OUR DIY WEDDING

When we got married in May we tried to make as many things as possible ourselves. This included most decorations, flowers, music, some of the food and last but not least, my dress (and hair & make-up). This allowed us to create everything exactly as we envisioned it and also save a lot of money. It took a lot of time and nerves. Although we had the help of friends and family, I did most of the projects myself, which was exhausting at times, I’m not gonna lie. So here are some of my favourite DIY projects for our wedding.

*Sorry, this is a very picture-heavy post! I didn’t want to split it up into a couple of posts, so if you have any questions about anything, leave me a comment below!*

TABLE DECORATIONS

Our wedding venue was a modern barn which didn’t need much decoration, so I could focus on decorating the tables. We went for a rustic, vintage look: burlap, wood, paper, lace and a pastell colour palette.

We and our mums collected jars for a couple of months which I turned into flower vases by decorating them with lace, doilies, twine and burlap. Although I used a couple of different shapes and sizes I tried not to use too many different ones, but collected sets of the same to make it look a bit more consistent. I used the larger ones as centerpieces and smaller ones to fill in gaps and to use as candleholders.

We printed off our drinks list on white card and ordered blank place cards matching our invitations. The handlettering of the placecards took ages, but was a lot of fun. We made the placecard holders from branches, which we sawed to get cylindric pieces of wood (roughly 4x4cm). We then cut slits into the top to stick in the placecards.

The table number I designed with Photoshop and printed them onto white card. I glued pegs onto twigs and put them with the flowers in the centerpiece vases.

FLOWERS

Early on in the planning process I decided to do all the flowers – including my bridal bouquet – myself. (I’m a bit of a control freak I learnt during that time!) It was much more difficult than you’d think to organise the different flowers, because it’s something that has to be done JUST before the wedding. It’s nothing you can tick off weeks before. So that was stressful, because up until the very last day before our wedding I had no idea whether everything would work out the way I wanted. It was sooo much cheaper than having a professional organise everything, though.

So this is what we did: I ordered blush pink and white roses and well as baby’s breath from a local flower shop which we picked up the day before the wedding. Since we only had to pay for the loose flowers, it wasn’t too expensive. It was much more complicated with the hydrangeas. They’re pretty expensive if you get them in a flower shop and they wilt VERY quickly if you’re not careful.

In the end I decided to get potted hydrangeas from a garden centre and cut them the night before the wedding. I had practised all the bouquet-binding and vase-filling a couple of weeks before, but filling between 30 and 40 vases took A LOT of time. We spent the night before the wedding in our hotel room with the Mr’s best man, the whole room covered in roses, hydrangea pots, greenery and boxes full of jars and other decorations. THAT was exciting. Luckily we had some wine to calm my nerves. I think we finished 1.45 AM, which is not a good thing if you’re getting married in the morning. It was worth it anyway. Thinking back, the flowers are one of my absolute favourite things to remember from that day.

BRIDAL BOUQUET

I used blush pink hydrangeas (about five large heads), baby’s breath, and pink roses in two different sizes. I created the bouquet shape by first binding together the hydrangeas with florist’s tape. Then I stuck the baby’s breath in, again, fixing everything with tape. After that I did the same with the large and then the smaller roses. I bound the stems with peach satin ribbon and some pins.

CANDY BAR

One of the best things to organise was our Candy Bar. I left the ordering of sweets to my mum in law who’d outdone all our expectations by getting us about 18kg of mostly gummi bears and other jelly candy. It was crazy awesome. For the candy bar I made paper bunting from doiles and ordered paper bags and tiny ice-cream shovels. The candy jars are from IKEA for the most part.

OTHER PROJECTS

Here are some other DIY projects I did: some activities for the guests such as a lottery, alternative guestbooks, a photo booth backdrop made from napkin pompoms, a confetti basket and more. It was so much fun to get inspired, create and make up new ideas for projects in the months before the wedding. I’m almost sad I won’t be doing that anymore!

We asked our grandmas and mums to bake the cakes for the day. They came up with a massive amount of different cakes, cupcakes and pies, it was incredible!

These garden decorations are simply Regolit lampshade from IKEA (2.95€ each) to which I tied long strips of scrap fabrics.

I also made our ring pillow from some scrap wedding dress fabric and made a case for it from an antique book which I bought on the holiday during which we got engaged last summer.

OUR WEDDING CAKE

One of my favourite DIYs of the day wasn’t done by me. I asked my sister, who’s very talented when it comes to baking, to make our wedding cake. I wanted to have a ‘naked cake’ decorated with fruit and flowers, and what she came up with really outdid all our expectations:

It was a perfect day and we had so much fun preparing for it and now sorting through all the photos taken on that day.

Wow, that was a lot of pictures! Well done, you, if you were patient enough to stick through to the end! If you have any questions about any of these projects let me know in the comments!

xx

Charlie

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Happy sewing!
♥

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