Regardless of where you will be having your ceremony and reception, you probably have some plans in mind for the decorations you want to use. If you’re a little overwhelmed with where to start looking, I’m going to share with you where I collected all of the supplies I used to make my decorations and hopefully this will help kick things off for you!

If you like hunting for treasure, you will LOVE this part of your wedding planning journey!

 

Almost every day I would have a new haul of awesome treasures, and oddly enough, it would work out perfectly that I’d be unloading my car the same moment my husband would be getting home. He would yell out of his car window; “What the heck did you find now?! Do you even have enough time to finish all these projects?!”

 

We got married in our backyard and although it was a smaller wedding, it’s amazing what you need to supply when you don’t book at a venue! Basically everything! Then the decorations on top! We rented the things that didn’t make sense to buy or make, but all the other details; I scoured for the best deals.

Sometimes getting a great deal is quite hard to do. But if you know where to look you can up your chances! And often, simply going at the perfect moment is what it comes down too.

 

 

Depending on what it was I was looking for, I had my favourite stores.

 

Flowers

I absolutely love putting together flower arrangements so I decided to do this myself instead of hiring a florist. I also liked the idea of using artificial flowers so that I could re-use them in a creative photoshoot after! A bonus; I will probably sell them eventually too.

• Aliexpress – I didn’t have the best luck with fabric flowers here…but the greenery & plastic flowers were perfect! I ordered succulents, moss, vines, lavender, baby’s breath, & wisteria (these were fabric and were ok quality, other ones I ordered as a test unfortunately didn’t make the final cut though)
• Walmart – Yea…. they have a flower craft section! I happened by it one day and literally screeched out loud for such a joyous find. They have monstrous succulents, and they aren’t too expensive.
• Michaels – This is an obvious one, but if you want superb quality, you can’t NOT go here… They have 40-50% off coupons every weekend.  They tend to be very serious when it comes to their policies, so bring some friends who can buy flowers on your behave, otherwise you’ll be using 1 coupon a day over the whole weekend. Sometimes their flowers are in the week long sale which makes things way more easy. Also! Check out their clearance section. I purchased a square succulent tile (for making a wall of succulents, I presume) for $5, but I just snipped off all the succulents and viola! Got some more to place in my table decorations, and wherever else.
• Thrift Stores –  I personally didn’t buy any from here, but found lots of trees! So if you want to sprinkle trees around your venue, make sure you hit up those thrift stores!
• Kijiji – I didn’t buy flowers off of Kijiji, but whenever I looked there were many people selling artificial trees. So if that’s your thing check out some ads here.

 

Vases, Frames, Hooks etc. (the small hard goods. metal, glass, ceramic…) 

Anyone who is a fan of pinterest is likely very familiar with how hard it is to land on one style choice. I flip flopped so much between ideas! It’s just so hard when all of the options are so beautiful! I ended up deciding on a whimsical, rustic & romantic look. I wanted lots of unique vases with flower & succulent arrangements scattered around, a ton of different sized candles, and I wanted our favourite photos in frames. When you choose things for flowers (if you’re using artificial) you can basically use anything! I had so much fun collecting stunning glassware, and I’m pretty sure some of them were actually fancy ice-cream bowls. I used teapots and watering cans too. Really anything works. The possibilities are literally endless here.

• Thrift Stores – This was primarily my main location for this kind of stuff. I mostly only shopped on 50% off days so I got amazing deals.
• Michaels – I didn’t have any luck finding small candles and small votive holders at any thrift shops (timing was not on my side this time), so I used some coupons and picked up a few styles from Michaels. They have many to choose from.
• Walmart – I also picked up some small candles here too.
• Dollarama – They have an impressive selection of things that may spark some ideas!

 

 

Fabrics

This is a hard one. I found that fabric is just not cheap. You can find decent prices, and definitely cheaper options than renting, but I could never find the sort of deals I was hoping for.  We used huge round tables for our guests, and unfortunately for this, we had to rent. I was lucky enough to find some clearance rectangle table cloths in the same off white colour to use for our food and gift tables though. On top of the table cloths, I wanted lace overlays. White Lace to be exact. I’m not sure why this is, but I often want options that are not easily available. No rental company had this option. It was only off white. Originally I was planning on using full sized cloths, (just ones that didn’t go right to the floor), but this ended up being quite difficult to locate too. Instead I ended up going with white lace table runners, which were made from curtains!

You may have to get into problem solving mode and make a few adjustments but you will likely be able to make whatever it is you have in mind.

Oh and of course I wanted to use lovely soft fluffy tulle!

• Fabricland – Watch out for sales and check out their clearance section. Otherwise this place is very expensive! This is where I got the tulle.
• Thrift Stores –  I loaded up on curtains here! But even on 50% off days it was shocking how much it can add up. They also do have table cloths and other fabrics.
• Aliexpress – You may be able to locate some decent deals on fabrics here. I purchased some natural muslin fabric for about $30, to cover our tropical outdoor furniture.
• Kijiji – I didn’t have luck but you may be able to find the right curtains to cut up/use for your decor.
• Loblaw Superstore – This is where I found those clearance off white table cloths! They often have amazing things on clearance here. If you are close to one, pop in every so often.

 

 

 

Furniture ect.  

Along with my vision of “eclectic” cute arrangements scattered around, I had some larger ideas as well. The first piece of furniture that inspired my refinishing kick, was this gorgeous dresser a friend gave me. Huge, solid wood, with dove tail details. It was PERFECT for my style. It sparked an idea to use it to display our desserts in our sunroom. After all, who says you HAVE to use a table? From there the ideas for other furniture started rolling in. When my husband and I were going over the set up of our backyard I realized we would need somewhere to sign the papers. Realistically, you can keep it REAL simple and use something you have already. Throw a nice table cloth over it, and you’re good to go. Since I recently came into possession of this beautiful dresser, I thought about seeing if I could find something else that would work great for a signing table. Enter this fabulous desk I came across. Oh AND it came with a chair and thee perfect shelving unit (for displaying photos and other decor) for $25! I also found some amazing shutter doors, another shelf (it was actually a headboard), a wing back chair (it was burgundy! and $10!! How lucky?!), and a floor length standing mirror. I’ll be writing some great refinishing posts of my experiences within the next few weeks, so you can see what these findings were turned into.

• Kijiji. You can’t go wrong checking out what people are selling on kijiji. If you don’t mind driving, or have family and friends who live in other cities, check out the ads in other cities!
• Thrift Stores. There’s usually many options. I’ve been to almost all of them and had great luck at Goodwill, Value Village, Talize, Salvation Army, & Mission Thrift. The key thing here, is to go on 50% off days if you want the best prices.
• Restores. They are located in many cities and sometimes there’s even multiple locations in a city! Which gives you more to sift through.
• Facebook. I was lucky a few times just posting on my own timeline, asking if people had various things for sale. Sometimes you may even just be given things for free! You can even mentioned the kinds of things you are looking for, and more than likely someone will contact you and let you know they saw something.

 

 

Games 

My husband and I are not crazy “party-ers”, and our families aren’t dancers. So instead of the traditional reception style of drinking and dancing we opted for a drinking and games approach. We started collecting yard games whenever we came across a great deal, but then somewhere along the planning process, I thought; “What happens if it’s a torrential downpour!?”. We built the whole day around the idea that the afternoon would be a “chilling games thing”. What if we can’t do that, and everyone is confined to the tent?! That could be bad. We’re talking about 4 hours of people sitting at their tables. It ended up being absolutely PERFECT out. But we were prepared with a collection of board & card games too.

• Canadian Tire – I’m not sure if we just lucked out with timing here, but every single one of the outdoor games were on clearance. Which was great because most are about $60+.
• Small Businesses – We purchased “Yardzee” off someone who makes them for about $20.
• Thrift Stores – If you want board games, don’t bother with Kijiji. Check out the thrift store selection. I purchased a Baulderdash for $2! Vs. someone on Kijiji who wanted $15.
• Costco – They have their “Costco” sized card boxes, so if you want the traditional deck of cards, and lots of them! This may be your best bet.

 

The Supplies

So I covered all the essentials of where to find the decor items you will turn into your own creations. Next is the crafty supplies you’ll need to spice up the treasures you’ve found! Spray paint was basically my best friend during all of this. I also used acrylic paint, paint pens, lacquer, stain, chalk paint, chalkboard paint, brushes, rollers, sandpaper, ribbon, glues, tapes, pins etc. If you want a more detailed description of the exact items I used check out my tutorials in the “DIY” category.

• Home Improvement Stores – Rona, Lowes, Home Depot etc. They have the sand paper along with tons of stain, lacquer, and all the chalk type paints you could ever dream of using along with the brushes to use them.
• Walmart – Great store for the spray paints, paint pens, acrylic paint, ribbons, glues, tapes and pins.
• Dollarama – You just never know what you’ll find here! I got some ribbons and bedazzled jewel stickers.

 

That wraps up the shopping adventures! If you were a little unsure before about where to find things, hopefully this has helped you with ideas!

I would love to see some of your found treasures. Share them here and mentioned what you plan to do with it!

 

Happy hunting!