It goes without saying that the average cost of a wedding in this day and age is through the roof. As such, for many people it’s important – if not downright necessary – to trim some of these costs wherever possible.
And one easy way to trim costs is to do some of the wedding planning tasks yourself. Three DIY wedding projects in particular can help save a boatload of money: stationary, flowers, and beauty. I know these DIY wedding projects might sound difficult, but they really are pretty easy to pull off. Read on for the surprisingly easy details.
DIY Wedding Stationary
Stationary is probably the easiest of the three items to do yourself, as long as you are somewhat creative and are good with crafts. Some familiarity with Photoshop would also be helpful, although these projects could be done using Microsoft Word or PowerPoint as well. This category includes things like save-the-date cards, wedding invitations, seating charts, escort cards, and thank you cards to name just a few.
Even if you want to retain the formality of professionally-printed invitations, hand-crafted save-the-date cards always make a terrific DIY wedding project. Generally speaking, all this requires is some simple cardstock (which can be purchased at any office supply store), a color printer, ribbon and envelopes. Simply search online for an acceptable design or background, print the imagery in color on the cardstock, add whatever text is needed, embellish with a ribbon, print the addresses on the envelopes, and stuff and mail them. Of course, there are many possible variations, and many ways to come up with creative save-the-date card ideas. Here’s a video that’ll hopefully help get those creative juices flowing:
DIY Wedding Flowers
The next relatively easy wedding DIY project is the floral arrangement. To pull this off, you obviously would need some knowledge of the various flower possibilities, but even if you do not possess this knowledge right out of the gate, a simple internet search should provide all you need to know in less than 1 hour. Additionally, you can make this a fun project by inviting all the bridesmaids to your house for a “flower party” to create the floral components.
The important thing to remember here is that there is a seasonal and geographical element to finding the right flowers. For example, some wedding flowers will be more appropriate for some seasons of the year but may not be appropriate for other seasons – in other words, winter wedding flowers will differ from summer wedding flowers. Similarly, if you are planning a destination wedding, focusing only on flowers that are indigenous to that locale makes sense. In addition to the overall floral arrangement, you could also make your own bridesmaid or wedding bouquet as well. Here’s a video that’ll show you how:
DIY Beauty
The third “low hanging fruit” DIY wedding project to consider is the beauty regimen. From hair to skin to nails to makeup, if you got the skills, you can forego the bills (wow…I’m a poet and I didn’t even know it…). Obviously this presumes that you’ve got the knowledge to pull this off, but the good news, like the previous categories, is that this knowledge is not particularly hard to come by. Online research can go a long way.
You can also set up consultations with a makeup artist, for example, and basically get a lesson and a face chart that’ll make your makeup application foolproof. A similar approach can be taken for your hairstyle – in fact, this element of your look is probably the easiest to learn online, as there are literally hundreds of wedding hairstyle video tutorials on YouTube. Here’s an example of a pretty good one:
Summary
These days, anything you can do to save a buck is worthwhile, especially when it comes to expensive events like a wedding. By doing as many of the wedding tasks yourself as possible, you can trim 20% or more off your overall wedding budget. And these 3 projects are really just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. For a comprehensive list of dozens of other ideas, check out DIY wedding project templates. So, take some time to do a little research and try and figure out if these or any other DIY wedding projects can be “in-sourced.” At the end of the day, your bank account will thank you. Good luck!
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