The best things in life are free

The plan for our weding is to find everything for as little money as possible.
It takes a long time, because it involves researching every supplier or company and comparing them with every other supplier or company in the area, then comparing the cost of them with the cost of making something ourselves.

But every now and again, something wonderful happens and we find things really easily - and sometimes it's even more wonderful because they are free!

For example, we were given a huge wooden photo frame by a friend of my mums. It was actually handmade by her father and she didn't have room for it when she moved house, but wanted it to be used as opposed to being thrown away.

It will be perfect for our signature frame, which we are having instead of a guestbook, like these:

We will just get a large piece of card and stick a picture of us in the middle and display it in the frame. We will put out a pot of pens (we are thinking lot's of colours instead of just black) and ask people to sign the card. After the wedding we will put a piece of glass over it and hang it on our wall.

The frame is a made of dark wood and I'm considering sanding it down and painting it white, but I've not quite decided yet.

Another free thing we got this weekend, was the fabric to make the backdrop for our photo booth. My mum had a bag lying around with 2 sheer, white curtains. They have pink flowers on the bottom, but you wont be able to see them anyway so we don't mind.

Since they are sheet, we might use both of them, one on top of the other, to make it more opaque. But if we have it hung on a plain white wall, it won't matter and we can just use the one. My plan at the moment is to paint some sort of design on the top half of the curtain so that it will be visible in the background.

While we are on the subject of our photo booth - the third thing we got for free this weekend was some sombreros to put in our photo booth prop box. We got them from our local Freecycle group.

 Here's my friend and hairdresser, Mark, modelling a sombrero. Doesn't he look lovely?

If you're trying to save money on your wedding, I would definitely reccommend joining your local Freecycle group. It is amazing how many things you can recycle after others have finsihed with them - and it is an easy way to pass all the things you collected for your own wedding on to someone else after you're done!

Click here to find out more about Freecycle.

Not wedding related, but we also got this picnic basket from Freecycle - how cute is this?

It's a shame it is raining so I can't go out and use it yet!