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DIY - Favor Bags & Cupcake Boxes

We chose to give our guests several small favors and a cupcake to go, so to make it easy for them to keep all of these items together we decided to provide take-away bags.

I found inexpensive, plain white bags from Oriental Trading Company, that were $5.99 per dozen. I had never purchased from this company before so I was not familiar with the quality of their goods. As a warning, the bags we purchased were very cheaply made, some of the handles came off, but they worked for what we needed and they fit within our budget. I also bought a large Damask stamp to use on the front of each bag, then added curly ribbon in our wedding colors and made thank you tags for each. As another personal touch, we opted to hand out the bags to each person so that we could personally thank our guests for coming to the wedding.

The venue where our reception was held included a dessert with the buffet-style meal. We still wanted to have a cake to cut, so we decided to follow the popular trend of having cupcakes, which I love, rather than a full blown crazy-expensive cake. Because dessert was served, I was afraid our cupcakes would go uneaten, which prompted us to provide pre-boxed cupcakes to each guest. The cupcake boxes also fit in the handy favor bag, giving guests the option to either eat it at the reception or take home and eat later.

I also ordered the cupcake boxes online (unfortunately, I can't remember the website name) and paid a little extra to get the cupcake holder insert. The insert is used to hold the cupcake upright inside the box so it won't topple over and get smashed. The boxes were very reasonably priced and a better deal than buying the boxes through the baker, so if you go the cupcake route I would suggest doing a "cupcake box" search online to compare prices.

In one of my previous posts I mentioned finding a huge roll of good quality wrapping paper from Hobby Lobby that I used to cover the centerpiece vases. There was plenty of this paper left over, so with 2 weeks before the wedding with no idea how to decorate these boxes, I finally decided to cut 2" wide strips of wrapping paper that would fit the girth of the box to create a belly band. I then used double-sided tape to attach the band to the box.

Both of these were very simple projects that were not overly time consuming, added a personal touch and tied in to the theme of our wedding.

Wedding Tip Number Two - Use Your Resources

If you've lived in your town or city for any amount of time, you're bound to know talented people who do things that are wedding related. Or, by asking around you may have a friend who has a friend, if you know what I mean. There are so many talented people within your community who may work full time jobs, but dabble in something else on the side as a part-time job or hobby who won't charge the more expensive prices as those who work in that particular field full time.

For example, I work in a building that houses over 1000 employees. In that building I have a friend who is a preacher who offered to officiate my wedding at no charge as a wedding gift. That is a $100 - $200 wedding gift that really helped my budget. Another co-worker is a photographer in her spare time and charged me a third of what the photographer my friend hired for her wedding charged her...and he was the cheapest she could find!

Another co-worker's brother is a baker who is going through baking school with hopes of opening his own bakery. He baked all of my cupcakes with 2 flavor choices, the topper cake and delivered them to my venue for $125, a fraction of the cost the bakeries in town wanted to charge for the same thing. Last, but not least, a good friend who I went to high school with works at a florist shop as a hobby and did all of the flower arrangements, bouquets and boutonnieres as a wedding gift. All I had to pay for were the flowers, which she got incredibly cheap with her wholesale license.

Ask around at work, school or church. You never know what hidden talents your friends and colleagues may have.

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DIY - Chinese Paper Lanterns

This post is not about making your own Chinese lanterns, but adding embellishments to spruce them up. My colors were black and white so I was able to find large 20" white lanterns on eBay. The yellow lanterns I found at Michaels craft store on their $1 aisle, and they are 8". I then bought different types and sizes of black ribbon and hot glued them to the white lanterns. I left the yellow lanterns plain because I did not want to over-do it, so I used them as the accent lanterns.

Another option to gluing ribbon to the lanterns is cutting out shapes, etc. from tissue paper and lightly gluing those shapes to the lanterns.

None of the lanterns came with a lighting kit, that would have made them much more expensive. You really can't have an evening wedding in a garden with unlit lanterns, so I had to get creative. At Costco I found a 28-pack of battery operated tea lights for around $13.00 and at Hobby Lobby (or any craft store) I found little double-sided sticky squares that were perfect to attach the tea light to the inside of the lantern. You do have to turn the tea light on, then attach it to the inside of the lantern, before you can hang it in the tree.

Here are a couple of tricks for hanging the lanterns. First, use fishing line. Because fishing line is clear it gives the lanterns a more natural hanging, breezy look. Second, attach a small fishing weight to the end of the fishing line to give it some weight, this will help you throw the line over a branch. That way, if you don't have a ladder tall enough you won't have a hard time getting the line over the branch. Also, once you've gotten the fishing line over the branch and are ready to tie it off, be sure to tie it off on the metal bracket of the lantern rather than tying it off on the fishing line. Tying the line off to the line itself will cause a noose effect, the knot will travel to the top of the branch and will cause a lot more work in taking the lanterns down after your event. Tying the line to the metal bracket of the lantern requires just one snip with the scissors and the fishing line and lantern will come down in one piece.

DIY - Centerpieces

Here is a super easy way to create your own centerpieces at a very reasonable price.

If you live near an Old Time Pottery visit them first for the best prices. Look for vases in either cylinder or square shapes, select a shape that is easy to wrap like a present. By this point you should have chosen a color scheme for your wedding, so find a large roll of quality wrapping paper in your colors. Some cheaper wrapping paper is very thin and rips very easily, try to find a thicker quality paper that you love.

For my wedding, as pictured above, I used rectangled 4x6 vases with black and white damask wrapping paper, ribbon and jewels. I found a huge roll of damask wrapping paper at Hobby Lobby after Christmas for 50% off. They really have some beautiful wrapping paper at Christmas time that doesn't necessarily look Christmasy.

Supplies:

Cylinder or square shaped vases

Wrapping paper

Double-sided tape

Varying sizes of ribbon

Stick on jewels (found in the scrapbooking section of craft stores)

Fabric or craft glue

All you do is wrap the vase like a present using the double-sided tape on the inside seem so you don't see the shine of tape on the finished product. Next, glue a wide piece of ribbon to the paper covered vase, then glue a smaller piece of ribbon in an alternate color and/or pattern over the first ribbon. Randomly place jewels on the ribbon, though you may want to re-enforce them with glue to ensure they don't fall off.

This is really such an easy and inexpensive way to have custom vases to show off your beautiful flowers. It took three of us just a couple of hours to decorate 20 vases. I hope you'll be as satisfied with your vases as I was with mine!

Wedding Tip Number One - Have a Back-Up Plan

If planning an outdoor wedding, there is absolutely no way to ensure your wedding day will be rain-free. Have a back-up plan in case there is rain, but also plan the back-up plan. What I mean by this is don't spend the next year focused only on a garden wedding because it is very possible rain will be in the forecast for your special day, which could send you into last minute freak-out mode. This would cause you to re-plan your entire event, the event you dreamed of taking place under the stars and in the garden, to fit under a small, unattractive tent. It would be much less stressful on you to plan the garden wedding, plus how you would decorate the tent if you have to have one, so you aren't even more stressed and nervous in the days leading up to your wedding. Also, make sure you budget enough money to rent a tent big enough to fit all of your guests comfortably.

(Side note: If you schedule and pay in advance through a rental company for something you know you'll need for the ceremony, such as chairs, they may be willing to throw a tent on the truck last minute without requiring you to put down a non-refundable deposit for it. They typically require a deposit to get you on the delivery schedule for a certain day, so by paying in advance for something you know you'll need you will then be on the delivery schedule and should be able to add last minute items without an additional deposit.)

I had picked October 17 as the big day and this gave me a whole year to plan the wedding. I checked the Farmer's Almanac for the weather prediction of that date. I also checked prior years' weather conditions online and each year consistently showed highs around 75 degrees with no precipitation. Not only that, South Carolina has been in a draught for years. With all of this information, what could possibly go wrong? I was confident I would have the beautiful, sunny outdoor wedding of my dreams. I never even considered it would rain.

It all started around the middle of September. Torrential downpours lasted almost a month straight with a few rain-free days in between. Then came the unseasonal cold fronts that swept through the week of my wedding. Rain was now in the forecast for October 17. I went to work the Monday before my wedding in tears. Luckily I have friends who prayed it wouldn't rain on the 17th. I went on faith that it would not rain, I had too many people praying it wouldn't. Besides, by this time I didn't have any extra money in my budget to rent a tent, so it couldn't rain.

The morning of the wedding it rained. Throughout the day it sprinkled. By this point I knew there was nothing I could do if it did rain so I finally stopped worrying about it. The ceremony was scheduled to start at 6 PM...It never rained another drop after 5 PM. Talk about the power of prayer. Now that doesn't mean October 17th wasn't the coldest October day we've had in years, but I only cared about the rain. Luckily I had the foresight to rent a couple of patio heaters and I ended up with the beautiful garden wedding I had dreamed of.

To all the DIY brides...

Hi ladies, my name is Teresa and I've been married for all of three weeks. For the past year I've been planning my own wedding, but now that the wedding is over I realize I have a lot of spare time that is no longer filled with creating wedding details. For a year I scoured the Internet for unique wedding ideas, I was especially interested in the DIY sections of blogs, searching for ideas to help get my creative juices flowing. I was frustrated after several hours of Internet searching when all I could find were one or two good ideas. This, and the extra time on my hands, has prompted me to start my own blog dedicated soley to those brides, who like me, enjoy the satisfaction of saving a few dollars and at the same time creating a unique and beautiful day that you'll always remember. Seeing it all come together in the end is worth all the time and effort you will put into your special day. Don't limit yourself, be creative and have fun! If I only pass one thing on that you remember, let it be details, details, details! I look forward to sharing many creative ideas with you and hope they will be useful to you. Happy planning!