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Create Your Own Table Settings
If you're having a small wedding and reception, this is a great way to give your reception a little vintage style. Visit your local thrift stores and pick up various pieces of plate settings and glasses. You'll have unique, one of kind table settings for each of your guests, a little vintage flair, and an afforable way to set up your reception area.

Check out the Second Hand Shopping Guide for a listing of San Diego thrift stores, resale, vintage and consignment shops, and more.

Customized Champagne Glasses for the Bride & Groom
It's easy to create a pair of customized champagne glasses for the bride and groom for any toasts throughout the reception. Here are a few ideas: can get them engraved with a special saying (or your names and the date) through an engraver (or try embossing it yourself), adding a special touch to the glasses with silk flowers or ribbons wrapped around the base (or hot glued on), paint them yourself with glass paint from the craft store, or even frost them yourself with a spray painted frosted glass finish.

Some other quick ideas: paint the bottoms (or whole glass) in one of your wedding colors, hot glue beads or crystals to the glass in a pretty pattern (or random, so it looks like little dots of beads or crystals), use holeless glass beads to cover the bottom or stems of your glasses or use decorative tape or ribbon to wrap tightly around the stems (put double stick tape on the stem first if you decide to use ribbon).

Embellished Candles
Candles are an easy to embellish decoration which can add a lovely ambiance to your ceremony and reception without breaking the bank. Here are a few ideas to help get you jump started on using candles as a decoration for your wedding.

• Buy candles in bulk! With the variety of ways to decorate candles, you can save some money by buying in bulk, in one color.
• Dress them up with ribbons! You can get your wedding colors into your candles by using matching ribbons to tie around the candle's base. Think pretty organza ribbons or even swatches of fabric to wrap around them.
• The hot glue gun is your friend. Add sparkle to your candles with jewels, beads, and more. Visit your local craft store for a ton of different items you can add directly to your candles.
• Paint on your candles. Monogram them, add hearts or doves, whatever you can get on there. You can even stencil your candles. Be sure you get the right kind of candle (non-sceneted ones have less oils) or buy paints specifically made for painting on candles.

Mint Julep Cups
Those cute little silver mint julep cups are a beautiful and tasteful decoration that you can use in a variety of ways at your reception. They could be a part of your centerpieces, displayed on your cake table or guestbook table, as a part of the head table, at your wedding ceremony as a part of the altar, a little display in the bathroom for your guests and more. Fill them with flowers or candles and put them on display as an nice keepsake that could also double as gifts for your guests.

Custom Placemats
For your wedding reception, consider buying some colored placemats or custom placemats for your table's settings. You can buy colored placemats from various companies buy the bulk in a variety of colors. You can also consider buying plain white or ivory placemats and customizing them with rubber stamps to match your wedding (consider stamping hearts with your initals to keep things simple). You can also contact local graphic designers to help you create a customized placemat layout for the perfect look for your wedding, complete with the names of the couple, the date of the wedding and location, your favorite quote or a "wedding couple trivia quiz" (ask questions of your guests with the answers printed upside down) or other printed items.

• Use organza or another type of ribbon in your wedding or contrasting colors
• Get some silk flowers or artifical garland or ivy to wrap up your napkins
• Use raffia or twine for a more country chic feel to your table tops
• Having a small bag of chocolates, soaps, or other item as your favor? Tie them around your napkins
• Print out various love quotes (or even quotes from the two of you) and attach to the napkins for a special note to your guests