Cheap wedding decorations don’t have to look cheap, and these 16 go clean and modern instead of country. Think a giant daisy backdrop for photos, a bohemian wedding arch, a cascading chandelier flower garland and a string art word sign that can hang in your house long after the cake is gone. For the tables, there’s a photo table runner of the two of you, napkins folded into roses, a textured heart canvas, mason jar fairy lights, fairy jar lanterns and ice votives that glow all night and then simply melt away. Honestly, a decoration that cleans itself up is my kind of decoration. Paper does a lot of the heavy lifting too, with paper heart and flower garlands, book page flowers, coffee filter roses and a cupcake liner bouquet. Perfect for small budgets and minimalist couples. For more ideas, see my outdoor wedding ideas, Dollar Tree wedding decorations, DIY wedding flowers and DIY wedding centerpieces.
1. Cascading Chandelier Flower Garland
Flower heads trimmed off their stems and sewn onto fishing line with a needle, then hung in long strands over a chandelier so the whole thing rains carnations. The maker used twelve strands four feet long with about ten flowers on each, knotting a loop in the line between every flower to hold it in place. Fresh, dried or faux all work, and carnations are the sensible choice because they are the cheapest flower in any shop and they hold their shape once cut. Hang the middle of each strand over the fitting so both ends fall evenly.
Get the full tutorial at The Holiday Mama.
2. Textured Heart Canvas
A canvas painted a flat color with raised, textured hearts built up on top of it out of tissue paper, glue and paint. The tissue is torn into small pieces, soaked in water, squeezed out and then mixed with glue and paint into a thick paste, which goes onto the drawn heart shapes in even layers and dries hard. It is a slow, quiet, oddly satisfying project and a very cheap one, and a row of three of them makes a gift table or a guest book table look considered. Let each layer dry properly before adding the next.
Get the full tutorial at DIY Joy.
3. Paper Flower Garlands
Round crepe paper flowers made by stacking rectangles, accordion folding them and binding the middle with floral wire, then separating the layers out into a full bloom. Twelve rectangles at about four inches by twelve go into each flower, stacked three at a time before folding, and the stems are green paper rolled on the diagonal. Crepe is worth the small extra cost over tissue because it stretches, so the petals hold a curve instead of going flat. Separate the layers slowly and from the middle outward or you will tear them.
Get the full tutorial at DIY Joy.
4. DIY Ice Votives
Candle holders frozen out of water and glitter in a pair of disposable cups, one inside the other, with the gap between them filled and frozen solid. This Heart of Mine mixes large flake glitter into the water, fills the outer cups partway, sets the smaller cup inside and weighs it down with something heavy, then tapes across the top to stop it drifting off center. Do not aim for perfect: the wonky ones catch light better. Plastic cups for both layers save you peeling wet paper off the finished votives.
Get the full tutorial at This Heart of Mine.
5. Mason Jar Fairy Lights
Pressed flowers glued onto the outside of a mason jar with Mod Podge and a string of fairy lights dropped inside, so the petals show as silhouettes once it is lit. Work in sections rather than coating the whole jar at once, trim any bulky stems flat, and seal over the top with a second coat once everything is stuck down. The one thing that decides whether it works is the flowers: thin, translucent petals and leaves let light through and sit flat, and thick ones do neither. Jute round the neck finishes it.
Get the full tutorial at DIY Joy.
6. Bohemian Wedding Arch
Three birch poles zip tied into an arch and hung with ribbon, trim and pom poms, which A Practical Wedding costed at somewhere south of five hundred dollars against a few thousand for the version that inspired it. The poles were six and a half feet high. The technique worth taking away is in the hanging: tie the middle of each length of fabric to the center of the arch, then tie the two ends down to the base at deliberately different heights, which is what gives you the uneven, draped look rather than a set of matching swags.
Get the full tutorial at A Practical Wedding.
7. How To Fold A Cloth Napkin Into A Rose
A square cloth napkin rolled and tucked into a rose, sitting on the plate at every place setting, and it costs the price of nothing at all if the napkins are already hired with the linen. Fold the napkin into a triangle, then roll from the long straight edge leaving about two and three quarter inches of fabric standing at the top, and keep rolling to the far end. Tuck the end into the fold, stand it up, then peel the layers at the top outward and downward until it opens into petals. Five of them and your hands know it.
Get the full tutorial at DIY Joy.
8. DIY Photo Table Runner
Photographs hot glued down a strip of muslin and run the length of a table, overlapping and spilling off the edges. Ruffled’s version was about nine feet long and took roughly a hundred and sixty photographs, made from sixty images with duplicates, which is the number worth knowing before you start printing. Cut the fabric a little narrower than you think you want it. Start gluing at one end, stop at the halfway point and start again from the other end so the two runs meet neatly in the middle rather than running out of space at the far end.
Get the full tutorial at Ruffled.
9. DIY Paper Heart Garland
Small paper hearts strung at intervals along lengths of fishing line and hung flat against a wall, which is the decoration to make when you have a large bare wall, a small budget and a lot of willing hands. Make & Do Crew punches the hearts two at a time, slits one from the bottom to the middle and the other from the top, and slides the pair together into a three dimensional heart. A dab of tacky glue on the seam fixes each one to the line. The whole garland takes under an hour and nothing has to be perfect.
Get the full tutorial at Make & Do Crew.
10. DIY Giant Daisy Backdrop
Oversized paper daisies made from cardstock and grouped into a flower wall, which is the backdrop everybody wants and almost nobody prices twice. Avanti Morocha points out that bought walls run about five hundred to seven hundred dollars for ten flowers, and having made them, says the price is fair because they are easy but genuinely laborious. That is the useful warning. She recommends a medium weight cardstock if the budget allows and draws her own templates. This daisy is the first in a series that also covers three kinds of giant rose and a second daisy.
Get the full tutorial at Avanti Morocha.
11. DIY String Art Words
Nails hammered into a wood plank along a printed outline, then thread wound back and forth across them until the shape fills in. It is a forgiving project, which is the point: the design comes from the nail positions rather than from any skill with the string, so anybody can do the winding once the nails are in. Printed graphics laid over the board give you the pattern to follow. Small wire nails hold better than anything bigger, and a knot at the start is what stops the whole thing unravelling halfway through.
Get the full tutorial at DIY Joy.
12. DIY Book Flowers
Roses folded rather than cut from old book pages, which is the difference between making one flower and making a hundred. cooking ala mel tried the cut and shape method first, found it so tedious she could not face a second one, and settled on a folding technique that forms most of the petals in a single move. She used Pride and Prejudice pages, which is a lovely touch at a wedding. Because the folding is done free hand, no two flowers match, and that is precisely what stops a bunch of them looking machine made.
Get the full tutorial at cooking ala mel.
13. DIY Candle Decor
Plain candles drawn on with paint markers in small repeated shapes, which turns a supermarket taper into something that looks like it came from a boutique. Work one area at a time and let it dry before moving on, because paint marker on wax smudges under the side of your hand more readily than on paper. Outline first, then fill. The one thing to know before you start: these are decoration only and the post says plainly not to light them, so treat them as a table piece or a favor rather than a working candle.
Get the full tutorial at DIY Joy.
14. DIY Fairy Jar Lanterns
A glass jar painted white on the inside with a cut paper fairy silhouette glued in against the glass, so that a light behind it throws the shape into relief. Moss or crumpled tissue in the bottom hides the light source and gives the silhouette something to stand on. The white paint is what makes it work, because it diffuses the light into a soft even glow instead of a hot spot, and the silhouette reads clearly only against that. Twine round the neck with a leaf or two glued on finishes it.
Get the full tutorial at DIY Joy.
15. DIY Coffee Filter Roses
Paper roses made from coffee filters, in a post that compares three ways of doing it rather than picking one. Up To Date Interiors tried a template method with every petal traced and cut, which is the most detailed and by a distance the slowest; a layered method using whole round filters that builds a full flower in minutes; and her own free hand version cut without a template. The comparison is the value here, because which one you want depends entirely on whether you are making six flowers or two hundred.
Get the full tutorial at Up To Date Interiors.
16. Paper Flower Bouquet Using Cupcake Liners
Full paper blooms built out of stacked cupcake liners, which is the cheapest flower on this page and arguably the prettiest. Nine liners are stacked, cut into eight sections and shaped into points, then threaded onto a skewer with hot glue and crumpled around it one section at a time to build up the petals. Leaves are folded and cut from more liners with floral wire glued inside so they bend and hold. Cupcake liners already come pleated and already come in a hundred colors, which is most of the work done before you start.
Get the full tutorial at DIY Joy.
