Welcome back to our recurring DIY Weddings spot, where we share our advice on having a DIY Wedding! Last week we outlined why we thought you should have a DIY Wedding, the benefits and the savings. This week we will start explaining HOW you can accomplish a DIY Wedding, and we are starting with #1 – Time.

[via memegenerator.net]

The number one thing you need, in order to have a D.I.Y. wedding is TIME. When you decide to make your own wedding details (invites, decor, etc), you have to be sure you are willing to spend a good amount of time not only making the items, but planning them out, purchasing the things you need for them, AND practicing to make them.

Obviously the time it takes to make DIY projects varies depending on the type of projects you have and the number of things you are making, but realistically, you need to take a look at your life prior to your wedding, and decide – will I really have time to make 150 favors by hand, stitch 12 table runners, make 50 programs, etc …

If you said YES! I do have that time … then AWESOME, I am so excited for you! And, I already have a piece of advice to help you:

make things that can be used twice.

Making things that can be used twice can not only save you some time, but some money too!

A couple examples of this would be to make ceremony decorations, that could then be used again at the reception or cocktail hours, or have your centerpieces double as the favor at the end of the night!.

Our church pew decorations …

…became our cocktail hour decorations:

And our table centerpieces became the favor for our guests to take at the end of the night (DIY christmas ornament favors!):

But, generically speaking, it probably took my husband and I (not counting the projects that our friends and family made for our wedding) 5-6 hours a week to complete all of our DIY wedding projects ~ and we started about 9 months out from the wedding.

This comes to about 230 hours total … or almost 10 full days spent making things for our wedding. Some weeks we spent more, and some less – but the fact of the matter here, is that DIY projects take TIME to make – so if you don’t think you will have a ton of it over the course of your wedding planning, then you should either consider finding a vendor to do the project for you … or…

you should come back next week to find out our #2 item!!

What do you think ~ are you going to spend lots of time making DIY items for your wedding, or will you just let the pros do their thing?

11 comments

  1. I could not agree more with this post!!!!!!! Our DIY wedding took about 45 days to do with the help of many people but…. that is teetering on the insane side of the spectrum. I wish I had this kind of advice before hand lol! We even made our tables – what were we thinking?? I love these segments and cant wait for the next!

  2. Funny thing about time, I finished my masters a semester early so I could have five months to work on DIY projects. Turns out, I wanted to do less when I had more time, haha. Now that I’m a little over five weeks away, I’m ready to fire up my glue gun! BUT with that mind mind, now I know I have to choose my projects wisely if I want them to look good, which brings me to my favorite piece of DIY wedding advice: the DIY Reality Check Flowchart:http://100layercake.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/diy-flowchart-for-100-lc1.pdf

  3. Love the centerpieces, love the recylce concept. So much is fretted over and then experienced for a moment.
    What I’m in awe of is the amount of time you were able to devote to their construction. Would have loved to have been a fly on the wall at about hour 150!
    How on earth did you keep it going?

  4. This is great stuff! Making things that can be re purposed is not only economical but environmentally friendly too! I don’t like a lot of waste, so this is perfect!

Leave a Reply to daniel mcgarrity Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*
*