In honour of celebrating our one year anniversary recently (okay 2 and a half months ago), I thought I'd do a wrap up of all the DIY elements we put together for our big day! Do I recommend DIYing a bunch of stuff during one of the most stressful times of your life? ... Not necessarily. But looking back I'm glad we did. I love crafting and it made it all the more special to be able to put a handmade touch onto so many things.
Invitations
First and foremost, our invitations. Holy moly, these suckers almost broke me. But I was also super proud of them and pretty happy I was able to bring my vision to life. I used a Cricut Maker, which was fun and satisfying to use (for the first ~three invites). I think they deserve their own post, but I will say this - if you have any more than like 30 invitations to make (and if you lack time management skills, like me), it might be worth just paying someone else do do them.
Vases
Vases galore! I made some out of clay, I found bottles from the discount shop, Kmart and the op-shop and spray painted them in our wedding colours. The clay was obviously the most time consuming but now when I use these bud vases at home they bring a smile to my face. Easy DIY, would recommend.
Arch and Backdrops
One of my favourite DIYs because Ryan & his family made them! Loved being able to sketch out my dreams and for my loves to bring them to life. So special.
Plinths
The saga of the plinths! My wonderful brother made these plinths, so they also hold a special place in my heart. Though they were not without their challenges. I found a giant pipe at Reverse Garbage in Wooloongabba and paid extra for them to cut it in half, and Dave salvaged a bunch of old Ikea bookcases to make the square ones. Bless the engineering mind and tenacious spirit of my brother.
These were truly a labour of love. I was so happy with them. Thank you Davey!
Signage
The Cricut strikes again! I ordered acrylic shapes from AcrylicBlanks.com.au and carried over the styling from our invites on these designs. Super happy with how these turned out. We decided to assign tables but not seats, to take away the awkwardness of choosing who to sit with but still giving our guests a semblance of control. lol.
I think about this quote quite often and I'm really glad it was the first thing to welcome our guests to our ceremony. (Plus, how cute is the easel!)
Candle Holders
I made these fun marbled donut style candle holders and loved the vibe. Unfortunately it was my ~first time working with polymer clay and I didn't realise they'd crack from being too chunky. Would definitely do these again but hopefully better with the knowledge I now have. (Hot tip, use alfoil as a base.)
Guest Book
Back again with the Cricut! After looking extensively around every corner of the internet, I decided to DIY this one and would do it again in a heartbeat. So simple, cheap as heck (Thanks, Kmart!), not that time consuming, and best of all I still pull this book out regularly and warm my heart by the fire of these cute memories.
Wishing Well
Funny story, when I was invited to my friends wedding as a young lady - my first wedding as an adult/not with my family, I saw "wishing well" listed next to gifts on the invite, and I thought to myself "how nice, they don't want anything - just some well wishes!". Imagine my mortification when I showed up to the wedding empty handed and my friend Ben explained what a wishing well was. Luckily there was an ATM close by. ANYWAY, I found this excellent white acrylic wishing well with a cute heart shaped padlock at https://craftingblanksaustralia.com.au/ and once again hit it with the Cricut and some iridescent vinyl. Loved how it turned out, would recommend.
Disco Flower Wall
Such a cute idea/so time consuming/wish it had gone better. By this stage in the wedding planning we were quickly running out of time. I didn't have a super clear vision for this one, and as a result it didn't come together as well as I'd hoped. Sometimes, you gotta work on a project until you get a spark of an idea that takes it to the next level... that didn't happen here but also I don't fully regret doing it. I think if I had time to make 2-3 times as many flowers, it probably would have been more impactful. C'est La Vie.
Shaggy Hangings/Tassel Thingos/Ceiling Bushes/Dangle Bastards
Incredible concept, absolute nightmare to make. Also unsure what to call them..? Dangle bastards seems fitting.
Lemme tell you a story about how every September the Wisteria on the arbour starts blooming a gorgeous purple curtain... except for this particular September. I was thisclose to taking a hair dryer to the arbour to see if it would hurry things along. After all, we chose purple as one of our wedding colours to match said Wisteria. Then we chose to spend hours of our finite existence tying these little purple hand-cut streamers to a grid. Many a late night was spent with aching hands, cursing these grids. I guess the silver lining is that this arbour would have looked even more barren without these time consuming tassels.
Sprayed Foliage
Fun fact: Xanadu is not only a cinematic masterpiece starring the late Olivia Newton John, it's also a type of foliage that Brisbane City Council grows in myriad public gardens. I would, of course, never suggest dashing through parks in the middle of the night to pilfer said stems, but if your floral budget is not as robust as you'd like, Xanadu makes a great filler. There are special floral spray paints you can buy, which are almost certainly better than the cheap tins of spray paint we got from Bunnings for this DIY, which started flaking off almost immediately. All things considered, 7/10 for this illicit DIY.
That brings us to the end of our trip down memory lane. I'm sure there were other DIY projects that I blocked out due to the stress of it all. Truly, wedding planning is an extreme sport. What a divine time to consider deeply the people you are and the things you love, and translate that into a seamless vision representing your commitment to each other. Not at all an overwhelming task. If you're planning a DIY wedding, my thoughts are with you. May your glue gun be scorching, may your fingers remain out of harms way, and may your sanity remain in tact.
Remember, it's a celebration of love. As long as you have someone to marry, some good music, delicious food and a metric tonne of booze, the rest is just icing on the cake. (Which reminds me of a story for another time about our wedding cake disaster - and that all disasters will eventually turn into funny stories.) Godspeed, lovers.