Decorating Wedding Hall - Help Please?

Juliav_2

Hi all

My friend is getting married in July . They are on a budget therefore were planning on decorating their wedding hall before they get married at 4pm.

As my present to them I have offered to decorate the hall for them so they can have a lazy morning first. They are over the moon.

They have a very tight budget and the hall is in a social club and the decor is horrendous to say the least.

I have a few ideas i.e. dark wood scruffy doors I can cover in white paper and then stick black and white photos of them and their children on. Think this will be a nice feature.

I would absolutely love some money saving tips/ideas on how to make the best of a hall.

Counting_Pennies_2

If you have any nice pot plants, you could take them and decorate the entrance and hall, and take them back home in the back of your car that night.

Flowers, do you have any good friends who could help do some vases of flowers, perhaps if they each bought a bunch and decorated them in their own vase and then took them home with them it wouldn't be too ardious or costly for each person, you could decide on a colour for them to work towards to match the colour scheme of the wedding.

If someone has a tv and video/dvd, you could ask friends and family if they have any old film of them growing up and play it in the corner of the room.

Make up a nice table (cloth and table confetti and balloons) and put a guest book on for people to sign.

Have people got white tablecloths they could bring along to make a few smart tables for people to sit at (table confetti or flower petals to decorate)

If you contact close friends to the couple I am sure everyone would be happy to pitch in, and you could collect items to take with you on the day to make up the room.

Good luck, it is a lovely gift for them

Justie

we used potted rosemary plants on some of the tables and standard olive trees as bigger on the floor plants (much cheaper than bay but you get the same standard with a ball on top look) and tied cheap white cloth over the pots and then put fiary lights in them - they were then given as thank you gifts to people who'd been involved in the wedding. If candles are allowed then Ikea do a vase/ candle holder for £1 that looks a bit like a storm jar that you could have as table centre peices. Or just collect up big glass jars.

If the hall isn't very attractive then anything you can do to soften the lighting helps.

Psykicpup

What a lovely present!
Do you have any Rosemary growing - it used to be traditional at weddings & will help the place smell nice!
Old/leftover Xmas ribbon -inc the type you use on pressies - would look lovely curled & dangling from doorframes, windows, table corners etc
White daiseys - a selection of big & small - can be collected from roadsides, openspaces (& bridesmaids will love to make chains) these can be used for displays & table pieces.
Track down pictures of the bride & groom during 'courting' & growing-up - this is always a conversation piece & the families both love it - my friend had this at thier wedding & was a great hit - it might be worth photocopying pics in black & white as it is flattering & will go with decor
-lots of ballons on the dance floor if there is one - pretties up & amuses the 'younger' attendees!
I believe white table clothes can be hired or you can use cheap plastic/paper ones - with a small runner or diagonally placed, coloured cloth on top

hope that gives you some idea or inspiration....

Dan_Thunder

Going along with the photo theme, why don't you e-mail/contact the people on the invite list and ask them to bring a photo of the bride/groom and then get them all pinned up on a wall?

Bendybops19

Could you get a few pics blown up reeeeeeeeeally big to cover some of the walls? Not sure how much it costs to have them blown up though...!
Sugar paper is quite cheap, that might cover some bits of the wall you dont want to be seen.
Buy some cheap material to make big bows round the chairs like this: (dont worry about the actual chair covers). If its too pricey to buy lots of material, then just do it on the Bride and Grooms?

Cheap table decorations...keep it simple. I'd get a really thin vase (cheap from pound shops etc) and fill the bottom up with coloured stones/crystals, and then have 1 or 2 lilys and soem foliage.
Or if you dont want flowers, get nice candles? Floating candles?
The flower OR candles look reallyn nice here

Balloons, although not cheap, will really cheer up the room and can cover quite alot of space. Dont bother with fancy foil balloons because they are very pricey.
12" balloons - you'll need to get on the day because htey only last between 12-24 hours, but will be the cheapest.
Helium filled ones for the balloon bouquets, but for just hanging on the walls, ask for them to be air filled because they'll be cheaper.
Ask them to use hi-float in the helium filled ones to make them last a bit longer.
There are lots of things a balloon artist can do with them, so maybe pop in and talk to one.

Gingernutmeg

You can hire helium canisters which works out much cheaper than buying the balloons ready filled - it is a bit more hassle filling the ballons yourself though. We decorated a function room for my grandparents golden wedding anniversary and made the balloons a feature - for about £40 we absolutely filled the place with gold and cream latex balloons and it looked great. We got the balloons and curling ribbon wholesale off the internet, and rented the gas canister from a local place that supplied various gases (I'm not sure what they were called lol, but it was MUCH cheaper than going through a balloon shop), and we had loads of balloons and gas left over.

We also used cheap paper tablecloths in gold and cream, and used table confetti. For flowers, we got some cheap baskets (I think they were about 3 for £1), sprayed them gold and filled them with greenery from the garden, and just a few cream roses in each one. The cake had gold feathers and hearts as the 'toppers' so we carried this through and put some of the gold feathers in the flower baskets - it added colour but was much cheaper than flowers. We didn't bother with candles or anything because of the fire regs, but it didn't matter - the tables looked lovely and because we had lots of flowers/balloons, nobody really noticed the room being a bit shabby. Cheap muslin is really great for draping over anything really offensive though, it can look really stylish and you can get it for about £1 a metre, sometimes less if you're buying a lot.

Steel_2

What a lovely chappie you are! I'd have loved someone to do that for me. I had my reception in our local church hall and the decoration was done on a budget with a theme of country and a tie in with blue butterflies. Ebay and Ikea were our salvation - practically the whole wedding came from those two.I also spent a lot of time searching for images on the net and ended up with bucket loads to give me inspiration. I've written out below what we did so hopefully it will give you some inspiration.

Outside
There was a fence leading up to the hall which we wound ribbon (ebay) around and peridocially added in some flowers (tesco). We also begged a rather great standard bay tree from a friend to keep the hall door open, and we decorated that with tiny bows and butterflies (ebay).

Main hall decorating
We bought 60 metres of white muslin on ebay, cut it down the middle and looped it around the beams of the hall radiating out from the centre. Some of it we kept back to cover whole sections of walls, as the plaster was coming loose and it hid that really well, particularly the area behind the top table. As the theme was country, we bought some flower themed bunting (ebay - which was quite expensive but we sold straight afterwards and made half of our money back) to loop backwards and forwards between the rafters.

We pinned up normal blue and whte balloons periodically around the place and went to town hiding the knotted parts of them with a pull bow (ebay) and tons of different length curling ribbon which hung down the wall. We also swagged half a roll of sheer wedding organza up behind the top table to hide the top of the section of muslin that we'd pinned to hide the rotten plaster.

The room was generally a bit shabby so we kept the lights down low and relied on the tea-lights. There was a horrendous hairy orange curtain on the stage we pulled right back and covered in muslin. Luckily the DJ's rig covered most of the stage and no-one noticed the orange horrors either side of him.

Table decorating
We had a few helium ballons blown up at a shop and tied to the top tables. I bought two trays (about 60) tea light holders to go on the long trestle tables (Ikea). I found 12 small posy vases for less than 50p each (ebay), which I bought some ribbon (ebay) to tie around. The day before we scoured Tesco for decent reception flowers as well as the gardens of relatives who lived nearby and made up the posies that morning. On the front of the top table we swagged the other half of the roll of sheer organza and pinned it in place.

I sent off for some flat-packed favours boxes (ebay), assembled them myself and decorated them with a butterfly stamp. Inside I put a little tissue paper (ebay) and laid a tiny pack of love hearts with our names and wedding date on them (swizzel-matlow). We also bought plain place cards (ebay) and put the butterflies on those as well. We sprinkled tiny metallic confetti over the tables (and spent days finding it in strange places and little 'crannies' shall we say:rotfl: ).

The only things we didn't buy were the napkins, tablecloths, china, cutlery and glasses which were provided by the caterer. However, I took the napkins and tablecloths in advance from them so I could wrap up the napkins with white ribbon and put a tiny sprig of lavender under for the women's and rosemary for the men's (both from my back garden). I also put lavender and rosemary in with the table flowers.

Phew...that's all I can remember for now. Hope this helps! By the way, if you can, get the keys to the social club the night before if there's not going to be anyone there. That way you can sneak in there the night before and start.

Broken_hearted

Every wedding I've been to lately has had confetti and balloons. You can pick balloon arches up on ebay.

Juliav_2

Thats great - thank you all so much for your time putting on your suggestions. Got loads of ideas - off to hunt on ebay!! Thanks so much.

poe.tuesday

you must be careful with the wall decorations, if you use fabric then it must be sprayed with fire proofing spray, I think you may find the hall insist on this