By Brenna Wiegand
With some creative thinking and a pair of clippers (or chainsaw if need be) you can gather the raw materials to beautify your holiday table, a community function – or a whole wedding!
Anyone who’s ever put on a wedding knows that costs tend to bubble up. For that reason – and because I spend a lot of time outside – when faced with a decorating challenge I look out of doors.
Nature is generous and free and you can’t match it for color, form and texture. Plus it gives me a legitimate reason to get outside!
Most of us are pretty well acquainted by now with the practice of bringing in pumpkins, gourds and autumn leaves; fir boughs, pine cones and holly to create a festive home, but since my daughter Valerie’s wedding has been dominating my life of late, I’ll share what my husband and I did to come up with some unique ornamentation to make her wedding (tomorrow as I write) special and lovely while keeping costs to a minimum.
I thought my husband, Wade, was nuts to go out night after night to the barn we were demolishing to remove each board, its nails and stack things away. I’ve since changed my tune. He was greatly honored when our daughter asked her dad to make her an arch and a table for her wedding ceremony.
It enhances the personal significance of the day – and saved lots of money in the process. My daughter and I fashioned a lovely swag for the arch using hop vines from a friend’s field.
Thinking primarily of centerpieces for the reception (count ’em – 30), I roped Wade and his chainsaw into taking a trip to his aunt’s place. I’d spotted a curly willow tree there; Valerie really wanted bare-branch arrangements of some sort for the reception.
I bundled a few of these twining branches to form each little “tree” and stuck them in the buckets, filling up the whole business with rocks from our driveway! At first I tried using some nice round stones and spray painting them to blend with the trees’ ornamentation, but frankly, the rough rock looked much better! Mother Nature prevails once more.
I found discounted “fall sprays” of sunset-colored fabric flowers and glass bead garland at the craft store. I pulled off the flowers’ “stems” and, with a little help from my friends, hot glued and wired here and there.
My daughter had envisioned a tree on either side of the platform at church. Stumbling over the large branches still hanging around in the driveway, I had an idea: I could make some “trees” myself! But wait – how to secure those heavy, ungainly branches and ensure they’d stay upright – and what kind of pots would I need? I let this problem simmer as I attacked other projects, and then, in the middle of a sleepless night it hit me!
Making molds from cardboard boxes reinforced with more cardboard and lots of duct tape and lining them with garbage bags, I braced my new “trees” in place using a complex matrix of scrounged items and bungee cords.
Then I mixed up my ingredients and (with lots of help from my husband again) filled the molds with this precious glop. Would they dry in the six days remaining before the ceremony? I blocked off a portion of the shop and plugged in some heaters.
After a couple of days, you’re supposed to rough up the surfaces to get rid of lines from the plastic bags and create a more natural look. I love that part, though it’s strenuous. The crowning glory was the addition of larger craft store flowers which ended up reminding me of witch hazel on steroids with a distinctly Dr. Seuss flair.
A friend helping set up the church just called to say how amazingly it all came together. I can’t wait to see it – but right now I’ve got to go set up the reception!
