I understand keeping clutter down to a minimum, but don’t discount the personal meaning a memento will have years down the road. A picture’s not as good as the real thing.

I *do* agree the place to cut down on clutter is before the wedding, not after.

I had some flat stones on the table with words such as “Love” and “joy” on them. Guests were instructed to take them to the water’s edge and skip them out across the water to send our sentiments into nature. (People tell me they still have these rocks at home, however!)

I made my own invitations and only had one sample leftover, which went into the scrapbook. There were no attendants, a cake with no ornamentation to save, and we had small metal buckets painted white to hold the Jordan almonds, and I use the buckets for pencils in my classroom. There were glass mosaic candleholders on the tables and I use them on the patio now, since the colors are all coordinated with the house.

My dress was a cream colored skirt and separate lacy top, and they can be paired with other pieces to wear again. I had a headband of pearls, which I can give away. The purse and shoes I will use again since they were dressy but not “wedding-y”

Hubby bought a lovely summer suit which he can use again.

I made my bouquet from silk flowers and use it as a vase arrangement as was mentioned in a post above. A few smaller arrangements serve as mini-arrangements in some crystal that doesn’t show up in the china cabinet without some color.

In all, I had a relaxed wedding, and our first anniversary was celebrated with a day at a local resort (summer rates very cheap in AZ) instead of with gifts, so no clutter and a nice de-stressed celebration!

I bought a photo storage box for all of the wedding cards and personalized mementos. I still have all of my wedding planning stuff since it’s been less than 2 weeks, I still need addresses for thank you notes (taking a break from writing them right now!), I have coupons for our registries, and my bag has details for our actual honeymoon coming up in a month.

As far as other clutter, unfortunately my mother decided to bring up the (plastic) champagne flutes and cake cutter when she returned our kitties last week. I can’t bring myself to dump them yet because we actually could use them again (they don’t look wedding-ish), but they might show up at our pre-move yard sale in a few weeks.

All in all, I think I’ve done well with wedding clutter. We had a small, cheap affair so a lot of the clutter like napkins, favors, and matchbooks were eliminated. We chose to use the money on grad school instead, and I couldn’t be happier with that decision!

As for the dress, I am not sure what to do other than good old fashion pursuasion.

Since we live in Vegas, we had altf photography to cover our engagement, wedding, bridal portrait sessions. It was the wife’s idea, not mine. It was also very expensive. However, it was also very worth it. I have to say in the beginning I had my doubts considering the wife had us do glamour shots (yes, I know) for christmas and that was quite the rip off (even though we did get some good photos of of it) but also I consider myself to be very hard to impress when it comes to artistic creativity in general.

After we sat down last weekend with John and Delisa to go over our album, I have to say I was blown away, especially with the bridal portrait session. Instead of the dress trashing, the bridal portrait session was shot in a studio. I reccommend that if you plan on getting married and you don’t have the money, to still splurge somehow and hire them for your photography-you won’t regret it.

As for the Dress, I dont get the one time usage thing. What’s up with that? Why do brides spend that kind of money for something they where once and thats it? As for me I bought a tux and I already worn it like two other times. Now whenever I have another wedding to go to, thats what I wear and just dress it down with a regular tie. Any black tie event, I am set. No renting, no lame suit.

As for favors, we got artisan dark chocolates made by a local confectioner and wrapped in personalized labels. While not everyone ate them, they were all eaten–no little trinkets cluttering up drawers anywhere!

Here’s my question: Two guests gave us framed invitations. Both are lovely, but I can’t imagine displaying them. I certainly wouldn’t display two of them. No one else wants a framed invitation from my wedding. What do I do with these?

http://marymadelineproject.org/

While I agree with most of the comments about keeping the wedding simple and not buying crap that you’ll feel compelled to save – I have to say that I do use my cake knife and server, which are not specifically wedding themed.

I also saved my wedding dress – don’t know why, but I wouldn’t toss it. Wish my mom had saved hers -I would have worn it. I’ll save mine for my daughter when she goes thru a rebellious stage and wants to destroy something.

One thing I had a really hard time getting rid was a big box full of gorgeous Japanese gift giving envelopes. Here, people usually give cash, in fantastically ornate envelopes with hand crafted wire or string closings. Often these are in the shape of cranes or turtles or other felicitous symbols. Some I repurposed as Xmas tree decorations, but I ended up trashing a bunch.

Here’s some simple ones here, in English:
http://pingmag.jp/2008/04/24/origata/
some elaborate ones:
http://www.worldlyweddings.com.....o-s/80.htm

As for the other wedding paper and memorabilia – aside from our album, we made a scrapbook of things like all the paper (invitations for shower, save-the-date, the copper plate from the engraving, menu etc), our program (so much love went into planning the ceremony and I handmade the programs – very professional looking, check out Crane’s imprintables), and a variety of the best candids from our guests. Easy to store and easy to get out and reminisce!

As for the larger items – we skipped the cake in favor of a dessert buffet, but didn’t keep the bouquet – no one wants to be the bride that never lets go of being the “princess” and having all that out on display…

Everything else we got rid of somehow. The card holder box sold on eBay for more than we paid for it. Most of the decorations were provided by the reception hall. We didn’t have a ringbearer’s pillow – we used my husband’s childhood teddy bear instead. Oh, and we didn’t have a traditional guest book. We had a movie-themed wedding and used small movie posters as table names (instead of numbers) and asked everyone to sign the one at their table. Since we used movies we liked, we now have a “guestbook” we can display on our wall.

I guess I’d suggest to brides planning their wedding to use as many re-usable things as possible to decrease the clutter. If you can proudly display it or use it again, it’ll save you money in the long run too.

Keep the wedding simple! That’s the biggest tribute to “uncluttering” I think you can make!