Creating a Wedding Arbor

Creating your own wedding arbor is an easy and memorable way to commemorate your wedding day. A beautiful way to frame you and your partner, a wedding arbor can add elegance to any setting. A few simple supplies are all that you need to be on your way to a one-of-a-kind decor piece for your special day.

Custom Wedding Arbor Supplies
To get started creating your wedding arbor, a few supplies will be necessary. First, you'll want to find the arbor frame itself. You can choose from metal, wooden or vinyl arbor materials, as any of these will look lovely once decorated as a wedding arbor. If your ceremony is outdoors, you can easily stick your wedding arbor right into the ground. If the ground isn't soft or if your wedding is indoors, try using flower pots filled with sand as the base for your wedding arbor. The rest of the supplies you'll need are as follows:

• Floral Wire
• Fabric
• Ribbon
• Artificial or Fresh Flowers
• Artificial or Fresh Greenery
• White Christmas Lights

Now that you have all of the necessary supplies, the possibilities are endless as to what you can do to make your wedding arbor unique and special.

Determining the Greenery for Your Wedding Arbor
A big decision, and one that will determine how much you'll spend on creating your wedding arbor, is whether to use fresh or artificial flowers and greenery. One advantage to creating your wedding arbor using artificial flowers is that you can make it ahead of time so that you can tend to more pressing wedding issues. Another advantage is cost, as you'll save literally hundreds of dollars by using fake flowers and greenery for your wedding arbor. However, if you're a gardener, you may want to use your own flowers to add that personal touch.

Either way, you'll want to be sure that you've got enough greenery, so that your wedding arbor doesn't look sparse. Bay leaves, magnolia leaves, citrus leaves and evergreen are great options for covering lots of space.

Decorating Your Wedding Arbor
Depending on the type of foliage you're using for your wedding arbor, you'll select your floral wire in either a standard style, or thicker for heavier greenery. Make sure that you cover your wedding arbor with plenty of greenery, and because floral wire is so inexpensive feel free to use as much as you need to hold the foliage in place. Once you're finished with your wedding arbor, you'll never notice the floral wire.

Now that the greenery is in place, it's time for the flowers. For a continuous theme, match the flowers from your bouquet to the ones in the wedding arbor. To save money, use just a handful of those, and try incorporating smaller, less expensive flowers of the same colors as fillers. The flowers can most likely be placed right into the greenery that you've already placed on the wedding arbor, but using floral wire on the flowers is acceptable as well. If you're using fresh flowers, be sure to provide a water source, such as the plastic tubes that florists place at the end of roses. Another idea is to incorporate fresh and real flowers. Whether artificial or real, baby's breath, daisies and carnations are all inexpensive options.

Additional Decorating Tips for Your Wedding Arbor
Adding fabric, ribbons, or white Christmas lights can add an even more personal touch to your wedding arbor. Weaving beautiful silk fabric through the arbor instead of, or along with, the greenery can add more color to the altar, while adding Christmas lights can add a warm glow to an evening ceremony.

Regardless of how you choose to decorate your wedding arbor, the beauty and personal touch of doing so will create wedding day memories that will last a lifetime.