Budget Wedding Backdrops – are they cost effective?

Are Budget Wedding Backdrops Cost Effective?

Are budget wedding backdrops cost effective? Or do they lead you down a rabbit hole of disappointment and frustrations? In this blog, we first ask the questions and then find the answers for you.

We do the research so you don’t have to

Being the fabulous wedding venue dressing service that we are, we spend quite some time doing our research for our clients and sometimes browse the Internet to see what’s new in the wedding and party dressing world.

It’s important to us – and in the end to you – that we’re up to date with the new trends in venue décor.

On a recent web crawl we came across an article about cheap, DIY wedding backdrops. We looked at this article and asked ourselves some questions:

1. Are budget wedding backdrops cost effective?
2. Are these suggestions at all realistic?
3. And what are the costs to you?

Long Years of practice

Bearing in mind that we’ve had years of practice at this, our quick answer to the question ‘Are Budget Wedding Backdrops Cost Effective? is: No. They aren’t. Not really!

Though there is of course ONE exception. IF you’re an arty/crafty type that makes handmade gifts on a regular basis this doesn’t apply to you.

Except for one cost area: time. Time, as they say, is money. So, even if you are capable of threading paper birds or butterflies on to lengths of wire and making it look amazing, will you, in the middle of all the other things to think about, have the time and energy for it?

One of the things we’ve seen touted as a budget alternative to a flower wall is a floral curtain similar to the one in the image below.

We made this curtain from flowers threaded on wire. In this photo it’s on the door at home when we were making it. 

From personal experience we can tell you that an alternative flower wall or curtain such as this, might be relatively cheap. But  don't be taken in by the idea that its an easy alternative DIY project for your wedding  to make. 

It took ages – and it was tricky to transport to the venue without it getting as tangled as the Christmas fairy lights always seem to.

A Rapid Rethink

A friend of mine tells how, when planning her daughter’s wedding, the pair of them harboured vague money-saving notions and making their own invitations etc. But after spending an hour between them constructing a flat-pack cardboard favour box they had a rapid rethink. And off to the printer’s they went.
What dawned on them was that, even if they had particular skills in this area – which, by their own admission, they didn’t – they had neither the time nor the energy for it.

And that’s a big thing to consider.

Budget wedding backdrops don’t come cheap in practice

Well – most of the time anyway. Okay yes, you can get friends to save coffee jars etc for you. You can tie sting around the top and put a giant tea-light inside and hang them around your venue. A pretty feature for a rustic style décor. Something like this – if you keep them plain – will be cheap in terms of everything except time. Time in getting them made and then time in getting them hung at the venue.

But if you want to decorate or frost them, well the cost soon rises. Have a quick root round somewhere like Hobbycraft. Look at masking tape and spray paint etc – that will give you an idea of how cheap soon turns into not-so-cheap.

Too much to think about

Our feeling is this. Unless you’re Kirsty Allsop (and she has a big support team!) making your own venue décor backdrops, or other décor for that matter, is giving yourself too much to think about. And you’ve got enough – with dresses and suit hire and table plans and planning the honeymoon. To name but a few things you’ll need to tackle. Trust us. You don’t need this.

How to do wedding backdrops without bursting the budget

But there is a way to do it without busting the budget. And that’s to hire not to buy. Have a look at the accessory hire and treasure trove sections of our website. There you’ll find flower walls and other wedding backdrops along with globes, table plan ideas and much, much more. All available to hire.

You don’t see what you have in mind? That’s no problem. Send us a message via our webform or call us on: 00447511842451 and let’s get problem solving.