The Social: Decorating

As I previously mentioned, MAKING MONEY is the primary objective of the wedding social so there isn't really a lot of room in my tight budget for decorations. I had originally assumed that I would leave it bare bones but the DIY bride in me has not enjoyed this idea from the start.

First I spoke to my mother, who is a very talented artist, and asked her to paint a banner for the entrance with Mr and my names on it. We are going to do it on a large ream of kraft paper...

**Side Note: I come from a small town, that's main industry is a Pulp and Paper Mill so kraft paper is easy to come by and my parents actually already had a roll that they use for their annual pig roast to cover the tables.**

...and she will paint it in our colors of grey, yellow and turquoise. I'm going to visit them this weekend so hopefully she's started it and I can take some pictures, if not you'll just have to wait until I post pictures of the social next month.

Then my Mr and I drove out to visit my BM - K, her husband and son on Saturday, and she suggested wrapping white mini lights around branches for decorations at the doors. Genius! She is going to collect lights from her extended family and I will do the same. And since I'm going to visit my parents this weekend I will be able to get as many branches as I want since their property has over an acre of trees, and my sister's property has even more.

I was think we could to a combination of containers with thick branches and ones with thin branches, like these...

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Now I'm trying to think of a few other additions that I can put together very inexpensively or ideally FREE.

I really like the hanging ribbon/streamer look but I can't go out and get material to cut into strips, unless I could manage to not damage it so that I could reuse it for the ribbons in the trees at the wedding ceremony. Otherwise my budget may only have room for dollar store white crepe paper streamers and I'm not sure if that would look too tacky.

I could drape them like this behind the DJ or Prize table....

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Or if I could get a ladder high enough that they wouldn't be ripped down by drunken people I could even attempt something like this...although I would need A LOT of streamers to make it look good...

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What are your thoughts on cheap/free DIY decorations? Any suggests that would go with what I already mentioned?