Selecting Your Theme
Wedding Decorations and Ideas

The wedding decorations and ideas that you choose should highlight and enhance your overall theme decor. It helps to create the mood for your celebration and presents your guests with a beautiful and memorable setting. From simple and casual to formal and traditional, choosing the right decorations will add drama and style to any wedding.

First, decide on the type of atmosphere that you both want to create. Are you looking at having a formal evening wedding or will this be a more casual, daytime wedding? Are you both very fun loving people who might choose to have a "Mickey and Minnie Mouse" wedding theme or would you both prefer a romantic theme?

To begin pulling your ideas together, you should sit down and work together to create a list of everything that you both enjoy - from hobbies to sports to animals. Anything and everything that is important to both of you. Then you can start eliminating items from your list until you have two or three theme ideas that sound reasonable and simple enough to put together, without breaking your budget or your loosing your sanity.

Next, you'll need to come up with a color scheme to match your theme. Some themes lend themselves easily to color matching, such as an Irish wedding or a Valentine's Day wedding (red, white, pink). With some other themes, you really don't need to worry too much about colors, as the items for the theme will create your setting anyway, such as a nautical theme setting or Hawaiian wedding ideas, for example.

Always keep your budget in mind when choosing your theme wedding decorations. Be aware of the size of the rooms you will have to decorate for both the ceremony and the reception. Don't forget to include any wedding flower ideas and arrangements that will be used. How many tables will require centerpieces? (Guest tables, head table, buffet or any serving tables, guest book table, etc.) If your ceremony is being held in a place of worship, how many pew markers are required? What type of decorating can be done at the altar?

To help you with the placement of decorations that you may wish to incorporate, take pictures of all locations from different angles. This way you'll be able to sit down and really look at what needs to be done and what decorations will be required, instead of trying to rely on memory.

Keep your decorating simple, yet elegant. Simple touches make a lasting visual statement. Using too many decorations or ones that are large and overwhelming will detract from the main purpose of this special day - the marriage of two wonderful people.

Be sure to also consider preparation time. If you're making your wedding decorations by hand, how long will each piece take to make? How easy will they be to transport to the location? And how difficult or long will set up take?

By keeping the above points in mind, you'll be sure to avoid costly mistakes and it will help keep the workload to a minimum. After all, a wedding should be fun, creative and joyful, not a chore that "has to be done". So be playful, use your imagination and enjoy picking and choosing those special wedding decorations that tell the world - "That is us"!