Decorations don't have to cost a fortune

Now that Annie and I have free photos to use for our invitation, wedding website and to show off we are ready to plan our wedding. We've found that as many things as we know about wedding planning there are as many things that we've not even considered.
We are having a wedding on Virginia Beach in May and since we're doing an untraditional wedding there's lots of things to think about. How to decorate the beach? What to do about seating? What is our backup plan if the weather is bad?
Annie and I wanted to get an arch to be married under on the beach so we looked around for a rental arch and found a couple options. One was $545. Another was over $200. That seemed like a lot for a simple arch. We went to Michaels and found an arch for about $40 retail. However, the sales girl handed us a coupon for 60% off so we walked out with a beautiful pre-lit arch for $16.
We are going to take the arch and wrap it in colored fabrics to match the flowers and overall colors of the wedding. All this for $16 plus the price of fabrics. This sure beats the $200+ we could have spent on an arch. This is just one simple piece of the puzzle but a main piece and we got it for next to nothing.
We're going to have a beautifully decorated arch sitting on the beach with a backdrop of crashing waves and blue skies. We are going to add to this a path of pinwheels and possibly colored sand as a path to the ceremony on the beach. We're going to save a fortune on decorations for our ceremony and you can too.
Don't rent expensive pieces when you can buy something for a fraction of the price. Don't pay for a professional decorator when you can whip something together cheaply and easily. Remember, our arch could have cost us $545. Instead we found one for $16. Check out amazon's selection of wedding arches, as one example.