Hello friends! I hope you are doing well! Today I wanted to share a bunch of the things that Ethan and I DIY’d before our wedding, and a bunch of the details of the day! I won’t be going step by step like I did in the DIY wedding favours post, but I will be sharing many of the details that made out day perfect! Okay, let’s get started!
The bar
Ethan built this bar from wood palettes we got from my work, and it is amazing! I showed it in one of my weekend vlogs from last summer, and with shelves it was perfect! We had our cocktail hour outside under a covered area, so we wanted one place for the bartenders to be able to set-up and this worked really well! I hope we can use it in our house! It’s also decorated with art drawn by my Grandpa who was an artist. I wanted to bring in touches of family members who are no longer with us, and I think my Grandpa would have loved it.
signs
The signs were my job! Ethan built the signs and I used my Cricut in the same way I made our coasters with vinyl. Of course they are Disney quotes! The window we bought from one of Ethan’s co-workers and I found a font that looked exactly like our invitations and cut it out of vinyl as well. The bar sign was a picture frame we found at Value Village and we just kept the glass in, and I used a marker from Michael’s to write our menu. One skill I wanted to learn before the wedding was hand lettering, and I think I got pretty good at it! We had a matching one inside the venue as well.
And lastly the French door seating chart! A very popular idea on Pinterest, and I loved adding “Be Our Guest” to the top! I wrote all the names on it about a week before the wedding, so everything was good to go! We hope to use this door (we got it on Kijiji) in our house!
centrepieces
The centrepieces came together exactly how I pictured! We purchased the wood slabs from the same co-worker of Ethans, and used that as the base. Next we used mason jars we had on hand, with tea light candles I bought on Amazon that lasted 8 hours, the floral centrepieces (florist supplied the cans), and and Ikea sign we spray painted copper and I wrote the number with the marker written above!
guest activities
Because we went straight from our ceremony to cocktail hour we wanted to have activities for our guests while we took pictures! So we had our guestbook (a beautiful wood sign), a date night jar, games for the kids, and a Polaroid camera! I think a lot of guests liked the Polaroids as a keepsake, and Ethan and I enjoyed looking through all of the pictures after! Ethan’s mom found the tree and I thought it was a really fun way to keep the tree theme going! And we liked all of the date night ideas our guests came up with, and I added them all to a list in my Bullet Journal!
dress hangers
Are you seeing how much I loved using my Cricut yet?! I made hangers for my girls and also one for my dress, complete with their names and the wedding date. BFOTB is Best Friend of the Bride (Gilmore Girls reference!). If you know someone who might like one, you can check out my Etsy shop here!
cake and K+E
Of course my biggest DIY project was the cake, and I’m so happy with how it turned out! The prints from the bar moved to this table, and Ethan built the K + E and covered them in a copper wrap. They were a little sharp in points so we wanted to keep them up and out of reach of tiny hands!
backdrop
The biggest test of our relationship was probably the wall behind us, but I’m still so in love with it! You may recognize the design from our coasters! We blew it up in the Cricut software, and made a stencil. The mat wasn’t big enough so it was 8 pieces that we fit together.. and it was a bit of a nightmare! The leaves kept sticking to each other and it took a long time, but I’m so happy with the result! Ethan built the wall in three pieces using wood from skids from my work. I still can’t believe we did all of that! Again, we will probably keep at least the middle section for our house. T
Some things to note
Some lessons we learned in all of this that I wanted to pass on: The more you make, the more you have to transport! Our venue was such that we had to bring a lot- but when we loaded everything up we had a U-Haul, a van, an SUV, and a trailer. Another thing was setting everything up. We had a wedding co-ordinator who helped, and we did some setup the night before, but most importantly we had my wonderful cousin and her husband who put in so much work and we couldn’t thank them enough! But as a planner it wasn’t something I thought about which I definitely should have! So, make sure to take those things into consideration when you are doing a lot yourself!
It was a ton of work to make all of these wedding details, but it was so worth it to see it all come together! Ethan and I worked so hard together, and when I think back to those last few months before the wedding, I think of how well we worked together. And everything made it our day, our way. it was perfect!
Other Wedding Related Posts:
My Wedding Planning Experience So Far (The First 8 Months)
Wedding Planning Update: Months 9-15
Wedding Planning Update: Months 16-22
The Wedding Planning Tools I Couldn’t Live Without!
It’s All In The Wedding Details (You’re here!)
Thank you so much for joining me today! I have one more wedding related blog post coming up next month, but if there’s something else you’d like to see please let me know in the comments!