Weddingbee Blog

Throughout this whole wedding process, I’ve been waiting for my creative spark to kick in. I grew up in a crafty family, I have an unhealthy love/obsession with all things stationery, and I was really looking forward to being frugal and saving some dollars by doing things myself wherever I possibly could. That was my original intention, anyway.

Many moons of planning have now seen me attempt several projects. I write ‘attempt’ because hardly any of those have come to fruition, leaving me feeling more than a little dejected at my efforts. It’s not for lack of trying, they’ve just not worked for me. In the spirit of caring and sharing, I thought I’d share a few of my DIY-failures with you all.

Let’s start with place settings. I went through the rigmarole of hunting down exactly 100 matching paper doilies, in my attempt at creating individualised scripted place settings that would sit on the serving plates of each guest. I’ve been in love with the idea for ages, and thought it would be something different and a bit unique. That plan was in full swing, until I checked with the venue regarding what the diameter of their dinner plates was—that was when they bluntly told me that their table set-up had no plates and had just napkins, as each course was brought out on their own plate. Seems like common sense, doesn’t it? But do you think I’d ever stopped to consider that?

Wah. That meant that my perfectly circular doilies would look ridiculous sitting there all by themselves with nothing to support them. Suffice it to say, that little project was scrapped - but not before I’d spent hours perfecting my scrawl to look somewhat legible.

My script handwriting looked much better than this. Promise.

Then there was my idea for decorating the church pews. We couldn’t afford to spend a lot of money on our ceremony decor since we’re pretty much hitting our budget as it is - and also because our church is pretty beautiful standing on its own. I did want to do something though, so decided to go and invest in a few cheap foam-balls, and create some pomanders to hang over each pew.

$2 per pack? That’s a buck-a-ball, bargain!

You’ve seen how awesome Miss Lox & Miss Elephant’s came out recently. Well, I had grand ideas to have something equally spectacular, only using artificial flowers poking into the foam. Er, silly me. Sure, dollar store fake flowers are cheap when you’re buying them one bunch at a time, but to completely cover one ball? It took several bunches. Multiply that by the 16 pomanders I wanted to use down the aisle and it became almost as pricey as paying for my own with real flowers! The balls are currently laying neglected in my wardrobe, unless I decide to give the tissue paper or ribbon ones a shot. We’ll see how that goes.

Next up was my grand idea to decorate our own box/container to sit on the guestbook table for people to leave cards/well wishes in. I believe this was when I got blindsided by the antique-looking briefcase and pretty, pretty fabric, and completely forgot that I don’t know how to sew or put anything together without the help of special craft products. I gave it a go anyway, and came up with a sweet but slightly mismatched and bumpy end-product. It wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, and sadly, it looks worse up-close.

Confession: I still love the fabric, as well as my thrifty vase & flowers.

So here’s the bugger with DIY-ing (though this may just be my shoddy luck) - I almost always find the perfect, cheap item to just buy and use on the day with no work involved, but only AFTER I’ve gone ahead and bought all the crafty supplies to give it a go myself. Case in point: I found this gorgeous, ready-made wicker & grey container on that same day. Annoyingly (but also yay!) it also cost less than my old-fashioned DIY-route. Sigh.

Why couldn’t I have found you YESTERDAY?

And finally, there were the invitations: something I definitely wanted to do myself. Only… I wanted something fancy. Not a huge invite suite, just something embossed, something traditional, and something I could put together cheaper than the $5-6 price-price tagprice tag per invitation that I kept coming across for sale. My decision was going to be to print our invitations using Vistaprint, and then add ribbon & embellishments to fancy them up a bit—same for the response cards and the envelopes I wanted. This was the top contender for the design choice:

When I did my research though, I discovered that buying all of the products needed to MAKE that awesome invitation-of-my-dreams come true, would’ve cost almost as much as forking out the cash to have someone create one for me. Our invitations are now being printed by Kristin over at Twin Ravens Press, but you’ll have to wait a while longer to see how they turned out.

As well as all of that, let’s not talk about the amount of injuries sustained to yours truly when attempting to work with a hot glue gun. Klutzy + perfectionist = one traumatic experience. I will admit that I have finished one DIY project that’s not mentioned here, but since that’ll probably be the only one, I figure it deserves its own post.

For our wedding though, I think we’re done. It turns out that sometimes it’s okay to hand over the reins to a professional, especially if that saves you some time, and more importantly, sanity. And while I feel a little silly in comparison to the crafting geniuses out there, I just don’t think I’m cut out for it in the lead-up to the wedding - and that’s okay.

We may not have a vintage, DIY-extravaganza like you see in the magazines, but we’ll have our own day. That doesn’t mean I’m going crazy and spending up a storm on all the items I’m not making myself—it just means that I’m doing extra research to get good deals through vendors, or I’m passing over things that we just can’t afford. It’s that simple. The day will work out in the end, even if we use standard place cards, have undecorated church pews, and non-personalised invitations. And lest you think I’m being wasteful with my left-over crafty bits, it’s not so bad: all my bits & bobs are from dollar stores and will be lovingly handed over to my mum or future sister-in-law. Hooray for thriftiness!

How are you/did you fare with DIY projects for your wedding?