Wedding Help

One way that many couples choose to decorate their wedding ceremony is through the use of a wedding arch. I’m sure we’ve all seen pictures of wedding arches adorned with flowers and greenery, or tulle and lights, and you know that the effect that the wedding arch has on the wedding ceremony.  Wedding arches can be simple and romantic, or beautiful and elegant depending on the kind of decorations you use and the kind of wedding ceremony that you want to have. Plus, wedding arches can be rented rather cheaply and can be an inexpensive way to add decoration to your wedding ceremony without breaking the budget. Wedding arches look great in nearly every kind of wedding ceremony, whether you are planning a beach wedding, an outdoor wedding as well as church weddings. Here are some different ways to decorate wedding arches to help complete  your wedding look as well as creating a great wedding ceremony decoration.

Decorate Your Wedding Arch Using Tulle

Tulle is one of the best wedding decorations around. You can buy it at any fabric store for about a dollar a yard, and weave it in and out of your wedding arch to help create the look you are wanting.  For a more dramatic look, buy some fake greenery or flowers from a craft store and arrange them around the tulle. Many Christmas weddings using wedding arches use tulle and white Christmas lights for a soft glow. This is a great way to decorate your wedding arch without having to spend a lot of money.

Decorate Your Wedding Arch Using Flowers 

Another way that many brides decorate their wedding arches is to adorn them with real fragrant flowers. Many people choose to use their florist for this, though the end result can cost you a lot of money. If you’re any good at doing stuff like that by yourself (which I am not), then order the flowers yourself and decorate your own arch. Though you might want to try it with some silk flowers before trying to work with real ones so that you can get a feel for what you’re doing before it’s time for the real thing.

Decorate a Part of your Wedding Arch 

Another great way to save some cash and still have a beautiful wedding arch is to only decorate the top of your arch - perhaps by weaving a few branches or flowers into the top. This is a simple look that can be really beautiful, your wedding florist should be able to help with that.

Wedding arches can be a beautiful addition to your wedding. They’re not for every wedding though, so be sure it fits with your wedding ceremony location before you plunk down the money for one.

Tags: decorating wedding arches, wedding arch, wedding arches

Another great way to add some color and class to your church decorations is to have pew decorations. Now, I wanted to have pew decorations as part of my wedding decorations, because I just think it adds so much to the overall look and transformation of a church or chapel into a beautiful and elegant place to have a wedding. I chose to have pew bows for my pew decorations, and go into a little more extensive detail about it in previous articles such as Do I Need Church Decorations and How to Make Pew Bows. I knew there were lots of ideas for pew decorations that I could go with and any one of them would be beautiful, but I thought that pew bows with sparkle ribbon and lots of tulle would look best in our church, and would create the look that I was going for. But, if you don’t like pew bows or perhaps are just looking for different ideas for pew decorations, then here are some other popular ideas to help you out.

Pew Decorations with Flowers

One great and popular way to add some color and style to your pew decorations is to use flowers. The flowers can be real or fake, or even a mixture of both to help save on costs. I remember I tried to have real flowers for all of my pew decorations, and the cost from a typical florist were astronomical. So you can only have arrangements on the first few pews to help save on costs, or you can integrate fake flowers to help stretch your dollar and still give you some beautiful pew decorations. Or, you can attach a single flower to the end of each pew, simple and elegant. Another popular idea for pew decorations with flowers is to use flower balls. I’m not sure if this what they’re really called, but if you’ve looked at any pictures on the internet, then you know what I’m talking about. Attach a ribbon to these flower balls and hang them from the ends of the pews, or even every other pew, and you’ve got an elegant pew decoration that is sure to have your guests take notice.

Pew Decorations with Candles

Another option for your pew decorations is to use candles. There are single candle holders that you can rent and stand beside each pew for a really elegant look, or you can find ways to attach a small candle holder by a ribbon or wire from the end of each pew. Get permission from your church before you do this though, as worst case scenario could be a falling candle and a small fire on your wedding day - not fun!

Pew Decorations with a Theme

If you are having a themed wedding, then look for pew decorations that will go along with your theme. For example, a friend of mine had a beach wedding, and they attached tall tiki torches to each pew. They didn’t light them - but the sight was enough. If you are having a western wedding theme, then you could hang cowboy hats to the end of your pews or bandannas tied around some simple white daisies are pretty as well.

There are lots of different ideas that you can use as your pew decorations. Get creative and try them out in your wedding location to make sure they’ll hold or give the look that you want them to give. One thing is for sure, the right pew decorations will really help your guests get excited about the transformation of the church as well as being excited about your wedding. If you have any ideas for pew decorations that you’ve seen or used before and loved, then write in and let me know!

Tags: church pew decorations, pew decoration ideas, pew decorations

A good friend of mine at our church got married a few years ago in January, and she chose to use a winter wonderland theme for her wedding. Now, while I was not able to attend the ceremony due to a prior engagement, I have heard a lot about it, and have even seen numerous pictures of how they transformed our tiny country church into a beautiful winter wonderland. The wedding reception was absolutely beautiful, and I know that it was done on a budget. Winter wonderland themes for weddings are really very popular, and can be totally different from weddings with a Christmas theme. In fact, I have decided to start a whole series on winter weddings, since there really isn’t that much information that you can find about it. See my previous article, Winter Wedding Ideas Part 1, or just check out everything in my winter weddings articles by looking at the Winter Weddings category. But, to get on with the article, this is just to help give you an idea of what to use for winter wedding ideas for church decorations, here are some great ideas to help you get started with the creativity.

Winter Wedding Ideas with Fake Snow

You just can’t have a winter wedding without some kind of fake snow. Even if you are like us here in Texas and almost never see snow, a winter wonderland wedding just isn’t the same without snow. So, a great idea for church decorations in a winter wedding is to use fake snow, which comes several different ways. One way that you can find fake snow is to buy the packages of white cloth sheets which are made to look like snow. Lay it out around the platform and in window sills. Then sprinkle snowflake confetti or other shiny confetti over the fake snow to help it glow. Another great idea for using fake snow in a winter wonderland wedding is to get the spray and spray at the corners and edges of windows (might want to get permission for this before spraying). This will help give the feel of a beautiful outdoor winter wonderland wedding.

Winter Wedding Ideas with Christmas Lights

Despite popular belief that Christmas lights can only be used in Christmas weddings, its wrong. I happen to think that beautiful white twinkly Christmas lights can help give off a beautiful glow and romantic feel to a winter wonderland wedding. Wrap some trees with lights and sprinkle fake snow on some trees, or drape the lights around the room and you’ll find that the effects are beautiful.

Winter Wedding Ideas with Characters

One thing that my friend did in her winter wonderland wedding was to add some characters. For example, some wooden reindeer and other animals up on the platform really helped make the church platform look like a winter wonderland. Then, she had several flower girls (6 or more I believe) , and the dresses that they wore dressed them up like beautiful little sugar plum fairies complete with the wings. Also, snowmen and other fun characters can be added into your winter wonderland theme to help complete the look.

There are so many different winter wedding ideas that you can use to decorate your church with. If anyone has any other questions, or need some more ideas to help them get started, don’t hesitate to write and ask, I’ve seen lots of winter weddings and can help with ideas. Also, if you had a winter wonderland wedding and would like to share something special that you did and really loved, please let us know!

Tags: winter themed weddings, winter wedding ideas, winter wedding ideas for church decorations, Winter Weddings, winter wonderland wedding, winter wonderland wedding theme

This is a continuation of a previous article, Do I Need Church Decorations, and I thought I would explain one of the points in the article. I talked about how my aunt and I ran to every Wal-Mart in the Dallas area buying out a particular silver ribbon and pulling an all-nighter to create enough pew bows for the church. Lucky for me, our church only has fourteen pews, so it wasn’t a huge project, but still quite an undertaking for us who didn’t know what we were doing. Up until a few weeks before the wedding, I hadn’t even thought of purchasing or designing church decorations. I knew I wanted them, but just didn’t know what to do, and so I pushed it out of my mind. When I finally decided to start looking at church decorations, I went to my florist, and they wanted to charge me around $20 per pew bow!!! No way! So I went to my aunt’s house in Dallas, and we set to work on learning how to create pew bows. So, if you are like I was before the wedding, searching for church decorating ideas, and want to learn how to make pew bows, I’ll tell you how we did it.

Pick Out a Ribbon for Your Pew Bows

The first thing you need to do is to pick out what kind of ribbon you want to use for your pew bows. I chose a sparkly silver wire ribbon that was about 2 or 3 inches wide. I found that for the size of pew bow I wanted, I would need one roll of ribbon per pew bow, not even to mention the tails (sorry, I’m not sure of the “technical” name, but the two pieces of ribbon that hang down from the pew bow) .

Start Making Your Pew Bow

Okay, let me start out by saying that neither of us were very crafty, but we were willing to try. So, what I’m explaining will work, but may not be how ‘professionals’ would advise making a pew bow, so take it with a grain of salt. We started out by deciding how wide we wanted the bow to be. Wanting it to be about 10 inches in diameter, we took the end of the ribbon and laid out 10 inches on the table, then looped the ribbon back to the starting edge of the ribbon, and we kept looping the ribbon back and forth until we had about 5 loops, getting a little smaller on each of the loops. Then, with the ribbon left over, we wrapped it around the middle of the bow, and hot glued it there. We then measured out ribbon for the tails of the pew bow, and hot glued that to the back of the pew bow. Again, probably not the most professional method for creating a pew bow, but like I said, it works.

Decorating Your Pew Bow

Once you have your pew bows created, you may want to add some decoration to them. For example, I wanted the first few rows of pews to be for family members, so I decorated some of the pew bows with peach ribbon roses a friend had made, and the other pew bows with small white silk flowers, where everyone else would sit. Those also, were attached with super glue. Hey, all the ladies in my family were teachers, super glue works on nearly anything!

Hanging Your Pew Bow

Depending on the type of pews that your church has, you will need some plastic pew clips (can be purchased at any craft store), pipe cleaner, or other type of wire to hang your pew bows. Be sure to try it a variety of different ways to find out what works best for your wedding ceremony location and budget. What ended up working for us to to hot glue pipe cleaners to the back of the pew bow, which were then easily attached to the pew clip and hung on the side of the pew.

Like I’ve said before, this is probably not the most professional way to create a pew bow, but they looked great, and worked perfectly for our wedding ceremony. Let me know if you have any questions on the directions, I tried to be as descriptive as possible, but I know it can still be confusing. If you look at the previous article to this one, Should I Have Church Decorations, the picture in that article is of the finished product of our pew bows and decorating. If pew bows aren’t for you, and you want more ideas for pew decorations, then check out my other article called Pew Decoration Ideas.

Tags: how to make pew bows, make your own pew bows, pew bows

I spent so much time on our wedding planning and working on the reception and other details that I totally didn’t think of church decorations. It really only hit me about two weeks before the big day when one of the ladies on the church asked me what I was planning on doing for decorations, and when I would need help to start decorating the sanctuary. I was shocked that I hadn’t even thought of it myself, and didn’t really have an answer. At that point so close to our actual wedding day, with all the other stressful details I was working on and considering more important I found myself wondering, “Do I really need church decorations?” After much thought and kicking myself for forgetting such a major detail, I came to the conclusion that my church decorations should have been at the forefront of my mind, and that I had let so many other things get in the way, and I’ll tell you why.

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Tags: Church Decorations, pew bows, Wedding Planning