Decorations

My name is Karen and I am the mother of the Bride. This is my first blog on her site. Courtney is home on Christmas break from school and today we, along with her step sister Olivia, had quite a wedding shopping adventure. A very productive adventure actually. You have to understand where we live first of all. Helena, Montana is not a mecca for shopping. On the contrary. You can rarely find anything you want if it is something you are actually looking for. But today, we stumbled upon a few things which really helped put us down the road to the wedding decor look of nature and birds that Courtney was after. We are all about being thrifty and getting a good deal. We first went to Jo Ann Fabrics and we did manage to find two of the three patterns needed to make the bridesmaid dresses. Unfortunately, no good fabric finds, but we do have ten months. Next, after a well needed lunch break, we went into a scrap booking store with the hopes of finding some bird die cuts. No such luck there, but there is the Internet after all. (When you live in Montana, you learn to love the Internet for shopping.) Next, we ventured to the Mall, if you can call it that. Helena, Montana's mall is pretty lame, but there is a nice bridal gown store there and Courtney, Olivia, and I had a ball having Courtney try on bridal gowns. She has mostly decided on a gown that will be custom made in Bali, but it never hurts to try on other gowns to see what you might like better. Besides, every girl getting married should try on wedding gowns. It is part of the experience of getting married. Anyway, she looked truly lovely in most of the gowns she tried on. Very fun! Next, we went to Pier One and that's where we found our treasures for the day. Gotta love after Christmas sales!! I found a really cute bird under a bell jar, which Courtney fell in love with and decided that would make a great cake topper. I have to say, it will look terrific on the top of a small wedding cake.

While asking if it was on sale, the sales lady found a collection of wrought iron bird candelabras. They were all on crazy sale and we bought every one of them. I couldn't believe the deal we got on them. Since we don't really know how many tables we will actually have set up, we just bought all they had. Even still, we saved a huge bundle doing so. It will definitely be the basis for the rest of the wedding decor. It pays to ask the sales people what they have in a certain thing. We would have never found these otherwise. Anyway, we came home with a car load and quite pleased with ourselves for finding a bargain.


This little guy to the left is a wire bird which holds a tea candle. We found him in Pier One as well. Courtney thought they would look nice hanging in some of the trees at the wedding ceremony site. We bought three to hang along with paper lanterns. I think they'll do nicely!