We had a great birthday party for my 6 year old last month thanks to some of the best ideas from all you wonderful ladies! Thanks much!

Now that we've gotten through all the birthday's and holidays, we are on to planning our wedding for May 0, 2008, and I would love to hear all the suggestions you have!

I already have all of our dresses (mine and three daughters) and also my fiance's clothes. I have jewlery for everyone, veil, flower girl basket, silk rose petals and I think that's it right now. Probably have a couple more things put away that I've forgotten about.

The colors are red and white, so I figure that between now and Feb is probably a good time to shop for things since it's that red time of year.

We don't have a reception venue yet. But in my area, everything is still open. And the stand by is the church gym/fellowship hall.

It's a fairly small wedding. There are 75 people on the guest list including us, and 20 of them are children. Oh, and I have the cake done as well. We have a baker in town that I have been going to for years and she's doing the cake for $100, I thought that was good and she's been paid in full for a while now.

Soooo, I need reception ideas, flower ideas, favors ideas and decorating ideas for everything.

Thanks in advance for everything.

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If it wasn't on a clearance rack, it's not in my house!

I forgot about invitations as well. There's so much to remember!!

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If it wasn't on a clearance rack, it's not in my house!

Ebay.

I used ebay for my flowers, table decorations, guest favors, arch decorations and invitations. Total cost for everything (200+ guests) =$300 for all the above. I bought the little handle thingys for the flowers and "made" my bouquets and the boutonnières were just a couple flowers and some ribbon.

My flowers: http://www.jstarkcreations.com/pics/weddingflowers.jpg (kind of a big pic).

The invites were easy, just bid on them and they customized them for me. Oh, and I got the toasting glasses - engraved and personalized, the guest book, and the cake topper for the above. I can't remember what else I got. All my ribbon and fabric stuff was from ebay.

Also, I got all my flowers, ribbon, and fabric from one "store" and all my themed stuff from another store, saved on shipping. It all came in a HUGE box. I just checked my past feedbacks - I made 10 purchases from "efavormart" and 9 from "wedding4u" for my wedding, both were excellent dealings.

That was my first wedding. My second one, to DH now, was a super small thing, but we plan on having a bigger reception this year or next - and I plan on doing the same thing (and probably using the same sellers!)

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Now's a great time to pick up white (and/or red) lights for decorating. I've seen beautiful wedding and reception areas that used small Christmas lights to decorate doorways, greeenery and tables. Very enchanting especially for an evening wedding/reception!

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Homeschooling Mom to Daniel (13 Years), Andrew (10 Years), Stephen (8 Years) and Emily (4 Years)

Try to think of something serving 2 purposes. For example, at my wedding we had a small box of chocolate (i think 6 pieces) with our name and wedding date printed on it. Also, on it was a blank line for guest name and then printed table. We filled in the guests name and table number. Make sure your write on them before they are filled. So we had one favor box per couple and one box per single guest. So this served as favor and table placements.

Think about what is important to you. I know that having my wedding bouquet professionally freeze dried and framed was important to me. Therefore, we did smaller flower arrangements at each table with pretty but less expensive flowers. We also had a DJ instead of a band.

Also, a buffet is alot less expensive than a sit down dinner.

For flowers if you want fresh talk with a florist and see what is in season when you are getting married. Would you prefer smaller flower arrangements with a few expensive flowers or a bigger arrangement with less expensive flowers on the table. Or would you want something that is not flower related at all. Perhaps something that says something about you and your soon to be DH ..... camping, skiing, hobbies etc or bowl filled with red apples.

Remember it is your day and your should enjoy it.

HTH

I found it's pretty easy to cut a few corners when it comes to wedding plans. A few things I did at my wedding were I bought inexpensive picture frames at a craft store- mine were pearl white and had a horse and carriage. I printed up paper on the computer with a pretty script font to place inside as place cards and they also served as favors. I made sure that the thank you card pictures that I chose would look nice in those frames so that people could place them inside (though I don't know how many actually did) I also saved a lot of money by buying my own centerpieces instead of having flowers on the tables. I bought these pretty 3 tiered floating candle holders that were decorated with silk flowers for half the price of the cheapest flower arrangement. I also chose a DJ over a band. I found a small stationary store that had a huge assortment of invitations for a great price. I would suggest ordering invitations online. I'm sure you can find a great price. Good luck and try not to get too stressed out.

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