Decorating church cheaply, advice please!

hels234

Hi, having spoken to the vicar, any flowers used to decorate the church have to stay there, we're not allowed to remove any! Not to the reception or anything, they become a donation to the church. As such I'm looking for ideas to decorate the church cheaply but nicely seen as we're only going to be there an hour or two. Our wedding is May next year.

Thanks for any tips / help.

deecy

Quite a lot of churches (or villages) have a flower club that arrange flowers for the church on a regular basis, they're usually cheaper than florists.

Single gerberas on alternate pew ends can look nice and they're cheap to buy.

Flower arranging groups at college maybe interested in it as an extra curricular 'project'.

Decorate the outside of the arches/doorways/gateways (maybe a couple of bay trees) if that's not covered within the 'have to leave it in the church' rule and take these with you to your reception.

Don't have flowers at all, have bunting or paper pom poms or handmade paper flowers or balloons - all of which they certainly wouldn't want to be left in the church. Then if you feel inclined make a small donation (or ask guests) to the Church funds instead.

katie1812

If not flowers what about some pretty ribbon which you could jazz up a bit?

RainbowDrops

I often think that there's no point in decorating churches.
They're such pretty buildings anyway, and already tend to have lots of ornate features, so don't really need any extra baubles, especially when people are sitting down.

Idiophreak

RainbowDrops wrote: »

I often think that there's no point in decorating churches.
They're such pretty buildings anyway, and already tend to have lots of ornate features, so don't really need any extra baubles, especially when people are sitting down.

This is how I feel about it.

At ours I think we paid about £50 for a lady from the church to put a couple of bunches around the place - and these were shared for all the weddings that weekend...In retrospect I'd have been happy without them...I couldn't really tell you what they looked like or where they were....I remember how lovely the church was, though

Maysie

we went without as they wanted hundreds and only approved church ladies allowed. Funnily enough they had a huge pedastal still in bloom that matched our flowers which was lucky.

Have a wedding near easter,mothers day etc lol

jollymummy

When we got married - 17years ago on Saturday - crikey !! We had one floral stand at the front of the church which at the time cost £20 ! Very pretty it was too.

One of my friends has a lovely country church wedding last year and decorated the church with little glass jars,with meadow and hedgerow flowers.Sounds naff but looked really pretty, a few gingham ribbons and hand made heart garlands here and there,just lovely.

If you wanted some country style ideas for makes, take a look on Cutoutandkeep, or at Etsy and Folksy for a bit of inspiration.

Tbh as others have said,the flowers aren't important. Have a great day.

SG27

We are getting married weekend before Christmas so the church will already be decorated with flowers for Christmas! So we have free flowers

Thriftygifty

I agree that most of the time churches are very pretty ours was lovely but the flowers made it even more lovely and highlighted areas more, we got married this May. We did everything ourselves, I didn't want to pay the church ladies to do it, they were lovely but their work wasn't fantastic and also would of cost us I think £60 without flowers and I wasn't willing to do that!

Do you have people with gardens? go and research what they have and you can use if you want arrangements free foliage is brill!

Pew ends: We had 2 at the start of the aisle, the ones that hook on and have oasis stuck on them, we used privit and then stuck about 6 heads of pinks and then attached the curling ribbon to them so that they blew in the breeze when we entered. Cost about £3.50 for both to make and very easy!

Window display - Rectangle tray 30p block of oasis £1, pillar candle in the middle, then again privit, you want to build the foliage foundation first in a rectangle display you want the sides to stick out then just put some rose heads or pink heads and then smaller flowers or whatever flowers you want to use again very easy and only a few pounds.

We also did the pederstals ourselves the flower ladies said they would cost about £30 in flowers to make but we spent about £10. Think we did the whole church for £50ish then had to give the church a donation of £20 for the flower lady to come down and show us where we could have them due to Health and Safety (honestly H&S is getting over the top now)

Cheap option is Vases with big bunch of flowers in them on the windows.

Wicker hearts on the pew ends.

Hurricane lamps with candles which you can go and get a few days after.

Wheat Bunches with dried lavender

Did you want flowers? If so find a florist supply wholesaler or ebay for the bits you need and then find a flower market or wholesaler a lot cheaper, if you aren't overly fussy about the flowers you want can get some good ones. When in May are you getting married? It's the Dutch mothers Day in May so flower prices are a bit higher than normal one weekend. We got married I think the weekend after and the flower wholesaler had loads of lillies as he bulk bought whatever was cheapest so we cleared his stall out. We did the church, marquee, 4 flowergirl boquets for about £100 in flowers.

If you need any help PM me

cats2012

We had 3 big lovely, spring vases full of flowers and foliage and spent £15 from the local market

Okydoky25

We put pull bows on each pew end similar to those used on the wedding car. Very effective and I think only worked out at about 50p each of ebay. We were also told we could share the cost with others getting married there that day