THE DOWNSIDES OF DIY WEDDINGS
Back in 2019 we did our very own DIY wedding. At the time I ran an events company in London and designed and organised around 12 events a year, so of course I was a little control freak and wanted to do everything myself…
For context we got married in a non-events, non-wedding space. I know so much more than I did 6 years ago when we got engaged 🙈
My bridal crew outside Rob's Aunties house
My husband-to-be’s Auntie’s house in Dorset was beautiful and like something out a Hugh Grant film, it was somewhere he’d been going since his childhood and had a real connection with.
Never mind the beautiful English country house with gorgeous gardens and grounds, it had 2 derelict barns covered in mud and dust that screamed ‘wedding venue’ potential to me back then 🤪
I have to say, we DID have the most fun, magical wedding (hello, we set up a nightclub called The Craic Den!) that I still get amazing complements about five years later (including ‘don’t tell X but your wedding is still my fave ever’) BUT it was akin to setting up a festival, for one day and a night and I want to share some cautionary tales about doing everything - all your wedding decor, styling, set up, planning etc etc - for your own wedding, AKA the DIY Wedding, to make sure you’re fully informed!
The two derelict barns that became our wedding venues (and mossy outdoor bit that we cleared) 👆🏼
My other work suffered
I reckon the impact of deciding to organise, design, plan and style everything for our wedding meant six months of my year were dedicated to it, which of course had a knock-on effect to my income. I turned down other projects and events because I was completely invested in doing everything myself and to be honest, I didn’t realise it would eat up quite so much time, headspace and at times, stress reserves.
👆🏼TIME CONSUMING: Making my own DIY tableplans and confetti from rose petals
I thought I was saving cash
The main reason behind undertaking all the wedding design and styling; and making everything (props, invites, signs and everything under the sun) was to save money. I have always been a maker, and knew how to use all these inexpensive but effective materials but what I didn’t fully appreciate was the cost of materials and tools you need to effectively set up a making studio!
What a lot of people don’t take into account is the trial and error involved with making a lot of the details and decor yourself, probably for the first time.
You might convince yourself you need to buy some form of Cricut machine (guilty 🖐🏼 😂) or a drill, or a jigsaw or a tile cutter…but then there’s all the materials you’ll mess up whilst you learn how to master the technique! The Amazon purchases can rack up whilst you trial and error the hell out of something!
Individual handmade invitations (so extra) and the casual fork lift hire to lift pallets of tiles out the barn!
Value your time!
DIY wedding decorations can take so much more time than you expect, because you might have 100+ of any one item to create e.g. nameplaces, favours, invitations…plus if you’re a perfectionist like me, each one needs to be perfect and mistake-free!
There are mountains of youtube videos available but not all youtube vids are created equal. The camera angle of how to do the most crucial bit of a technique might be blurry, they might rush the part you’re struggling with at home, or the link to an essential product could have expired - these are all examples of real-life massive sticking points and another cue to spend another 5 hours you don’t have doing research online!
If you have a full time job, be prepared to lose most of your evenings, weekends and any social life if you decide to DIY all your wedding decor (this especially applies if you’ve got a huge space or multiple rooms to decorate!)
I didn’t realise there was help out there!
This all happened before I started The Joy Eclectic so I didn’t have the knowledge of the wedding industry that I have now - there are SO many people that specialise in creating amazing wedding decor, invites, stationery, signs - you name it.
It was such a false economy for me to think that I was saving money by making everything myself. If I added up the amount of hours and days spent working on the wedding according to the hourly or daily rate I would charge my clients - I could have easily paid others to supply the wedding decor I wanted, made more skilfully because it was their full time job!
Another couple of ‘essential’ makes - neon Craic Den sign and handmade drinks menus 🙈
Bits you only use once, then what?
I trawled car boot sales and collected vintage glass bottles for flowers, then hand-painted some cheap clear ones with a copper or seaglass effect - we had 4 crates of them left after the wedding - what do you do with them?!
You can try and sell secondhand on Ebay or other online marketplaces but of course that relies heavily on someone else wanting EXACTLY the same stuff for their wedding at that very moment. Plus what can be a logistical nightmare is shipping all the stuff - the cost of 100 glass bottles might be too much for a secondhand buyer (and that’s before any breakage chat!)
👆🏼 Said bottles…
Storing it all before the wedding - where?!
I am one of those people who likes to be prepared and hates being last-minute about anything, which meant sourcing and prepping a lot of the wedding decor a few months before the day so I knew it was done and I could tick it off my never-ending list.
We were lucky we could ship boxes to my partner’s Auntie and they would kindly store them for us in the run up to the set up period (which FYI was longer than a week!)
This didn’t stop us filling a car to the brim for a couple of pre-set up trips down! You’re very unlikely to have this option of pre-storage; especially if it’s a dry hire venue you’re hiring for the day or a few days before. Which means you’ll have a load of stuff lying around your house cluttering it up for weeks, if not months…
Another jam-packed car of bits, probably 1 of 3 car journeys we did from London to Dorset in the run-up…
If I could do it all again
I look back at some of the wedding design choices I made at the time and think a lot of them were made ‘to save money’ even though they ate into most of time that year. Which means when I look back at them now, I cringe and wish I’d made different design choices. My top 3 are:
I wish I’d invested in professional floristry
I wish we’d had an actual colour scheme rather than ‘colourful’
I wish I’d worn my jumpsuit for the entire day and not a white dress
3b> I wish I hadn’t been so extra about evryyything
Trends have moved on so much since 2019 but what I realised is that considered, coherent design choices will stand the test of time in your wedding photos much more than cobbling stuff together on a budget. Read on for how I think a little investment at the start of the process can help you achieve this, STILL saving you money… 👇🏼
I wish I’d had the headspace to have more of an overall design vision for the wedding. This feeling is part of the reason, after more experience and years in the wedding industry myself, I dreamed up my DESIGN MY WEDDING PACKAGES
It’s something I wish had been around when we started wedding planning, that could have saved me hours and given me more of a coherent design vision, signposted me to wedding suppliers that were less expensive than I thought and helped me shortcut some of my crafting and making processes, all saving me wads of cash in the process…
If I was planning a wedding now, I’d definitely aim for 90% of the decor to be hired. The idea of someone taking everything away or being able to courier it back is the absolute dream. I’m not a fan of admin or storing unecessary stuff so I’d definitely pay a premium for this service! We have a new Re-usable decor range if you’re thinking about hiring your wedding decor and saving you a lot of faff and stress.
To be connected with my black book of awesome London wedding suppliers, hire companies and more, definitely check out the Design My Wedding service - there’s three different levels to choose from, all based on real life couples and weddings I’ve experienced ✌🏼 💋