wedding: DIY, Decor & Details

I knew that I wanted to incorporate DIY and pieces that represented a bit of Ryan & my's personalities & family with our wedding. This post shows all the close up details, decor & DIY.

The Ceremony:
For the ceremony decor, I kept it simple. We used leftover flower petals to line the aisle. The venue included cute aisle hangers, so we collected mason jars and used some of our centerpiece flowers in them to hang. Ryan's dad made our arbor out of birch, which turned out amazing! And at the back of the chairs we had big planters filled with white flowers.

We had a table for gifts, which included an old mailbox for cards. Our guestbook table included a book I designed which had all the pictures from our engagement photos. I just made sure to leave extra white space for signing. I also designed some signage that was scattered around the venue, including one for Instagram, one with our wedding party, one with the ceremony order and one for the bar. For these, I kept them simple black & white and tried to make them look like chalkboards. 

The Reception:
Our centerpieces included wood rounds, which Ryan & one of his groomsmen made. We then topped the wood rounds with hand-crocheted doilies, that my grandma made. Flowers are expensive! So we went to a flower farm the morning before the wedding and picked out less expensive flowers and made the centerpieces ourselves. This was really fun because we got a bunch of our family together and worked on them. My family and friends helped me collect cheap flea market vases. We also included thank you cards on all the tables. I designed these up and made sure to include our cute wedding cats, which were a theme in our stationary. I have an obsession for cats, if you didn't already know, and Ryan proposed by tying the ring to our cats collar. So it felt fitting to include. I made the table numbers by printing white vinyl stickers and adhering them on one of the vases on each table.

Our wedding favors were CDs I made. I've been known with my friends to randomly make them CD mixes, so I felt it was appropriate to make a mix for our guests with all our wedding music. We made the cases using recycled cardboard and then used transfer pens with inkjet print designs. If you've never used/heard of transfer pens, you should look into it. They are amazing. You can basically transfer anything inkjet printed on a piece of paper to any surface. 

Some of our tables included custom wood signs that my sister painted and lace tablecloths that my grandma had. And Ryan & my chairs had wood signs hanging from the back that said "Mr" and "Mrs". I mad these by laser etching into the wood, just like our invitations.

Overall, I was very happy with how our decor turned out. I loved that you could see our personalities throughout and that our family and friends helped.