Decoration Inventory

Head Table Butterflies from Michael's

I have spent a lot of time and money buying decorations for the wedding. I started with the things I knew we would need and as details became more specific, I began to purchase more and more!
I have never spent this much before in my life on any one thing and that's kind of scary! I'm sure I'll never spend this much on anything(event-wise) again! I think the decoration total has far surpassed the gown total. Our basement apartment is full of blue spools of ribbon, boxes full of paper lanterns, rehearsal dinner supplies and TONS of fake flora and fauna that is spewing everywhere.
The first things we bought was a thick roll of ivory tulle, brown glitter butterfly clips for the head table and our thank you notes(yay, us!).
Next I bought my Flowerpeople's hair accessores supplies and also my garter supplies, which contributes to the first two rolls of blue ribbon I found myself beginning to collect. That was also my first(not to be remotely the last) elastic rodeo. It went well!
 

Then I found the butterfly decorations of my dreams! I work for a novelty company but not the one these came from! I couldn't find these anywhere and they're absolutely perfect. They each have a twist-tie backing so they can go everywhere and anywhere in our venue! They're going to be "flying" around all over! I also got these wooden ladybugs (and they are from where I work!) for the Flowerpeople's hair accessories and I also will scatter these around like the butterflies so they look like they're crawling around comfortably enjoying the wedding, too!
I found another company (sorry, work!) that I purchased ALL of my sunflowers from. I could not find a better price on silk sunflower stems so I ordered extra just incase! Now I have a box full of sunflower goodness that it's hard to keep the cats out of! The box is a great craft-project-bags holder, too!
On my 234th time back to Michael's I found the big Flowerpeople's Gerber daisy stems to make flower wands for them to carry for $1 each. Score!
I also acquired another roll of blue ribbon (Jumbo size!) and all my invitation supplies: my paper cutter, my tracing paper pads, sunflower sticker seals, brown pens, an adhesive Butterfly border from Martha that matched our wedding album(!!!!) and some brown pigment pens for incidental writing on the invites.
I did have to buy my paper punch for the invites separately on Amazon, though!
Last week I needed more yellow ribbon before starting my Flowerpeople's hair accessories so being in the ribbon aisle at MICHAELS AGAIN, I purchased another jumbo roll of the blue ribbon so I think our ribbon purchases are over. 150 yards of bows ought to do it?
I just did several orders to my place of work so they're currently getting make-up sales for my wedding supplies. I'm getting our flutes, our lanterns, the aisle-runner(a DIY project coming soon!), the ladybugs, the gifts for our Flowerpeople, our serving set, more rolls of tulle, Dec-Ons sugar ladybugs(for the cake because the wooden ones aren't for food), our photobooth cameras and our wedding bubbles. I ordered our rehearsal dinner supplies from them months ago because some of it was discontinued and I just needed it. It helped spacing out the purchases to make them manageable in $20, $50 and $100 chunks.

Oriental Trading Lanterns

 
Now given the scope of the decoration purchases, you may understand how much we have purchased. You may also get an idea of how much that may be. Let me just say, that if we were paying regular rent to an apartment, maybe a third of this would have been purchased. So it is safe to say that thanks to Shawn's Grandpa who is letting us stay in the basement at the rate of $All the food, cooking & dishes + Shawn's Handiwork. So a big thanks for the possibility of decorations to Grandpa! His willingness to help us and sense of family has made our wedding beautiful.