Oh I'm so addicted to wedding planning right now. It's 333 days and I'm starting to plan where I want everything to be in my wedding reception. Also, since I'm doing my own flowers I've even considered doing flowers for my tables.

I want to see specifically all of the bloop wedding receptions! What were your colors and themes? And how did you incorporate them in your wedding receptions? I've seen some of your pictures of your gowns, etc. but I want to see more!! :) Tips always welcomed!

im getting married in 93 days -- its going by so freakin slow we planned it like a year ahead of time which is good, we havent really done the center pieces yet, we have somewhat of ideas, i wanted the betas in the vase and candles we have no theme really just a heart theme kinda it became like that since the planning started with the hearts, with the jewerly with the rsvp cards and such, and our color is apple red and white

good luck! tip- keep a notebook, when i started i am glad i did it too i bought a normal notebook with the clear cover on the front so i can puit in "chris and ambers wedding" and have it seperated on what we did and done what we have payments pictures and etc...

and payments are better than all in one... less stressful

I just went to my friend's wedding the end of April and her centerpieces were the vases with betas and candles! I had never heard/seen of that before, they were the cutest things ever! There was a little poem about the fish and a little thing of fish food for whoever took it home.

yeah, but they also offers to rent em too along with the vases ands o on including the cake stand -- for the same price for getting the vase it self and rocks and so on... cuz we sure didnt wanna end up with bettas it is pretty cool!

I got married 20 months ago. We got engaged 13 months in advance.

My colours were gold, white and burgundy. I wore cream with a burgundy necklace and very dark (almost black) roses. My bridesmaids wore burgundy and carried white roses.

My reception was like so:

(best pic I can find showing the tables etc)

I had the tables in a horseshoe with the cake in the middle. Place settings were made with gold and burgundy napkins, name tags were the same as the invitation (which was white, gold and burgundy hearts) with gold writing. I had gold, white and burgundy helium balloons.
These are the flowers from the tables:


These are my bridesmaids and mum (I had my four sisters as bridesmaids):


Enjoy the planning. I see you have a wedding planner, I did all my own planning coz I had a very specific idea of how it was going to be and I only trusted myself to see it through to fruition. And I couldn't afford a planner :D

I have a wedding planner and it's great. We started planning our wedding at the 14 month mark just so we could do exactly what you did and make payments. We are paying our wedding reception/hall slowly, and our photographer will be paid off on September 1.

Who did your invites, reply cards, etc. Do you have any pictures of them? I'm making all of my own! I know this sounds like a lot for the bride but we're saving so much money!

I didn't have a theme - just colors, which were a classic red and white, with black and silver accents, and I wore pearls. Obviously my girls were in red dresses, and the guys had red vests. My MOH had a red rose, in a bouquet of white roses - while the other girls just had white. My tiara had the red from my wedding (Apple, from David's Bridal) as well as pearls. It's currently on Ebay, lol.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&item=140321513869
We had printed napkins in those colors, as well as match boxes. We also had glass pillars filled with dragon's eye marbles and water with floating candles in those colors. My centerpieces weren't flowers - they were shallow, clear glass bowls with the marbles and floating candles.

You can definitely never give yourself too much time - we started planning 18 months before the wedding. We didn't pay for anything except our honeymoon though, so it was nice to give the people that were paying for it ample time to save. (Our wedding cost over $15,000). You're definitely being smart by doing a lot of this stuff yourself, you'll save yourself money AND stress. I'll have to see what I can find pictures of for you!

Umm no picture at the moment since my computer is down (I'm using my phone) I got em through david bridals online do it your self one

I couldn't afford a wedding planner -- but go 2 wedding expos we won a free place for recption (roof top wit a great view value at 1200 an hour) free stearling silver picture frame from jc penny (valued at 60 bucks) free engagement photo session and a few other things

We didn't use a theme. We hired a lady for decorations. We paid $2000 for her. The centerpeices I wanted, ONE part of them alone would of cost us $700. Our next question was, that were we going to do with 20 vases when we were done? LOL. I would recommend at least a decoration person. I have TONS of pictures on my facebook. Our wedding was VERY low key and nothing expensive. It worked for us :) Let me know if u want to see the pictures.

I'd love to see the pictures. You see our wedding is being done by the Hilton. We were provided a wedding planner and two coordinators with our package. The centerpieces which would be basic white candles are included; however, anything extra we want is an extra cost. We don't want to pay them to do it; we have actually paid for them to put everything up and together once we buy it. But it's much cheaper for us to buy the supplies. Or see it seems thus far.

Oh fun!!! I love weddings :D. My husband and I planned our wedding for about 18 months (we were engaged exactly 23 months). Our whole theme was rustic. We got married in a large "barn" (it's called a barn, but it was very elegant). Our colors were chocolate brown, beige, white, and off white. We used fake flowers (cheaper and looked real!) and they were also brown and white roses with tiny red and orange flowers placed sporadically throughout the bouquets. Our centerpieces had white and brown roses and rose petals. For dinner we had THE most amazing BBQ EVER. It wasn't like it was with red and white checkered table clothes either, lol. When people think of BBQ at a wedding, I'm sure they think "hillbilly", but we worked hard to make it exactly the opposite. Oh and instead of throwing rice (okay, I know you're not supposed to throw rice because of birds, but I can't think of what it is they actually throw instead of it, lol) I recommend getting bubbles for your guests to blow at you. It makes for AMAZING pictures. Pictures.. let me see.


You can see the flowers I had there.


Our cake


Grooms cake


Set up of the cake table








See? Bubbles!


This is me with a bridesmaid, but you can see the color of their dresses and the contrast as far as sizes go for our bouquets.




We had the ceremony and reception all in this "barn".


Our centerpieces and disposable cameras (GREAT pictures come from those;)).


Our gift table


BUBBLES!


Our favors (honey!)



Sorry. I just realized I kind of bombard your forum xD. I just... LOVE weddings! lol.

Aw, man :(. Grooms cake picture didn't post. Oh well, I'm sure you've seen enough ;).

Oh and me and my husband had to pay for our entire wedding on our own. My mom would pick up things here and there when she could afford it, but the majority of it was just us. Our entire wedding cost approximately $8,000. My in-law's gave us our rehearsal dinner and honeymoon.

MY GORGEOUS NOM.

I LOVE your theme! Everything looks so beautiful! Especially YOU! :0D

Aw, THANKS!

your wedding was awesome :)

Oh I used those disposable cameras, sent them off for developing (it all came tied in together) and had someone elses pictures come back. I didn't write down the address of the company so I couldn't send them back or get my own ones from them! I got SOME of mine back and they were all shoddy.

Ug, that sucks. I find that experience happens probably too frequently with send out photo companies.

The only other thing I'd say about disposable cameras on wedding tables is that the bride and groom need to take into account the lighting in their reception/ceremony site...usually disposable cameras and fluorescent lighting equals HORRIBLE pictures. I used to develop film at my job and it would break my heart when I'd develop disposable cameras from weddings and the pictures would come out awful because the lightening in their hall/whatever.

That is AWFUL! I would be upset. I loved the ones out of the disposables. Thankfully we didn't send ours off anywhere, just took them to our local Wal-Mart to be developed.

By the time I got the pics back it was like...two months later and there was no point getting upset. I just wish I'd had a proper photographer at the party- he went home after our first dance. He was a friend and doing it for free, so couldn't whinge, but meh.

Lauren, your wedding looked AMAZING! I love the honey favors! Very unique. I am too using fake flowers; did you do the arrangements yourself? I'm doing them myself to save money. And I had wanted to do bubbles but everyone told me they ruin the wedding dress. I am going to defiantly do bubbles now. When did they blow them? Right after the ceremony?

My flowers-


My cake-

love the flowers

Thank you :D. I fell in love with the honey favors at first sight. It was the FIRST favor I wanted, and even though we toyed with probably five more ideas for favors, we ended up falloing back into the honey jars anyway :P. No, we didn't do the flower arrangements ourselves. I'm not as crafty as you are ;). Believe it or not, we got all of our flowers off of eBay! I've never heard of bubbles ruining the wedding dress! They surely didn't leave as much as a spot on mine! It might depend on the fabric? I don't knw! Do you have your dress already? And the bubbles were blown as we "left". It was a fake leave for pictures/videography, but we did all of the reception/eating, and then the fake exist for the bubbles.