Ikea Has Everything

I love Ikea. The majority of the furniture in our apartment comes from Ikea because it's affordable and hip. I never thought about Ikea for wedding supplies though. That is, until I read a post on An Atlanta Bride, who recently married her Mr. Wonderful. Her blog is awesome, you should check it out. She bought tables from Ikea to use in her lounge area during cocktail hour.

My wedding is basically one long cocktail hour and originally we were going to rent coffee tables, but $125 each for 2 seemed extravagant. We are still getting the lovely white benches for our two lounge-like areas, but I knew we could get the tables for cheaper. Enter Ikea. Mr. J and I took the free Ikea shuttle to the Red Hook, Brooklyn location. I love walking around the showroom. We saw many coffee tables and wrote down a few we liked. Then we saw a display that had two tables pushed together to make one, and guess how much those tables were? $12.99! So, we picked up 4 white Lack tables for about 52 bucks, as opposed to $250. Yes, I was in heaven! I love a deal. (All images via Ikea) We were on our way to pay and had to go through the first floor with all the Home Decor. For anyone thinking about centerpieces, YOU MUST GO TO IKEA. So many ideas, so little time. We walked towards the paper lanterns and both fell in love. Instead of me slaving on the beautiful coffee filter garland I was going to make to hang over the tree branches, we're going to go with 4 paper lanterns dangling just above head range. Ikea had an example of a lantern painted blue (SCORE!) so we bought the blue paint as well. It will look great during the ceremony when the sun is out and beautiful at night after sunset when the lights can be turned on. So with the 4 Lack tables, 4 paper lanters, 5 cords (we bought one more just in case), 1 can of blue stain, 1 paintbrush, and one blue Ikea bag, we spent $107.

I can't wait until Mr. J and I move into our next apartment, I want the red kitchen in the showroom!