Decorations - Ebay haul so far!

To try and cut some corners in our budget, I am scouring Ebay for decorations, which we can use in the Hall. I had sourced quotes from all of the local decorators, 6 in total, and the quotes, bar 1, were scary.

My theory is instead of paying thousands of dollars to hire items, I can buy them cheaper, use them on the day/night, then sell them afterwards.

So far my haul is:

100 x Rice Paper Lanterns (white) - $126 ($150 to hire)
150m x Fairy Lights (warm white) - $283 ($300 to hire)
2 x Candelabras - $40 ($50 to hire)
1 x Bird Cage Wishing Well/Card Holder - $66 ($40 to hire)
100 x Willow Green Organza Chair Sashes - $139.99 ($2.00 each to hire)

So on these 5 items alone the costs compare as:

Ebay - $654.99
Decorator (average quote over 6 quotes) - $740

Plus I can resell mine after the day, say if I sell them for 1/2 price of what I paid for them, that makes the cost $327.49!  Savings yay

Birdcage Wishing Well/Card Holder

Fairy Lights

Willow Green Organza Chair Sash

I've also bought:

1 x Bridal Cake Knife & Server set - $25
50 x personalised wine charms for gifts - $75

1 x Guestbook - $25

4 x White Bali flags - $25

All were much lower prices that I found through other online stores or 'real stores'.

Cake Knife & Server

Guestbook

Bali Flags - to use on either side of the gate to the Hall

I'll be back with more savings :)

DIY Invitations - I'm game!

After trawling through probably hundreds of wedding blogs and supplier sites looking at invites, I have decided to make our invitations myself, a DIY project, I'm game, I think!

We want to go with a mainly green and cream colour scheme, based mostly on my obsession with green, and the lovely cymbidium orchid we'll probably have as our flowers.

I ventured to Spotlight today and holy moly what a craft section, I've never done any sort of craft, so hadn't wandered the aisles of craft, ever, so it was a bit of info and sensory overload, sooooo many options!

So after visiting 2 Spotlight stores (50kms apart, yes I was committed to get it done today!), I ended up going with the options below:

DIY invitations in the making!

I'm thinking of using the dark green as the backer, then the flower paper with a 1cm border of dark green, then with vellum (like tracing paper), over it bar for a .5cm border, and printing on the vellum the details of the invitation.

Then I'll use the white and pale green for the RSVP cards, and the map/directions/accommodation/transport card.

Using a 100% recycled envelope, pale brown, not matchy matchy, but we like it :)

The whole stash of DIY supplies

So wish me luck, I'm sure it's probably crazy to have first crafty/DIY project as our wedding invitations, but here we go!