House Revivals: More Budget Wedding Decor

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

More Budget Wedding Decor

A few weeks ago I shared these elegant hydrangea centerpieces we did for our daughter's wedding reception last summer. The reception venue was a restored net shed overlooking the Columbia River -- it was a gorgeous space. But it was just a bit too large for our party. We needed to fill in some corners, and it needed to happen on a tight budget! The solution we found was to decorate branches with these fun little pompoms.

The nice thing about this idea is that you can use it indoors or out -- these sweet pompoms hold up to the weather really well. Since we are in the Pacific Northwest, this is pretty important!

These little guys were super easy to make.

We used silk flowers from dollar store leis and dollar store whiffle balls (I have absolutely NO idea how to spell whiffle -- or is it wiffle? whiffel? wiffel?). Using flowers from leis ended up being quite a bit cheaper than buying bunches of silk flowers! For smaller pompoms, we bought packages of ping pong balls to use as a base. We also found some slightly larger whiffle balls at a thrift store, so we had three sizes of pompoms to decorate our branches.

After pulling the leis apart, we just glued the flowers onto the whiffle balls -- in no time at all we had a little pile of sweet pompoms. A loop of ribbon was glued to each pompom to hang it.

I wish I could share pictures of the decorated branches from the reception, but all my pictures showing the branches have people in them, and I want to respect their privacy. I took these photos of the decorations outside so you could get an idea of how they looked on the branches at the reception venue.

They looked great!

It was such an easy and inexpensive way to "fill out" the space, and add color to the room.

Pardon the blurring in this pic -- I've smudged out the

faces of the wedding guests for the sake of their privacy.

We even used them at the beach ceremony, tied onto the poles of the wedding huppah with wide ribbons of flowy fabric. The ribbons of fabric danced gloriously in the wind!

Just for fun, here is a basket of kids' games and activities we had at one of the reception tables. Our celebration was a family event, and we wanted everyone to have fun. Trust me when I say, this basket bought moms and dads of kiddos precious hours of dancing and socializing and celebration!

I hope you enjoyed a little peak into our daughter's wedding celebration! The pompoms were such a simple and inexpensive decoration, suitable for lots of different types of parties, mobiles, or just about anything.

Edit: Okay, I looked up "whiffle" -- turns out it's "Wiffle", and it's a specific brand of ball, so I guess my Dollar Tree balls are called Wiffle balls in the same way that store brand tissues are called Kleenex. They're not really Wiffle balls at all, but what else can you call them? "Hard plastic balls with holes in them" is kind of a mouthful. :)