Confetti has become that must have action shot of the wedding. It one of the iconic moments of the wedding day that dates all the way back to medieval times. In fact, originating from Italian carnivals where sweets were thrown at the crowds, later flowers, petals and grains were thrown at newly married couples as a symbol of fertility and prosperity. In the UK rice became the traditional confetti of choice and understandably, a more attractive alternative took over with mass produced rice paper or tissue paper shapes.
Over recent years many wedding venues put a confetti clause into their contracts, so confetti has taken a bio-degradable turn. Dried flowers are the bio-degradable preference and you can get so many beautiful and colourful mixes to create that beautiful romantic (and aromatic) moment after your ceremony. Personally I purchased my dried flowers from Shropshire Petalswho were a delight to buy from. Their website is SO useful with a confetti calculator which will help you decide how much confetti to buy and you can mix and match a wide variety of flowers in different colours.
Whilst this is a super useful tool, it is, of course, an expense that adds up in that wedding budget. I got thinking about how you can cheaply and easily DIY your own confetti as well as personalising it and my list was pretty endless. Here are just a few ideas to get you thinking about how you can easily make some cheap and beautiful confetti…
Floral Confetti
I always wanted there to be lots of wild and beautiful smelling flowers at my wedding… I love flowers. I love buying myself (or having them brought for me) when ever I can and always run out of space to put them. However their shelf life is limited and the disappointment of throwing out once beautiful flowers isn’t so great. Wouldn’t it be amazing to recycle those flowers for your wedding?!
Making your own floral confetti is much easier than you might think. It can be done way ahead of time and in smaller manageable batches and stored away easily:
Buy and enjoy some flowers (or get someone to buy them for you!)
As your flowers are nearing the end of their life and drooping a little, gently pull away the petals from the stem
Spread the petals out on a sunny window sill or on a tray in an airing cupboard and leave to dry completely until the seem a little ‘crunchy’
Collect and put them in a decorative paper bag, jar or confetti cone and set aside for your big day!
Things to consider:
Some flowers yield more than others, for example, a single rose has more petals than many other flowers and they shrink less than many. In the rose confetti I made here, I filled a paper bag full of confetti from 1 bunch of roses, but got a fraction of that from a bunch of alstroemeria
You can choose whatever colour you want which is a huge bonus. But keep in mind that the colour is likely to change as it drys, the roses I used were a dark pink and cream, however when the dried they ended up dark red and yellow. The peonies I used were very pale pink, but as they dried the pink became deeper and similarly the alstroemeria went a bit dirty pink as they dried
If you want to buy flowers just for the purpose of confetti, then look at the discounted supermarket flowers that are nearing the end of their life, I regularly pick up really cheap flowers to dry out for as little as £1… SO cheap!
Paper Confetti
Well there is certainly no end of opportunities here and you can go to town on personalising this type of confetti. Literally anything you can cut up can be made into confetti. Some ideas that I love include pages from a favourite book from the couple, sheets of paper with your vows written on it, pieces of newspaper from important days of your lives… shall I go on??
I have chosen to use some multi-coloured tissue paper from Hobbycraft but you could choose any colour you wanted. A great time saver is definitely a paper punch and I picked up this 0.6in punch from Hobbycraft. You can get these in almost any size and there are so many different shapes to choose from. I kept it simple with a circle.
Gather together several sheets of tissue paper (any less and it is too fragile to cut with the punch) and press with the paper punch
Gently separate the little circles as they would have stuck together when you punched them
Pop in a paper bag or confetti cone!
Things to consider:
Stay out of the way of any breeze or fan when you get going with this… they will go everywhere if you don’t!
Avoid liquids around the tissue paper. So when you are separating the little layers, don’t lick your thumb to help you separate them as it will just disintegrate (yes I found this out the hard way!)
A little goes a really really long way! The pack I brought had 50 large sheets of tissue and I cut one row along the length of the sheets and probably had enough for about 10 people. So a whole pack will give you enough for a fair few weddings I’d imagine!
Consider the paper you use… think about bio-degradable options whenever possible
Alternative Confetti Ideas
If you aren’t keen on these more traditional confetti ideas there are too many more that can be included on your day:
Pom poms (so much fun to make with younger people involved in your wedding!)
Bubbles (think of the photo ops there!)
Paper flags with ribbons with messages for the couples
Streamers
Silly string… ok this one may not be that practical on a wedding day, but would be a lot of fun!
If you are after more inspo feel free to head over to my confetti Pinterest board (which I’m sure I will add to all the time!).
Please let me know if you have tried any of these ideas or can suggest any alternatives here or on my Instagram page @laurendloves, I always love to see what you get up to!
Lauren x
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