How To Plan An Enjoyable Irish Wedding Reception

Making your wedding reception wonderful with touches of Irish tradition can be a great way to entertain family and friends, while also honoring your own heritage. Adding touches of the Emerald Isle’s charm and culture to your reception is easy to do, and it doesn’t have to pump up your wedding budget. By using Irish music, dance, and poetry to add vibrant beauty to the proceedings, you can make your reception unique and truly lovely.

Photo Courtesy of Leigh Maher

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Irish Music

Many couples of Irish ancestry enjoy featuring Irish musicians at their receptions. It’s easy to find local musicians who specialize in Irish folk tunes, fiddling, or even rock music – U2 and Enya cover tunes are very popular with people of all generations. If you don’t know how to locate Irish bands or singers in your area, check message boards that bring together people of Celtic ancestry. Usually, each region has a group of touring musicians who can add a touch of authentic Irish spirit to your big celebration. Irish associations in your area (they often hold parades and festivals) are another great resource you can utilize to find the perfect wedding singer or group.

Irish Decorations

Decorating your reception hall will be a pleasure when you plan an Irish theme. Dark, emerald green table coverings and Irish wildflowers can add beauty to your décor, without being too over the top. Motifs that will work well with your theme include shamrocks, golden harps, wild roses, or ancient Celtic symbols, such as Trinity Knots or Celtic spirals. These ancient symbols are easy to draw, but you can also find wonderful stencils to use. Get creative and incorporate these timeless symbols of faith and eternity into your table settings. All of these motifs can also work well on your wedding cake!

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In the next of this two-part post, we’ll talk about some Irish toasts and suitable wedding favors.

This post was supplied exclusively for Letterpress Wedding Invitation Blog, by the online jewelry store: Irish Celtic Jewels, who specialize in Celtic engagement rings and wedding bands.

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With the economy in a downturn, brides on a budget are becoming much more common. Brides to be are skipping on the fancy and formal and looking for ways to make their weddings more artsy, personal and inexpensive. With the help of family and friends, today’s DIY savvy brides are constructing everything from their wedding decorations, different pieces of their wedding invitation designs, as well as their wedding celebration desserts.

Perhaps one of the most common areas that brides are DIYing surrounds the many decorations that their ceremony and celebration will need. Everything from flower arrangements to table decorations, 21^st century brides know that to make their wedding intimate and personal it does not necessarily require a wedding planner.

My personal favorite arena to DIY in is with wedding invitations designs. While I have heard many woes from other blogs and forums about trying to DIY an entire letterpress wedding invitation design, there are a couple easy ways to DIY and save money with letterpress wedding invitations that are very easy. The first is to make your own invitation liners. This will not only greatly enhance the appeal of your wedding invitation set, but it is super easy to do too. Check out this step-by-step video that walks you through the process.

Also, being a part of the design process and dictating exactly what you want your invitation design to look like is a very liberating feeling. It gives you more control and will help make your invitation set more personalized and something you feel responsible for creating.

If saving money is your main criteria for your wedding, I suggest trying to locate package deals for letterpress wedding invitation designs. Some printers greatly reduce the price of their work if you are just willing to ask around. This can save you hundreds of dollars.

Most brides would never dream of making their own cake, which is completely understandable. But a growing trend among 2010 weddings is steering away from the rigid wedding cake tradition and focusing more on individualized tasty delights. Such decadent and individually frosted delights like wedding cupcakes, fudge brownies, cheesecake on a stick or biscotti cookies are super delicious and can end up saving you a lot of money. In lieu of a formal gift, ask one of your friends or family members to cook up enough treats for your entire guest list.

Wedding Cake Alternatives courtesy of Martha Stewart Weddings

Be creative! Think about all the places where the wedding is going to cost you money and think of ways that you could potentially do that yourself. There is no end to the potential DIY projects for a bride on a budget.

Written by Nick

Invitations by Ajalon
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Once I had my colors and location selected, I started thinking about décor for the ceremony and reception.  Chris and I have decided that we want a pretty short ceremony, 20 to 30 minutes at most.  With that said, I didn’t want to spend a ton of our budget on decorations for the ceremony, so I decided to come up with something that I could do on my own.  Enter Weddingbee, a wedding blog where there is a ton of inspiration and DIY ideas.  A lot of the girls were using tissue paper pompoms, which I liked, but we live about 18 hours by car from our wedding location, and even my mom’s house is a 2 hour drive, so I was nervous they would be crushed if we used tissue paper.  Finally I came upon this post, where another bride used tulle to do them.  I was intrigued and decided to do a test run.  I basically used this tutorial, but I will walk you step-by-step through what I did.

First, I purchased my supplies.  I bought a 5-inch white Styrofoam ball, a few yards of navy ribbon, 7 yards of pink tulle, some silver beads (more on these later), 22 gauge floral wire, and then I also used a hot glue gun, a measuring tape and a pair of scissors that I already owned.

To start, I made a hole through the center of the ball.  I did this using an unsharpened pencil, but I’m sure anything of that sort would work.  After I made the hole to my liking, I used the pencil to push the ribbon through.  Then I tied a knot with the 2 ends, making a loop from the ribbon so that it can hang from the Chivari chairs at the ceremony.  It looked like this:

After I had that, it was time to make the flowers.  I had done a test run without the beads, and I didn’t like the way I could see the green wire, so I decided to make “centers” for the tulle flowers.  This turned out to be one of the more time consuming parts, so I am planning to use a large pearl-looking bead rather than a ton of seed-beads when I make all of these to save time.

To make the flowers, I laid out the tulle in the floor, and then folded in half “hotdog style” and then I put some straight pins around the edges just to keep it in place.  Then it was time to start cutting.  I cut it in 5-inch strips, like this:

I would cut anywhere from 5 to 10 at a time, depending on which task was looking more appealing, cutting or flower-making J.  Once you have the strips, it’s time to start making flowers.  I first did the “center” by putting some of the silver beads onto the center of a piece of wire (I’m not really sure how long of a piece of wire I used, but I tended to go long and then you can trim them at the end) and then twisting it into a circle and then I attempted to cover the twist by putting more beads on:

Next I accordion-folded the strips and twisted the wire around the center:

Then I “fluffed” it into a flower by pulling the layers of tulle apart from each other.  Make sure that the wire is twisted for a few inches and then using your scissors or wire cutters cut it off near the end of the twist.

After I had enough flowers made (again, not sure on the count and it depends on how you want it to look, also you can always make more flowers if you run out), get the glue gun ready to go.  I started by making a hole with the flower by sticking it into the ball and removing it, then I put some hot glue into the hole as well as right around the hole on the surface of the ball, then put the flower back in.   Then I just did this for each flower, until the ball is full of flowers, and I was done!

Here’s a picture of my finished product:

And one with my little helper Maggie:

Elizabeth