How to bustle a wedding dress with baling twine ... and other tips for the budget conscious bride (posted by Lorri)

Apparently, we are the marrying type in our family.  All four of us (my three daughters and myself) have gotten married in the past seven years.  Obviously, I've learned a lot from all the wedding extravaganzas.  Each daughter's wedding expressed their own individual tastes.
Since I am not a wealthy mom, each daughter had to choose was they felt was really important to include in their wedding.  I gave each daughter a set amount of money, they could either spend it, or receive a check for the balance not spent.  This system worked pretty darn well, I must say.
As any bride knows, it's all about the dress.  Having spent time at bridal stores, it seems the money really adds up with the accessories and the alterations.  I learned to make an elastic loop at the waist so the big fluffy slip (from wedding #1) was reused.  I have since learned that several friends have these slips at their house.  Borrowing one would make good sense.

Kelli's wedding dress (a beautiful beaded dress) was purchased from Ebay for $158, with the tags still intact. I am not a particularly brave E-bay shopper, but we took a leap of faith and ordered it.  I channeled my inner 4-Her and did some pleats and tucks and she looked beautiful.

The dress before being bustled.

Stephanie's dress had a lovely train that she wanted bustled for the reception.  For those who don't live in estrogen land, bustling a wedding dress is a way to gather up the train so the bride doesn't trip and crack her head open.  Well, I didn't really know how to to do this.  Having recently made roman shades, I had purchased a spool of ring tape.  This is a strip of twill tape with rings attached.  I hand stitched a row of this tape inside the train.

Ring tape stitched inside train

 I had run out of drapery cord, so I went to the garage to get the string that we used to tie up our tomatoes.

Bailing twine and spool of ring tape

This happened to be a spool of bailing twine my dad gave me some years back. Worked beautifully, I just tucked some twine in my mother-of-the-bride purse, and hitched that train right up after the wedding. 

The inside of the wedding dress, after being bustled.

Example of table decoration.  Other grains were used also, for variety.

Having handy aunts is always helpful, also.  Kelli and Stephanie married farm boys.  So, Aunt Sherry made table decorations with canning jars, filled with grain, topped with a votive candle holder and coordinating ribbon. Sherry is especially handy with tulle. Kay is always willing to help set up, also.

Wedding programs

We did similar programs for Kristy's wedding.  I used lavender spray paint to spray the paint sticks for her programs. I used quart sized cans of paint applied with a paintbrush for Stephanie's program sticks.  I would highly recommend using the cans of paint with a brush.  The spray paint was messier, and I'm pretty sure that I bought so many cans I was put on some spray paint huffing list at our local discount store.  I used spray adhesive to stick the front and back programs together.