If you think about it, brides have always made a lot of aspects of their wedding days.
Many moons ago making your own wedding dress used to be quite a common occurrence and if you didn’t make your own bridal gown, you might have run up a few bridesmaids dresses for your girls instead. While making your own gown is generally unheard of these day, a lot of brides are still making things for their own special occasion.
It’s all in the details
Nowadays weddings tend to have a lot more small details involved – like save the date cards, wedding favours, place cards, etc. And it’s many of these that today’s brides are choosing to DIY.
We asked Daniela who writes the Bridesmaid.com blog what she thinks is hot for brides to DIY right now.
“From what I’ve seen, DIY begins when the couple announces the date of their wedding and couples are finding creative ways to tell people they are getting married. Whether it is a simple photo they are taking with the date in the picture or making a DIY calendar.
As for wedding favours, many couples are doing little jam or honey jars as gifts. Another great wedding favour is having a sweetie table just as your guests are leaving the venue, provide them with little sweetie bags that ready to be filled to the brim. If you are having a rustic wedding or an eco-friendly wedding, I recommend little potted plants that each guest can take home with them, and grow in their own garden.”
Pin happy
Type in DIY Weddings into Pinterest and you’ll be met with literally hundreds of ideas and the instructions or sources of how to recreate for your own big day.
Forum details
As ever, our Forum brides are busy chatting about their weddings and the question of DIY weddings is a hot one. Bride MRSB was certainly busy in the lead-up to her big day.
“The bits and bobs I made myself included; pew ends, jam jar candle holders, jam jars for flowers lining the church path, order of services, water bottles, fans with directions on, tissues for the church, save the dates, menu holder/name settings, Mr & Mrs sign, signs for all around the venue and church, table names, men’s favour holders, ladies favour tags, garlands for the curtain rails and bunting. My experience is that it might not necessarily be cheaper to DIY things for your wedding but it makes it 100% unique, as no one else will have them.
My husband said when I was stressed and using every weekend up that ‘No one pays attention to all that’ but everyone mentioned the ‘personal touches’ so it was so worth it.”
You don’t have to do quite as much as that but Bride MRSB makes a good point when she says that DIY-ing your wedding makes it unique and personal to you. Nobody else is going to put together colours and details in quite the same way as you and nobody can ‘buy’ your individual look.
Bride DoubleD on the Forum has enlisted the help of her local Women’s Institute. Actually we think that is a great idea – many members offer traditional craft skills like embroidery or patchwork and WI cake baking is famous. Maybe you could have some lessons?
“My wedding is very DIY. I have strong connections with the small village I live in and we have had a very short engagement, we only decided to get married in February and the wedding is August 31st. The whole village has chipped in and I have gone craft crazy. I have great pictures of everyone doing things and teaching me how to do it. So far we have done the table centres, cake, favours and stationary.
Bridesmaid dresses are cut out ready to sew and the village hall is being painted by a team this weekend… if I can make it I’ve done it, or found someone to teach me how to do it. I am loving the fact the whole community is part of my celebration.
The WI have been amazing as well. They have taught me all sorts of craft skills and they are doing my buffet for the evening. The cakes should be amazing!”
Busy Facebook brides
Our Facebook brides have also been getting in on the act. Kelly Ann Cremins Watson said, “We had a guest tree where people pegged their wishes to the branches. It was covered in fairy lights. Was a beautiful feature that cost nothing!”
Claire McLoughlin has been busy too! “I have designed our save the dates and even tweaked a design I found online and created my own stickers,” says Claire. “I will be making all of our stationery myself. I am making lavender fabric hearts for favours, I will be making bunting for our venue, pom poms to decorate both inside and the decking at our venue and also will make jam jar tealight holders – I’ve got my sister and mum collecting them for me! I have gone DIY crazy! I’m quite proud of myself as I have never really been very “crafty” so I have discovered a new side of myself!”
That’s a good point – don’t write yourself off as a DIY bride if you have never been artistic – there’s probably some little something you can DIY yourself! Good luck and please share your projects with us on the Wedding Ideas Forum!
