Monday, December 29, 2014

Wedding Recap - a DIY Bride


Well, as a married lady of a little over 2 months, it's all settled down and I have life back in order, and more importantly, have all my professional photos back ;)

If you live in the Central Florida area, I'd highly recommend Sarah and Ben, who took all the photos in this post and who are just all around fabulous people. The photography was my most important part of all the vendors of the wedding day, so I was a fierce critic when researching photogs!

But as promised, I wanted to show off the DIY parts of the wedding day. Partially because I was tickled with how it all turned out and in case anyone is looking for some inspiration for their own wedding/event, or those of you who just love wedding photos [I do!].


My dress came with an attached beaded belt that I hated, and had removed during production, because I had a specific vision for a belt. I found some beading from China on Etsy and bought some beautiful silk bridal ribbon from my local fabric store. While not super noticeable from afar, it was just the little touch I wanted. I sewed the ribbon to the beading with some invisible thread and we were in business! Total cost of about $15, as compared to the ridiculous prices of wedding belts.


I also sewed my own garter and it was so simple! I love polka dots and wanted to incorporate them as much as possible without being obnoxious, so I got some polka dot grosgrain ribbon and some polka dot lace netting, along with some 3/4" elastic. I sewed the garter at a couple inches smaller than the circumference of my leg. Total cost of about $5.


I created the earrings I wore by scouting around for some better quality costume jewelry and creating my own with some assistance from Stephen using pliers and a soldering iron.


I painted all the signage at the wedding over the weeks leading up to the big day. Our colors were mainly gray and navy with pops of mint and yellow. I bought picture frames when I had coupons to Michaels or Joann and then created inserts for the welcome sign, alcohol lists, etc. The table numbers were tiny square canvases. I already owned the white plate from IKEA, and I just repainted it. Total cost was less than $50, and we've already reused the frames. If you look closely at the picture with the canvas table number, you can see tea lights on the table as well, which were wrapped in silver washi tape to coordinate with the mercury glass votives.


The table runners were all cut and hemmed by me. The navy for the 10 guest tables was just cheap cotton that I got for about $2/yard. The cake table runners were a navy geometric print sateen that I picked up for $5/yard from my local fabric shop earlier this year. I saved that fabric and washed it after the wedding so it can be used for pillow shams. The head table was a king's table, so it was long, and required a special table runner [obviously] so I picked up a pewter sequin fabric for $8 that I had to sew together to make long enough. I'm still picking sequins off my carpet, 2 months later.


Stephen and I wanted our wedding to be classic but we wanted to introduce a small bit of whimsy as well. Enter, dinosaurs! I love dinosaur jokes, tshirts, pretty much whatever has a T-Rex on it. So we bought bulk packs of tiny dino figurines on Amazon and spray painted them mint and silver and used them for the place settings and for the cake table. I also made the cake topper [RAWR means I love you in dinosaur, dontcha know] using die-cut letters and toothpicks. Superglue was definitely our friend the last couple days.


Our seating chart doubled as our favors. We found these AHHHMAZING salted caramels on Etsy [do yourself a favor, please] and ordered several pounds. Fun fact: I don't like chocolate. So the salted caramels were a win for everyone. We then paired that with a Kona coffee blend that we got from friends of ours who have a coffee and tea distribution company, because we love both Hawaii and coffee. We packed them together ourselves a couple days before the wedding, assembly line style with my family.

And finally, the wedding guest book quilt. I sewed together most of the paper pieced envelopes, enlarged to be an appropriate size for writing a note. I ran out of background fabric/time [seriously, where does all the time go leading up to a wedding?!] so I put up a guideline envelope to show everyone where to sign. I painted our monogram for the table and bought a bunch of Micron pens. The quilt will obviously get its own post once I hunt down the few remaining people who didn't sign squares. I love the photos of the table set up because it makes me very pleased about my color choices. I also plan to turn the Cotton & Steel framed sign into a pillow, because cats :)

So in the grand scheme of things, maybe not the most DIY wedding in the world, but I thought it was a nice mix of handmade and small business, that it represented me and my vision, and that it didn't drive me crazy during the final days.


Thanks for reading this novel of a post. If you've made it this far, go order yourself some caramels.