My Number 1 Tip for DIY(ish) Weddings
There are a lot of reasons people choose to DIY elements of their wedding; maybe they love crafting, maybe they want to save money, maybe they have a vision they just can’t trust anyone else with...I get it! Some DIY is great and cost-effective if you have the time, and other DIY may seem like a good idea, but eventually makes you want to cry and ask yourself why you thought it would be better to build a doughnut wall when you could have just spent an extra $20 to buy one off FB Marketplace. DIY weddings are a lot of work, so it’s always good to ask yourself “will this be worth it?”
In my opinion, the hardest part of a DIY wedding is the wedding day itself. Simply put: you need people to set everything up AND take everything down. Those bud vases you carefully sourced need to be thrown into a box at 1:30am and taken out of the venue...usually by your half-drunk (or full-drunk) wedding party and family.
(Or by not-drunk wedding planners who actually stick around ‘til the end of an event. Like me. I do that. For real.)
So with this in mind, here’s my biggest tip for a DIY wedding: extra bags and boxes.
Sounds silly, right? You spent an entire weekend wrapping and packing plastic tubs and cardboard boxes with all the great DIY elements you created! They all fit in, so they’ll all fit out!
But picture this: it’s 1 in the morning. You and your wedding party have been up since 7am doing makeup, drinking bubbles, posing for photo after photo after photo (and then one more photo just in case). The music stops, the lights come up, and you and your freshly-married partner have to start tearing down everything you set up earlier in the day. Are you really going to want to spend time playing Tetris with wooden rounds and picture frames?
Trust me. You won’t.
In come those extra bags/box you packed! What seemed like a silly idea at the time proves to be the best idea you had, because you don’t have to worry about everything fitting perfectly...you just need to worry about everything being thrown in to a vessel to worry about later.
My top choices: IKEA giant blue bags, leftover booze boxes (easily available if you BYOB your wedding), cheapie big Rubbermaid container (no lid necessary), or literally any tote bag you have lying around your house.
Sure, there are a lot of other great DIY tips out there...but this is an easy (and cheap) one that I promise will help on your big day.
Do you have any favourite DIY tips? Comment your sage wisdom below!