More and more couples seem to be going the DIY wedding route when it comes to their special day.
Some want to save a little money, some want to be more involved in their wedding, or some have a certain plan they want to follow and DIY is the only way for them to do that.
There are many things you might want to think about before you decide to go the DIY route for your wedding.
You will want to think about why you want to DIY the project, how much money it will save or cost you, how much time it will take, whether you actually have the time to complete the project, and if you are even creative enough to do it.
The last part is what stopped me from DIYing too much for my wedding because I know I’m not creative enough.
I often have Pinterest fails when I try to DIY so I knew for a fact that many ideas I found online would look like garbage if I tried to attempt to do the same. Oh well, at least I am honest with myself! 🙂
There are many different areas you can DIY with a wedding. You can have a DIY wedding dress, DIY bridesmaid dress, DIY wedding invitations, DIY wedding hairstyle, DIY wedding desserts, DIY wedding cake toppers, DIY wedding bouquets, and more.
Below are some of the different areas you may be thinking about DIYing for your wedding:
Outdoor Wedding On Private Property.
Okay, so this isn’t exactly a DIY, but having an outdoor wedding on private property does mean you have to do everything yourself. It can be a DIY wedding nightmare or a DIY wedding dream.
We had to plan the event rentals (such as tent, tables, chairs, linens, dance floors, etc.), weather backup plans, maintaining the property, coordinating everyone and everything, planning the best times for everything, setup and locations of everything, the bathroom situation, and more.
There are a TON of things to think about when having an outdoor wedding. All things wedding related will be the only thing on your wedding. We ended up hiring a wedding coordinator to help us with everything because the stress was mounting quickly and I didn’t want to forget anything important.
I think having an outdoor wedding on private property is more about having the wedding you want because you can usually have everything your own specific way. We were able to choose our own event rental company, caterer, coordinator, music, and more.
Usually an outdoor wedding is not a way to save money, so having a DIY wedding for that sole reason may not work out for you.
I don’t regret our wedding at all. It was a great day and we still have people telling us that it was the best wedding ever.
It was a TON of stress though planning everything for the amount of people we had. I also knew that having an outdoor wedding wouldn’t mean we would save money. The amount of people we had come up to us (during the planning process) asking if we were too poor to have a “real wedding” was ridiculous!
DIY Wedding Invitations.
We did not DIY our wedding invitations. I calculated the possible cost savings, and it was very minimal for us. After calculating the time and money, I decided it wasn’t worth it for us.
Instead, I found an awesome website called PaperStyle that has many affordable invitations on it. They do have expensive invitations on there as well, but we found ones that we loved for cheap.
Our invitations, including envelopes and our address stamped on each one, cost around $160 altogether, which was equivalent to the cost of making them ourselves in the style I wanted.
I know that many DIY their wedding invitations but it just wasn’t for us.
DIY Wedding Flowers.
We DIYed our wedding flowers and saved a decent amount of money by using FiftyFlowers. I can’t remember the exact amount we paid, but I believe we paid around $350 for over 2,000 flowers. We were able to save so much because we used discounts, bought at cheaper times, and they accidentally messed up the address on one of our orders and gave us a 50% discount.
The address mix up was where they sent the flowers to the wrong address (my home instead of the wedding location). It wasn’t a big mix up, but I did have to have someone drive 1.5 hours to make sure the flowers didn’t die.
FiftyFlowers gladly refunded 50% of my money for the mix up without any questions asked. Their customer service is great and they apologized for the mix up. My tip to avoid this is to confirm the address with them after you book.
I looked at many different wedding flower wholesale websites, and FiftyFlowers won hands down for me for many reasons. They had many, MANY flowers available, they have flower combo packs, you can choose flowers by wedding color, and more.
Another big reason is because FiftyFlowers has someone there who helps you choose your wedding flowers for you depending on the theme and colors of your wedding. This was awesome and it was nice having that help. She gave me different flower suggestions and she also helped me choose flowers that would do well sitting outside during a HOT and HUMID summer wedding.
You might be wondering “But I always kill flowers!”
Fifty Flowers has a really easy to use guidebook on how to take care of your flowers once you receive them. I didn’t kill any flowers and I am a known plant killer. I was afraid of the same thing but I didn’t have any problems.
Arranging the wedding flowers was a lot of fun too. My bridesmaids and I all got together the day before the wedding and arranged them. It wasn’t stressful at all and it as a lot of fun.
DIY Wedding Lighting.
The place where we rented our wedding supplies (tent, tables, decorations, dance floors, etc.) also offered to hang up the lighting for our wedding. We said no to this because like with all of the other even rental companies in the area, they charged $0.75 per FOOT. Considering we had hundreds of feet of lighting to hang, that price just seemed insane.
This is something I do not regret doing myself at all.
We hit up Target right after Christmas and bought a bunch of Philips Christmas outdoor lights for something around 75% off. These were supposed to be the best lights out there, but sadly they only lasted about an hour and then everything died. I’m not sure what happened but I was extremely upset since we hung it all up and they all went out.
Luckily we still had backup lighting. We got the rest of our lighting from the Paper Lantern Store (affiliate link, but I only joined their affiliate program because I liked their products), and surprisingly those worked the best. Not a single one of those lights went out!
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worth it for the most parts
I love these ideas, I DIY’d a lot for our wedding 10 years ago including all of the flower & I try to tell any friends to do this along the way to help them save money. It’s not worth it to spend so much on a few hours! The only thing that I wouldn’t DIY is photography!
Yeah, I wouldn’t DIY photography either. Photos are so important to me!
I feel like pinterest has brought out the DIY in EVERYONE.
For weddings, I get it, but sometimes you’re saving money just to spend hours and hours of your own time making 200 whatevers, and I’m not sure if that’s a good tradeoff.
But I think people spend too much on crap for weddings regardless so I’m probably not a good judge of this haha
Haha yeah I didn’t DIY too many things for our wedding. I really only DIYed the items in this post.
I think it’s a nice idea! Of course, things like a DJ or a photographer are worth it but I see a lot of good points in your post. My friend had a wedding with about 160 guests few months ago. They DIYed the decoration of the wedding place, put names of guests on small butterflies cut out from some type of cardboard and they even made flower bracelets for single ladies who wore them all night. Like you, they didn’t save on invitations because it would be pretty difficult to make them for 160 guests, right? My friend has a flower shop so she helped them to buy and arrange flowers with a discount. I think DIY is a good way to get more involved and also to save some money. It’s a pity it wasn’t so popular when I had my wedding.
Yeah, a DJ and photographer are definitely worth it! I’m glad I skipped DIY in some areas of my wedding and DIYed others.
I have never been married but is always a good idea to make as much as you can so that you can spend your money or more important things. I can never see people spending thousands of dollars on decorations and flowers.
I agree! Thanks Jennifer.
We were on a tight budget for our wedding so I did some DIY stuff like the invitations and decorating, I hired a professional photographer, I didn’t want the pictures to be messed up.
Yeah, I would never have DIYed the photographer either.
Love this post! We just got engaged, and are thinking of where to DIY and where not to. I have to say, I love a good crafting session and think we might DIY a good portion of the wedding decorations. We are having a small wedding of 50-60 guests, so I think that makes a big difference!
Glad you made the points you did – good things to keep in mind as we plan 🙂
Congrats on the engagement! 🙂
I would DIY things that can be done at least a couple of days before, to avoid stress on the wedding day or the day before. I went to a wedding where the bride did her cake and that you can bake three days before without stress.
I didn’t know you could bake that in advance that far. Good to know!
I am so not a DIYer!! The only thing I did was our centerpieces. I’m capable of floating a carnation in water but that’s where my creativity ends!!! I really wish I were into crafts and and restoring things though. Just like I wish I were into cooking!
Haha yeah I am not a DIYer much either.
DIY weddings may be right for some couples. If time is not an issue, then I would say go for it.
I agree. Thanks Richard!
Great ideas for my upcoming wedding
Thanks!
We did do quite a bit of DIY for our wedding, but not the invitations or flowers. We alternated flower centerpieces with floating candle arrangements that I made from stuff at Hobby Lobby, so that cut flower costs in half. Since our ceremony was in the national forest, we didn’t have many decorations there, but a dear friend did make an aisle with painted white stakes and tulle with bows. It was awesome and cost me a few dollars for materials. This wasn’t really DIY, but since my sister is a dentist, she ordered toothbrushes with our names and wedding date and we gave those out as favors. It wasn’t like I could give out eyeballs, and people really liked the toothbrushes. I would say DIY if it’s easy, but otherwise, don’t stress yourself out.
Love all of these ideas!
I think the trick with DIY’ing a wedding is to only pick SOME projects, otherwise the stress and time commitment is just totally not worth it and can ruin the wedding experience. I DIY’d a few things, but we didn’t live by our wedding location, so there was very little that I could do myself.
Yeah I agree. It would be very hard to DIY everything so choosing just a few you care about is key.
Sounds like the DIY flowers worked out really well. I did DIY flowers for my wedding years ago and they didn’t turn out too great on my end. I didn’t really know what I was doing and didn’t order enough. In the end, it wasn’t that terrible and we made it work.
Oh no! That really stinks 🙁
Wow that’s awesome! Very nice of her to do that.