Wedding Blog

This is a hard post to type—seriously, I poked myself with a seam ripper and I have a Band-Aid on my right pointer finger and it is making it physically hard to type.

I’ve spent a ridiculous amount of time in the last few weeks working on several crafty DIY projects that I thought would be amazing!! And if you’ve noticed, I haven’t yet blogged about any of them—well, except for this ridiculously easy project.

Why haven’t you seen the rest of them? They’ve been failures.

I wasn’t joking when I stated in my opening post that I was DIY challenged, and I think after this weekend I have taken it to a whole new level.

My goal this weekend was to sew up a wedding purse for myself, makeup bags for my bridesmaids, and a ring bearer pillow.

And what do I have to show for it?

One purse that now has a small bloodstain on it (from poking my finger), another non-wedding day worthy purse, a bunch of half-finished bits of fabric, and one decent ring-bearer pillow that took way too long.

You may think that my project list was ambitious, but I thought I was totally prepared. I had a pattern for the purse I was making myself; I have successfully made makeup bags in the past; and a ring bearer pillow is seriously home-ec 101, so I thought I was pretty safe.

Here’s where I went wrong:

1. On the purse I made myself, I skipped a step. Only now am I realizing that my fatal flaw was in not following the directions verbatim. While I finished the project, if I had followed the directions, I would have taken the project from everyday worthy to wedding worthy.

2. While I was prepping to make my bridesmaids’ makeup bags, I thought that instead I should make them little clutches. This was fatal flaw #2—nothing in DIY land is simple, nor should you ever think that it is easy to stray from what you know.

3. I second-guessed myself. I made a fairly cute ring bearer pillow, but then I thought I could make a cuter one with some of the leftover silk fabric from our chair sashes. I spent two more hours on this project before I realized that the ring bearer pillow I previously made is actually cute enough.

4. I jumped right in without doing proper research. This may be the most important rule of all DIY projects—research, research, research. If you can’t find it on the web or on Weddingbee, ask someone to help you.

Dare you ask why I am writing this post with a list of mistakes that any kindergartner knows to avoid!?! Well, I figured if I was stupid enough to think that DIYing was easy, then there has to be another bride out there thinking the same thing. In my everyday life—-outside of being a bride-to-be—I take on one, maybe two, crafty challenges a year. And while I half-ass most of them, I usually don’t care because I am the one who has to deal with the sloppiness of my work. But in wedding land DIY, everyone will see my mistakes and fumbles. Most importantly, I also actually care about the final product.

So, after I fold my clean laundry and clean our apartment (both tasks on my to do list that got pushed aside this weekend), I hope to pick up the DIY ball again and try again. Only this time, with a lot more patience.

I will hopefully also remember something else fairly important, that some DIY projects are failures no matter how many times you attempt them.

I leave you with a picture of my DIY ring bearer pillow. This project cost me nothing out of my wedding budget, as I already owned all the materials. Let me know if you want a play-by-play on how I crafted this, but I pretty much kept to the rule book on this one:

So, I ask the hive: Is anyone else totally frustrated with DIY projects that have gone wrong?