Wedding industry is ruthless… You are required to have a lot of money to book a venue, caterer, photographer, videographer, officiant, to buy THAT dress and maybe pay crazy amount of cash just for peonies themselves in your bouquet (for out of peonies season weddings). On top of that, the wedding blogs, glossy magazines and, OMG, her majesty Pinterest, all are full of amazing images of stylish decorations of the day, like backdrops and details of table settings. And these things, my friends, cost lots of money as well, especially if you want peonies to decorate all your reception tables (in autumn, ha ha)…
But people behind Bride Goes Wild always believed, that there are other, way cheapest and planet Earth friendly options. Having exploring the possibilities how to have a stylish and more green wedding decor with less cash for a while now, we thrown a challenge for ourselves (drum roll please) – is it possible to make a beach ceremony backdrop with no money??
And the answer is: yes, and once again – YES! That backdrop, of course, won’t be made of peonies or David Austin roses and probably won’t have a golden frame. You will need to use what you have available around you for free and make the design itself as simple as possible. Nor it will be super luxurious in style (sorry supporters of luxury wedding industry). But if you are seeking for something chick and bohemian in spirit, you should definitely give it a go!
So, coming back to the project itself, the action took place on the eastern coast of Sardinia island (Italy), very close to the town called Tortoli. We decided to build a backdrop at the very impressive local beach, covered with black volcanic rocks. There is a river in Tortoli, and lots (and lots) of giant reed grasses grows near it and in some damper areas around. They are huge! These plants (which grow up to 7 meters tall) make a lot of problems in this time of the year, as they are dry and take large lands preventing people from using them, so some locals just… set them on fire! And then the firemen have a lot to do… Anyway, I guess you have a question, why this kind of plant was chosen for the project (considering, that it is from last year, and, let’s say the truth, is dry and… quite dead now)? Well, this year the sustainability trend in event design is said to be super strong, so maybe reusing some dry plants and grasses is not a bad option at all? Do you feel me, huh?
Ok, here it is! Are you ready??
So, of course we didn’t need to pay anything for the reeds (obviously, thanks to Mother Nature). However, the biggest point was how to sort the technical problem of the support of the structure without going to the shop and purchasing something for that purpose. Well, here is the secret ↓ ↓ ↓
Wehh, I bet you are wondering, what a hell is that.?! Well, my friends, just two blocks of once used floral foam! We found them in the local garden centre/flower shop. The problem with these things is that… it is rubbish! You can use them once (when they are new, without holes, like these ones in the picture above) to hold a floral arrangement in place. However, you can not reuse the floral foam, at least not with fresh flowers, as already used blocks won’t take water anymore. So it just goes to rubbish containers creating huge amount of waste. And on top of that, floral foam is not biodegradable… So, at least we reused these blocks one more time before their journey to the landfill. And, of course, we got them for free!
What’s next? Cover the ugly foam blocks with some volcanic stones (thank you, Mother Nature, once again!), and you will have a quite solid structure to hold your reeds or whatever else you want to put in!
And… Ta-daaa!
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At the end we just threw in some yellow pillows and charming traditional Sardinian carpets just to give the natural design a bit of colour (I grabbed them before leaving home in the morning, to be honest…).
So yes, that’s all. We spent no money at all for what you see in the pictures. However, I must admit one expense: we did pay for the fuel to take everything to the beach by the car (I hope the reader will forgive for this little sin!)
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