Creating a Trendy After Party Reception on a Budget {The Priceless Conference}

Each Spring, our church hosts an amazing ladies conference called Priceless. Every year has it’s own theme, with a different look and feel. It’s a lot of fun, a lot of work, and as our creative team has developed and strengthened, we’ve pulled off some amazing projects.


This year, the theme was “Imagine”. The creative team at our church was given a tight budget to pull off an entire makeover of our space. With our decorating budget we had to makeover our front foyer, hallways, bathrooms, stage, registration tables, and decor for an after party reception.


We chose to work towards a trendy upcycled look, focusing on found objects and light and airy art. With a lot of creative thought, savvy shopping, some great free finds to makeover, we rocked it!

Here are some of my tips for creating a trendy after party on a tight budget (and yes, we used all these):

• Start planning early. Give yourself and your team time to be imaginative.
• Establish a theme and stick with it. 
• Think outside the box. 
• Pinterest and creative bloggers are your best friends when you need inspiration. 
• Be inspired by results created with larger budgets, and adjust the look to fit your budget. No money for vintage milk glass vases? No problem, find dollar store vases and spray paint them white. 
• Look for great finds at thrift stores and yard sales and upcycle and repurpose everything you can.
• Paint is your friend, almost anything can be given new life with a new coat of paint.
• Borrow, borrow, borrow. We didn’t own all of the patio furniture we used, but  someone else at the church did and graciously let us borrow it. Don’t be afraid to ask.
• Be flexible. You may not find 50 outdoor hanging lanterns at your local discount store to fit in your budget, and that’s okay. Maybe you can afford 10 and use battery operated candles in pretty holders elsewhere. 
• It’s okay to spend a little more on flowers and greenery. Let’s face it, they’re expensive, but if there’s nothing like a beautiful fresh tulip.
• Don’t feel like you have to make EVERYTHING. If the wall art you love is on sale at Hobby Lobby for $6, that’s probably more cost and time efficient then purchasing a canvas and spending a few hours recreating it yourself.
• Spend your time wisely. That goes right along with not needing to make everything.  

One of my favorite projects is the large dresser that became our dessert bar for our after party. One afternoon our team got a photo text of this ugly brown dresser that was being thrown out, and the lady who sent the message wanted to know if we could use it or not. Um, yes!!
It happened to be in great solid shape, and the only thing wrong with it (other than the color) was it was missing one drawer pull.

Unfortunately because we were so busy working, we didn’t think to be snapping photos of the actual makeover process. But I can tell you that we used one coat of Annie Sloan antique white chalk paint to cover the entire thing. Then we tapped off our bottom half, covering the top with some garbage bags, and used Krylon metallic gold spray paint to give it a unique gold-dipped appearance. The antique white was just too dull, so I gave it another coat of white latex paint. This is the first time I’ve ever tried using latex over chalk paint, and it worked just fine.

When the after party reception was over we swapped the desserts for clear glass vases, white milk glass, and some that we spray painted in gold, all full of tulips and other gorgeous flowers.

The large dresser wasn’t the only piece of furniture we made over. We found another smaller brown dresser (sorry, no before pic), gave it the same treatment, and it became the photo booth station, housing our props for some fun pics.

A local shipping company was throwing out pallets and shipping boxes, and said we could take our pick. We scooped them up, and made seating from the pallets, and the shipping boxes were used as tables. These are also great as tables surrounded by fold away chairs. We white washed some of the pallets & boxes, and others we gave a dark slate stain. The stain was found at Home Depot in the oops paint section for only $2!

Here’s some of the other decorations we used at our after party.

Yes! Those are individual shoots of bamboo wrapped in white lights, and secured into the ground. Aren’t they unbelievable? 

Again, I wish I’d thought to snap a few more photos of the process and end results. 
But we’re definitely happy with the way everything turned out, so many of the younger girls have already claimed our services for “when they get married” which really just made our day!
It just goes to show what a team that works well together and has a big imagination can create, even on a tiny budget!