Decorating Our Wedding Space

When we were planning our wedding, we knew that we wanted somewhere other than the usual hotel ballroom.  We also wanted a place that we could actually decorate. (Not 50 foot ceilings, or gigantic spaces that weren't suited for decorating)

Our wedding budget was eight to nine thousand dollars.  Just typing that out makes me feel weird because that is so much money.

Let the justifying begin:  We had 100 people attend, served food and drinks, and DIY-ed the heck out of things.  Our biggest expense was the venue.  As I'm sure you can imagine, we did lots of hunting for cool venues.  After looking at museums, art galleries, old mansions, places on Lake Michigan, and on and on, I was starting to get discouraged.  Most places charged around $5,000 plus they required you to go through their caterers which was so over budget they were all out.  So where the heck can we have a cool wedding?!

We go so lucky when I found this fantastically perfect loft space, The Westgrand Studio for $2,500 including insurance and extra stuff.  Plus we were able to get in the day before to decorate and the day after to clean up and get chairs and tables picked up.  That doesn't sound like a big deal, but it's rare.

They let us bring in food, serve our own beer and wine, and pretty much do whatever we want.





After the jump, you can see how we decorated this wonderful raw space.

Making My Save-The-Dates

Last week, I told you about some strategies that I used that can help you figure out your style, theme, colors, general feel that will match the type of wedding you want to have.

After much deliberation, here are the save-the-dates that we made for our wedding.

The blue paper, font and photobooth pictures were the starting point

See the back and read more after the jump.

Paper Crafts from Our Wedding

My husband and I got married about 2 and a half years ago.  It was a crafty lady's dream.  My creative enthusiasm was definitely bigger than my execution abilities, but man was it fun to look for inspiration and be able to say, "Sure.  I can spend $200 at Paper Source for supplies for our invitations.  That's a deal!"  (I don't think I have ever thought spending $200 at Paper Source was ever appropriate before.

This post will share with you how I went about paper crafting for our wedding as well as some photos and sites that gave me lots of inspiration.