I thought it would be fun to do a post on our wedding DIYs since wedding season is approaching. I’ve always liked doing arts and crafts but I think my love for crafting really developed when Josef and I started planning our wedding. After getting a few quotes for wedding invitations we quickly realized that costs were going to add up FAST if we did not make some things ourselves. Though the process of doing a DIY wedding can be super stressful and time consuming, it’s also really cool to see the end product and be able to share it with your loved ones.

Invitations

When deciding on the type of invitations we wanted to send out, we wanted to keep with our modern theme and have something unique, so we decided on invitation booklets. We received a few quotes and designers were going to charge us $8.00 – $12.00 per invite. Yikes. Our guest list was upward of four hundred people (yes, I know!), so you could do the math and calculate how much that would have cost us. We decided to take a leap of faith and make them ourselves. With some self-taught Adobe Illustrator skills, Josef was able to create the graphics that we wanted for each page. We had them laser printed since the gray background we wanted could only be done with laser printing.

I used a Martha Stewart Scoring Board to make a one inch margin on each of the pages. Then, I punched two holes and set two white eyelets with a We R Memory Keepers Crop-a-Dile. We also opted for electronic RSVP options (email, phone, website) to save on stamps and avoid having to print out RSVP cards for people to mail back to us. All in all, we estimated that it cost us about $3.50 to make each invite! We mailed the invites in brown kraft paper envelopes and just used our home inkjet printer to print the addresses.

Reception programs and menus

We continued with our modern theme to create our reception programs and menus. Again, Josef designed them on Adobe Illustrator. Since we were going with a white background, we were able to print them out on our home printer. Using the same technique I used on our invitations, I punched a hole in the top corner and set a silver eyelet with a crop-a-dile.

• 

• 

• 

Place Cards & Meal Tickets

We wanted to do something different for our place cards and meal selections that was fun and functional at the same time. For our place cards, we printed each guest name on a 4″ x 9″ envelope and also stored the utensils inside of it. We included a fork and knife graphic as well as our names and the date and location of our wedding reception at the bottom.

• 

• 

The meal tickets served two functions. The top portion showed the servers which meal option each guest chose (meat, veggie or kid’s meal) when they RSVP’d and the bottom was a favor ticket. We decided that instead of spending $300+ on individual favors for each guest, we would raffle off three Nexus Tablets (we’re an Android Family) throughout the reception. I used a Fiskars Rotary Cutter with a perforation blade to make it easy to tear off the bottom portion to place in the raffle bowl.

Fun Extras

Our cocktail hour was in a separate room from the main reception so we were able to put our seating chart and guestbook/gift table there. We kept our seating chart simple since we had about three hundred people to list. We separated the names alphabetically by last name and printed them out on white card stock. And I made the alphabet tent cards out of brown kraft paper card stock and chalkboard paper. I made our guestbook out of 5″ x 7″ chipboard and white card stock and used binder rings to hold them together.

We also put up a gallery of pictures that Josef got enlarged and used when he proposed to me. Josef also made the easels, so I have no idea how he made them, but they turned out great!

Most Filipino weddings include the infamous money dance and ours was no exception. Instead of having someone pass out the pins, we thought it would be better to have them on the tables. My sister came up with the idea for the pins storage. She used small styrofoam balls to stick the pins in. Then she used a Cricut Machine to cut out the bases out of yellow card stock. The image she used was the Octagon Box from the Tags, Bags, Boxes and More 2 Cricut Cartridge. She finished them off with a small label made out of a toothpick, twine and gray card stock.

Signage

We used wooden frames and chalkboard paper for pretty much all of the signs we used for our reception decor. We used the Tolsby White Plastic frames from Ikea for some smaller signs and for all of our table numbers. My sister wrote on all of the signs with chalk markers. She has since taken up hand lettering and modern calligraphy (IG: @smudgedletters) if you need any custom lettering done = )

If we did it again

Looking back, I learned quite a few things about doing a DIY wedding. First and foremost, just like everything in life, DO NOT PROCRASTINATE! We ended up sleepless and stressed the last week before our wedding trying to get everything done in time. Secondly, ask for help. That’s what your wedding party is there for!

It’s always been difficult for me to ask for help, but it made a big difference, especially that last week! Utilize them and delegate tasks that don’t need to be done by you. And lastly, don’t sweat the small stuff. Your wedding is supposed to be fun and enjoyable and it goes by fast! Five and a half years later our friends and family don’t really talk about our invitations or the reception decorations. Instead, they talk about all the fun they had celebrating the day with us.

So have fun with it and enjoy crafting your Happily Ever After!