends did theirs with white linen and silver runners, ribbons and accessories. it was for 100+ people on tressle tables. might be up for selling it if you're interested. they also bought glasses etc - worked out cheaper to buy from ikea than hire!

agree re chocs sprinkled on the table instead of favours to eat with coffee.

Do not buy a wedding cake, eiher get M&S ones and decorate or get friends to make. Recently a couple of friends have had "cake tables" - no central cake, but lots of friends made cakes so no need to provide a dessert and lots of choice.

you don't need a disco - just hook up CD player or Ipod to some powerful speakers.

one thing - don't skimp on photographer - you'll want decent photos to remeber the day by!

Interesting Voluptua! I took round the sugared almond confetti as I'm part Italian.

I am italian but I really want to be different, my family will be expecting sugared almonds!(they just wont get them)

I went to a small local grocer / florist for my flowers, she showed me lots of fuzzy pics of her own arrangments, that looked fantastic. I had checked out a fancy florist who had lots of glossy brochures but not her own work. Went with the grocer and the flowers were great, saved me a fortune.

I made my own favours with a paper rose and a heather twisted together with a hand printed label tied on with ribbon. Roses were from AuNatral cost £3.98 for the two bunches I cut up and the florist gave me the bunch of heathers at cost about £3.

You can buy the boxes or nets from wholesalers to do your own almond favours.

what about something from here Vistaprint , and put your own poem or words of thanks on them, I had scrolls on each table with a poem I caopied fromsomewhere and changed the words to suit.

thanks skribble all great ideas x

anyone got any more ideas? The more the merrier! xx