Erica's simple wedding DIY ideas.

The three most important things: cake, gifts & food! LOL

Last week, I blogged about my DIY centerpieces. (I placed them on top of doilies and they looked soooo good! So good that people were asking if they could take them home. I was very happy with them!) That was the only big project I did for my mom's wedding. All the other decorations I made were really simple... and affordable. (Even better!) I don't want to toot my own horn too much, but everything turned out very nicely, I got a lot of compliments from friends & family and most importantly, my mom & Mike loved how the reception hall turned out. *gushes*

My mom provided the ideas for the reception layout, table cloths and some wall hangings. I made:
* wedding favors
* painted wooden signs
* bouquets for the flower girls
* banners
* bulletin board "guest book"

For this blog, I'll go through each project I made by giving a brief tutorial. I'll also add the time it took to complete a project and the cost.

The wedding favors were some jolly ranchers & starlight mints wrapped in tissue paper and tied with yarn & a small thank you card. They each took about 5 minutes to make and cost less than $2. (Thank you clearance aisle at Michael's!)

My boss gave me a hand-me-down wooden sign last year when she & her husband moved houses. She bought it at a craft show but never had time to paint or embellish it. I couldn't find a use for it either but was too polite to turn it down. It sat in my closet for about a year. LOL

I found some wooden bride and groom chair hangers at the Dollar Spot in Target. I knew my mom had mentioned making paper wall decorations so I thought the wooden signs would add some nice dimension to her decorations. I painted the signs with her wedding colors and added glitter to the ampersand. That You & Me sign ended up being one of her favorite things! Took about 4 hours to paint and cost less than $10.

My mom was originally going to buy bouquets for the flower girls but something happened and I was called in to make them. I was presented with about 5 or 6 stems of varying silk flowers, yarn, bread ties and wired tulle fabric. I cut the silk flowers off their stems and attempted to arrange them identically on each bouquet. Then I tied them together with the bread ties, wrapped the wired tulle around that and finally tied it with yarn. My mom wouldn't confirm if the supplies came from The Dollar Tree but I'm thinking the cost was probably $10 per bouquet and it took me about an hour to make them both.

These banners were actually not as affordable as I had hoped but I used a coupon. LOL I used pre-cut card stock, scrapbook paper, yarn, scissors, glue stick & tape. Banners always look so nice & like they took a lot of effort but are actually pretty effortless to make!

First, I cut the letters out and arranged them on the banner pieces. Then I glued them down with a glue stick (liquid glue would have warped them). Lastly, I strung the pieces together with yarn and taped the yarn down on the backside. Both banners cost about $25 and took 5-6 hours to make.

I was hoping for more notes; the board didn't get as filled up as I expected.

I saved my favorite project for last! For Wes & my wedding gift, I decided to make a bulletin board of well wishes. The idea was for everyone to write a note and pin it to the board. Then at the end of the reception, my mom & Mike would have a fun keepsake of their wedding. The idea wasn't as well received as I had hoped. Only about a quarter of the guests left a note.
       I bought a bulletin board, easel (which my mom lost in her mess of stuff she had to take to the church so we ended up using my easel that I have for craft shows), stationary paper (leftovers from the banners), push pins and sharpies. It cost about $45 and took 10 minutes to set up.

125 wedding favors!

I made the decorations at my place, took it to my mom's for approval, then hauled it all to the church. The Reception Decoration Team (does RDT sound cool?) consisted of four people--myself, Wes, my cousin, Dianne, and one of my mom's former students--on the morning of the wedding. My mom gave us vague directions and we got it all set up in two hours. Afterward, the clean up team consisted of 6 people and we got it all taken down in an hour.

Thank goodness my mom & Mike are Catholic and the church isn't allowed to be decorated to taste. Otherwise, I would have had to decorate both the reception hall and church! All we had at the church were two vases of flowers at the altar.

For all you future creative brides out there, although putting wedding decor together yourself is a lot of work, it is totally doable. I took a week off work to get everything together. I didn't give myself a budget but I did shop sales and use coupons. I think if you get a good sense of what you want and give yourself enough time, a DIY wedding can be a fun and more personal experience than a traditionally planned wedding. But be warned, the idea of a DIY wedding is alluring until you have to actually execute it... then all the appeal vanishes and it becomes a lot of hard work and stress.