Here at Wedding Ideas, we love DIY weddings. Firstly, you can save a huge chunk of your budget by making and creating things yourself. Secondly, DIY is a way of making your wedding completely individual to you. Design your own wedding bunting, invitations or table decorations and you can be certain that there’s nothing like them.
However we’d just make a couple of points. First of all, don’t underestimate the time it’s going to take you to make all of these wedding items. Don’t leave things until the last minute and then get into a stressful panic. Be realistic about how much time you’re actually going to have and how many evenings and weekends you want to spend making things.
Don’t be over-ambitious, we wouldn’t advise you to make your own wedding bouquet or wedding dress but decorations, invitations and seating plans are quite do-able if you still have a few months to go until the big day.
If you are planning to DIY some of your wedding details, read these words of advice from the pros before spending any cash…
Special moments
Carolyn from Much Ado About Weddings has a good idea for DIY table decorations at your reception. “Fill vintage china bowls or cups with a beautiful blend of fresh-dried delphiniums and wildflowers,” says Carolyn. “It creates a gorgeous centre piece that’s quick and easy to do. You’ll find vintage china or your local charity shop or at a car boot sale.”
Do it yourself
There are some fantastic companies out there who specialise in helping brides to create their own stunning wedding stationery and accessories, such as The Mulberry Bush who suggest the following…
Love Hearts are cheap to buy and readily available in sweet shops or online. Simply tie a cellophane bag with lace or ribbon and attach a personalized heart or tag.
Double up your place cards and favours by personalising with your guests’ names.
For a stunning table plan in a great setting, print panels of guest names by table on your computer and then attach them to a mirror with Velcro dots. The mirror can be recycled afterwards as a memory of your special day.
Source good quality cards for your invitations and don’t forget that you will need envelopes and inserts as well as embellishments. Ideally you want your invitations to look ‘handcrafted’ and not ‘homemade’ so keep it simple and choose a design that can be easily mass produced!
Think about the tools that will be required for the making of your stationery… glue, tape, a cutter for creating straight edges and so on. If you don’t have the right thing for the job it can be a disaster and end up costing you a lot more.
Your invitations will be the first glimpse that your guests have of your special day. Think about whether you want to bring your wedding colour scheme into the design of your invites, or if you are going to stick with the traditional wedding colours of ivory, white, gold or silver and keep your scheme under wraps until the big day.
If you have a printer at home it is easy to print your own inserts with the help of a free template. We prefer to print inserts using a grey font as it doesn’t look as harsh as black and will not smudge as easily on pearlescent papers. The font choice is also important – use something elegant yet legible so all your guests can read it easily.
Fab table names
Another way of presenting your table names and table plans is in a reclaimed frame, which gives a great shabby chic look that would be perfect at a rustic wedding or barn celebration.
Think creatively and you could save a few pennies by making your own DIY wedding favours. You don’t have to be a great crafter to do this. Sophie at Wedding Ideas magazine bought lots of pretty little mini jars online, filled them with mini eggs and tied a personalised name tag on with raffia.
No regrets
Finally, one of a bride and groom’s biggest regrets after their wedding is not having the whole day captured on film. So it’s really worth thinking about allocating part of your budget to this – after all, your wedding is not a dress rehearsal and you can’t have a rerun.
The Wedding Ideas forum brides suggest that you investigate DIY wedding filming options. Here you film footage for the wedding yourself and then have it professionally edited.
Visit the Wedding Ideas Forum and you could start your own topic on DIY items for weddings or join in a discussion. It’s always good to chat with other brides-to-be about the issues you’re experiencing and share your ideas… you can even ask the Wedding Ideas team!
