Weddingbee Blog

Now that we are less than two months away from our wedding day, we’ve realised it has come to crunch time with regards to our DIY projects.n When it comes to deciding whether to do things the handmade way for your wedding or to buy it yourself instead, the factors involved can make someone (more specifically, me) want to tear their hair out.

On the one hand, we have gorgeous weddings filled with elaborate handmade details bombarding us from every side. “Oh look, that bride did _____ by herself? Well maybe I should do that too…” From being a way to put your own personal mark on your wedding and (maybe) cut some of your costs, doing it yourself seems to have grown into “must” for today’s weddings. As in, if you don’t bust your gut doing projects then there must be something “not so special” or “personal” about your day. It puts a lot of pressure on us brides, huh?

On the other hand, we have BIY—buying it yourself. This is a way to go that can have great results, but can certainly add up, cost wise. Oh, we can never win!

Or can we?

I see myself as a DIY bride—I love details and I love doing crafts so I see this wedding as a great creative outlet for me. But, of course, there are times when I am so frustrated with a failed project or the logistics of even starting a particular project that the BIY route seems so very attractive. And what is so wrong with that? Why should we feel guilty for not doing ______ ourselves just because so-and-so did and it looked awesome? For me, balance (as always) is the answer to the DIY/BIY dilemma, and also allowing yourself to:

1. change your mind and
2. remember that it is your wedding after all, and no one (including yourself) should be holding a great big stick over your head telling you that you “have to” DIY the crap out of it.

So, when it comes down to the wire and I’m overwhelmed by the decision to DIY or BIY, then it helps me to go back to my handmade pledge and put things in perspective again. These last two months are going to whiz by, and the last thing I want to do is make myself sick with stress right before I marry Mr E. So maybe I need to learn to delegate a wee bit, realise that sometimes it is worth it to pay a bit extra and avoid the stress, and, if we can’t afford that, then to know when something just has to be dropped. That way the projects we do ourselves can be still enjoyable, rather than one giant hassle.

So, goodbye handmade bridesmaid necklaces, hello pre-Christmas jewellery sales. Goodbye to learning how to make sugar roses for our cupcakes myself, hello friend-of-a-friend who has offered to do them for us. And hello to sanity and approaching the handmade projects we have chosen to keep on our list with less cluttered minds.

Next I am going to talk about learning to delegate as another way of staying sane during the handmade wedding process, so stay tuned!

What about you? How do you decide whether to DIY or BIY?