I Always Loved a Photo Booth

One of the trends that I've become a big fan of is the Photobooths. I looked at renting one ... $800 for 4 hours...OH MAN that's way too much for this frugal bride. 

Another friend had done a "photobooth" by setting up a digital camera with a remote and taping off the area in the photo. This would work for me! I have a nice digital SLR  and could easily buy a remote. 

Next to figure out was how to do a back drop. I thought "how cool would it be to have a 'big top' backdrop!?" I came up with a simple pattern...oh gosh...fabric is expensive when you use this much! In walks Save-The-Day-Mom. She just happened to have extra fabric- tons of red with white polka dots and sewed it to a white tablecloth. Within a few hours, she whipped this bad boy up!

I figured what's a photo booth without props? A quick google search returned dozens of ideas. I printed some colorful ones on cardstock, cut out black and white ones with the pazzles.

Then, I started getting creative and decided to have speaking and thought bubbles that you can write on. I just cut chipboard that I got out of the trash at work, sprayed it with chalkboard paint, and stuck them on a dowel rod. Perfecto!

Everyone had such a great time with this. Due to the weather during set up, the photo booth got move to the inside a little hidden but we had a good number of photos turn up that were hilarious. 

And some that were adorably cute. 

Total cost: (Backdrop-Nothing) + Camera (Nothing) + Remote ($17) + Dowel Rods ($4 for 24) + 20 sheets of paper ($0.40) + Chalkboard Paint ($3.50 after using a 50% off coupon) = $24.90

I think I saved $775 on this one! 

Sit your butt then sign your name

If you couldn't tell, I don't want to like to throw money away and I like stuff to be practical. One thing I couldn't get over is spending money on a guest book I'm going to store away and never read. I searched for practical ideas and stumbled upon this one.

A guest bench seemed like such a fantastic idea! 

       A) It would give my fiance a wedding project

       B) It would give my parents a place to sit at the wedding
       C) It would be something my friends would get to decorate

       D) I would be able to smile seeing said bench everyday

It had to be done! I didn't give my fiance a budget for this project because...my future father in law gets the most amazing deals at Lowes and Home Depot. He got $200 worth of plywood for $40 months prior that we used for so many random things. Using leftover 2x4's and plywood, they made a beautiful bench. I painted it white and used the pazzles to cut a stencil for our names. All the paint was leftover from previous house projects. 

Everyone loved the idea. We put it on a work stand covered with fabric and made it counter height. We threw a sign on there and some sharpies and ended up with a treasured bench. 

Total cost for an awesome bench and sign: Nothing

Total cost for the sharpies: $2.75 on clearance at Michael's for 4. 

A good popcorn bag is hard to find!

I searched everywhere looking for 100 bags for cheap. I could find 1000 bags for 20 bucks or so but I would have about 920 too many.

Luckily, I have a Pazzles and it cuts paper and does awesome things. I found paper on sale 10 for $1. I bought about 50 sheets. Using the pen tool, I drew on red lines at the top and dots on the rest.  Using the cutting tool, I cut out our names and the box itself. I was able to draw and cut 2 boxes out of each sheet. For $5 bucks, I had 100 custom made popcorn boxes!

Our friend lent us a popcorn machine and gave us the popcorn and oil for the party as well saving us well over $75. It looked fantastic with the whole wedding!

Total Cost: $5.00 for 50 sheets of paper + Glue (Free)= $5.00 for 100 or $0.05 each!

Every Cupcake Deserves a Pedestal.

We were going to go for a wedding cake but neither of us could decide on one. Eventually, we figured a cupcake would be better since it's portion controlled and cute. How else should you have a cupcake displayed other than it's own stand!

Instead of spending hours contemplating how to make a stand, I bought a digital file and edited to fit our personality. Each stand used about 1.2 sheets of paper. I also found polka dot cupcake wrappers on sale at AC Moore randomly.

For 26 stands: Wrappers $0.35+ Paper $1.28 + Digital File $3=$4.63 or $0.18 each!

I LOVE balloons

To make things even more special, I wanted for every person to have a balloon in their cup. I love balloons. I know there's a helium shortage and I shouldn't have done this but I LOVE balloons. So all 26 guests that came to the wedding got a balloon.

To weigh it down, I wanted to use gummy bears. I cut boxes with the pazzles and had it draw our faces on one side and a heart cut out on the other with the lid shaped like a heart. I didn't have any acetate sheets so I used a ziploc bag and used the clear parts to make the window on the box.

Total Cost: Paper $2.60 (On sale 5 for $1)+ Plastic (free) + Glue (free)+ Balloon ($26.00)=$28.60 for 26 or $1.10 each!

Sweet Tea Cups!

I wanted each person to take home something that was memorable and unique to our wedding. Since my fiance and I love sweet tea, I decided to paint Sweet Tea Glasses.

We used Vetrea 160 paint. I printed their names in a font and size I liked. Taped it on the inside of the glass and painted over it. Then I printed various size dots for the glass and painted over them. They took about 10-20 hours each since I made sure each dot dried flat before painting the next one.

The glasses cost $50 for 36 glasses-so I could make a few for my college friends. The paint I bought one color at a time with 50% off coupons and ended up paying $12 and it covered well over 36 glasses. To make them a little sharper, I used 3 sheets of papers to cut some bow ties for my fancy glasses...

Total Cost: $62.12 for 36 glasses ($1.73 each)

They make straws out of paper?

For us 80's babies, we learn things everyday about how it was in our parent's day. After watching a commercial, I realized I wanted to have mustache straws as decorations and for people to use. I used swagbucks to get an a few amazon gift cards to pay for a lot of the decorations. I bought the straws with these gift cards saving me almost $8.00.

Using the pazzles, I cut out about 150 mustaches out of 9 sheets of black paper (Purchased from Michael's with a %50 off coupon-making it only $2 for a pack of 50 pieces of paper).

Total Investment:

Straws: $8.00 + Paper:  $0.40 = $8.40 for 144 straws (~6 cents each)