As a bride in the middle of planning her wedding, you’ve probably seen hundreds of pictures of DIY wedding projects. Maybe you’ve considered creating an entirely hand-crafted wedding, but you’re just not sure if you want to dive into all of that. If you’re a crafty individual, there are actually some great benefits to a DIY wedding aside from the fact that it’s more cost-efficient.
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Making the Most of Your Wedding
A wedding isn’t less meaningful because you purchase decor rather than creating it, but crafting things for your wedding gives you the opportunity to really enjoy the planning phase. You can make the most of this important process, and that’s important, because once it’s over, it’s over.
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Bonding with Your Wedding Party
When you’re crafting items for your wedding, you’ll sometimes need assistance and who better to give it than your loyal bridesmaids or other members of your wedding party? This is the perfect opportunity for bonding; make a night or a weekend of a project and spend time with your loved ones. Be sure to provide excellent drinks or food you can all enjoy.
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Complete Customization
Have you ever had an image in your mind of what you want something to look like, but you can’t seem to find it in any store? Crafting your own wedding gives you the ability to completely customize it – and bring those images in your mind to life.
Crafts Unleashed
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Full Bragging Rights
During your ceremony or reception, when someone remarks that a centerpiece or decorative element is gorgeous and asks where you found it, you can brag that you made it yourself! Making beautiful things really does give you a sense of pride and accomplishment.
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Gifts from the Heart
Everyone loves getting gifts, but gifts that are handmade or have a handmade element always feel like they’re more meaningful. Hand-crafted bridesmaids gifts or wedding favors are the perfect way to thank your loved ones from your heart. You can opt for completely handmade (like homemade jam in little jars with printed labels) or partially handmade (like delicious assorted chocolates in gift bags that you’ve sewn or crafted).
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These are just a few of the benefits of crafting your own wedding. If you’re still on the fence about it, visit Pinterest and search for ‘DIY wedding.’ The amazing range of items that crafty brides have created might just make you decide to jump in with both glue guns loaded!
I’ve photographed weddings for almost 17 years, and seen the pluses and minuses of all DIY efforts.
The biggest pluses is the personal touch for each item, but this assumes a level of logistical mastery that is quite frankly beyond the time or scale of even the most dedicated DIY person to be married.
Time- ask yourself how long to assemble a gift bag? maybe 2-3 minutes? for 100 guests? that 300 minutes (4.5 hours) is not something to do the night before the wedding
Arrange the flowers on the tables- You need to have the holders, and the flowers ready to be put together no earlier than 6 hours before the wedding guests are seated, earlier than that, flowers wilt. and who does this? you can get a day of planner who may be holding armloads of DIY items to go onto tables, and no, the catering staff doesn’t do that, but that amount of time holds people back.
The long and short of it are simple, DIY is great, but having a good plan for implementation creates a stress free wedding day for you, and no matter how personal that jar of jam is for your guests, if you didn’t get to sleep until 5am gluing the labels on, your wedding day, and the time to spend with your guests, is impacted.