DIY (or Do-It-Yourself, if you’ve been living under a rock) details can bring heaps of personality to your event. The handmade look is “in” – but more than that, there’s a real sense of accomplishment when you look back at an event that just screams that you were the host. Details you created by hand can take your wedding from blah and everyday to unique, interesting, and personalized. And – sometimes, if they’re done right – they can save you money.
I am a huge supporter of DIY projects for weddings and events. But there’s a catch. If you want to Do It Yourself, you have to Do It Smart.
It’s a natural tendency. The insistence on being Superwoman (or Superman!), on taking everything on. We all do it. But it’s one of my jobs to alleviate stress for my clients, so I will always have the same advice:
Choose wisely, plan ahead, do a trial run, start early, leave plenty of time, work efficiently, embrace imperfections, be realistic about costs, and know when to go to plan B.
Okay, it’s not poetry. But trust me on this, it’s advice worth heeding. Unless you actually like to be stressed out, up working on projects all night right before your wedding or event, of course.
Choose wisely
While you might be painfully aware of every single detail that goes into your wedding or event, your guests only ever see the final product. They won’t notice if your tablecloths are the perfect shade to compliment the bridesmaids’ dresses. They won’t judge you for buying premade sweets for your buffet. They simply won’t care if you’ve hand-embroidered every napkin.
Oh, they’ll see the overall look. Some of your (more event savvy) guests might even notice a few of the special details. But as a rule, your guests only notice a fraction of what you put into your wedding or event; so choose your handmade details wisely.
I always ask my clients who are considering making the details themselves what they want most to see at their wedding or event. When in doubt, go for the visual impact – the big wow. I also ask whether they have any experience with the DIY project at hand. After all, baking and decorating a dozen cupcakes can be a challenge for someone who rarely cooks, but baking and decorating twelve dozen is tough even for the most experienced baker. Likewise any project that you haven’t done before has a 50/50 chance of being harder than it looks (I, for example, am a disaster at making cake pops, no matter how many tutorials I read or watch).
When discussing strategies with my clients for designing their wedding or event, I always suggest to take on only one or two DIY projects; with careful advance planning you can do more, but beware the totally normal tendency to try to do it all. Taking on too much might mean not getting it all done.
Plan ahead
French chefs are trained to cut first, cook second. Instead of searching frantically through drawers and cupboards for just the right spice as the dinner is bubbling away on the stove, they measure just the right amount of each ingredient into little nesting bowls, all laid out on their workspace, before turning on the stove.
The trick to a smooth DIY project is to prepare your own mise en place (“putting in place”). Read the instructions for your project, or figure out your plan of attack if it’s a totally unique idea. Read them again or sketch out exactly what you need. If you’ve heard the expression “measure twice, cut once,” that’s exactly what you need to do here. Especially if a project is brand new to you, the last thing you need is to get halfway through and realize you need to make a run to the store. Make yourself a shopping list and always get more supplies than you think you’ll need (if I’m making a dozen tissue paper flowers and my instructions say I need ten pieces of tissue paper per flower, I’m picking up 130 or 140 pieces; always better to have too much than too little, in a case like this!). Lay everything out on a nice stable, permanent surface, and expect to dedicate the surface to your project until it’s completed. And don’t forget to find a storage place for your finished project, before you start!
Do a trial run
I get a lot of questions from clients asking how long a project should take them to complete. There’s no short answer to this question, even if I’ve done the project a thousand times before. For example, it might take me twelve minutes, on average, to fold and fluff a tissue pouf. But I’ve made dozens of them, so I have the advantage of experience. I also have ripped dozens of them (it happens), and I know that certain tissue papers will be more cooperative than others. If I tell you that you should plan on 15 minutes apiece, that might be an excellent estimate. For me. But if you have less of an affinity for the project, you’re exhausted from a full day of work, or the tissue paper you’re using is particularly thick or thin, it might take you closer to an hour. Or you might get so frustrated by the whole thing that it just doesn’t happen at all.
To estimate how long a project will take you, to determine if you like the materials you’re using, and to make sure that you can even complete it at all (cake pops will never again be something I attempt!), you must do a trial. Get enough of the supplies to make a single trial piece, set a timer when you start, and go slowly to make sure you complete all the steps.
Start early
Of course your trial run will help you establish a ballpark figure for how long your DIY project will take. But a rule of thumb is that something is always going to happen to get in your way of finishing on time. I always, always, always suggest to my clients to estimate that their project will take twice as long as they think, and to plan accordingly. And, except for perishables, I strongly encourage them to plan on finishing no less than a week before the wedding or party (the earlier the better). That way if the family dog gets sick, or the Maid of Honor can’t make it to help, or the store is out of supplies, you won’t be in the weeds. You’ll just calmly pick up where you left off, a day or two after you’d anticipated, or add a day or two on to your finishing time.
Starting early has another advantage, too. You can tell before the-wedding-eve if you might have trouble finishing, and call in reinforcements (what’s the wedding party for, anyway?) or move on to the next item. And it’s an exceptionally satisfying feeling to look around you two weeks before an event and think, “I have no more DIY projects to do – I’m going to the movies!”
Leave plenty of time
This might sound redundant, but it goes hand-in-hand with starting early. Especially for weddings, the days leading up to the Big One can get hectic. Family comes into town. Nails and hair need doing, the dress needs one last fitting, the rehearsal needs rehearsing. It’s easy to overschedule.
Even for a social event, if you’re working a full-time job (full-time mommy is a job too!), or you have other obligations, it’s easy for time to slip away. Something I’ve learned to do is carve out large sections of time for projects, but even that can get tough. Leaving yourself plenty of time, solely dedicated to preparing your DIY projects, scheduled into your week, is the best way to ensure that you’ll be able to get it done.
Work efficiently.
You know how big manufacturing was revolutionized? The assembly line was invented. One person did the same thing over and over until all of the pieces for all of the items being manufactured were made. And only then (if ever) did they start on something else. The same principle should apply to any DIY projects you might have. It’s much faster to cut 100 strips of paper to use as belly bands for your invitations than it is to cut each strip individually, as you need it. And if you think “in bulk,” you’ll be inclined to think of things like minimizing the number of sheets you can cut at once while still maintaining quality, or how best to make the minimum number of cuts (I once received a “finished” piece from a designer that required four cuts per strip of paper, with little tiny stripes of white between each strip… I almost threw my paper cutter across the room!). You can use this principle to make backdrops or table runners, embellish details, and assemble just about anything solo.
But working efficiently can mean recruiting help, too. After all, what makes a project go faster than spreading around the workload? My favorite method for assembling boxed candy favors is to create an assembly line where one person folds boxes, another places paper shavings inside, a third adds one type of candy, a fourth another, a fifth closes each box securely, and a sixth ties a pretty bow or adds the sticker on the outside. Yes, it gets repetitive. But it ensures that everything is done consistently, quickly, and with minimum fuss. And it’s a heck of a lot more fun than putting everything together by yourself. This goes the same for assembling Out of Town bags, invitations, and a multitude of other repetitive tasks. It’s also a great way to involve people who might not be as artistically inclined – they can make precise cuts, count out exactly the number of candies that go in a box, or stick adhesive to an invitation, and still make a big contribution to your wedding or event, without you having to redo their work. That said, working efficiently means not redoing work – so if you worry that one of your loved ones might not be able to handle the task at hand, don’t assign it to them!
Embrace imperfections.
Handcrafted events are just that. Made by hand. Unless you’re secretly Martha Stewart (and if you were, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?), your DIY projects probably won’t look like they belong in a magazine. Especially the first time you make one.
But that’s okay.
In fact, it’s better than okay. It’s excellent.
You made this piece. With your own hands. How often can we really say that, in today’s grab-and-go world?
I think one of my favorite reasons to DIY is to just get my hands dirty. To feel the paint and the clay and the wood and the paper. It brings me joy. And it should bring you joy too. Remember art class in Kindergarten? Your project didn’t have to look perfect. It was perfect because you made it.
The same thing goes for your DIY projects. Unless you’ve been sewing, or painting letters on a sign, or making tissue paper poufs, since the age of three, you probably will need a lot of practice to just make something that doesn’t look like a mess. And even if it does… Who cares? You made it. Be proud of it. That’s the charm of “handmade” after all.
Be realistic about costs.
One of the biggest misconceptions people have about DIY projects is that they’re always less expensive than buying ready-made pieces, or hiring someone to make a piece for you.
I’d like to tell you that it’s true. But it’s not.
Between buying equipment (staple gun, paintbrushes, drill, paper cutter, sandpaper, etc.) and supplies (paper, wood, paint, ribbon, etc.), a simple-looking project can turn into a money pit. Many artisans can actually make a handcrafted project for you for less money (and in less time) than you could, because they already own the equipment, buy supplies in bulk, and know how to do the projects to ensure that they don’t waste anything.
This isn’t to say that you can’t create an inexpensive DIY piece. But if budget is really an issue, it pays to be extremely aware of the costs of all of your equipment and supplies before purchasing anything. Don’t forget to factor in extra supplies for your trial/learning.
Know when to go to Plan B.
Including beautiful handmade projects is a fantastic way to personalize your wedding. But not every project is for every person, even if you’re crafty. I learned this the hard way when I was making pipe cleaner Mickey Mouse ears for a friend’s Disneyland bachelorette party last year. I can whip out a tissue paper pom in no time, but twisting a simple pipe cleaner around a cup to make an attractive ear shape, and hot glueing it to a headband, was impossible.
I ended up making a lumpy, gluey mess.
Luckily my sister was on her way over and just happened to be a pipe cleaner Mickey Mouse ear prodigy (who knew?). The project that I’d been struggling with for an hour to make a single, awful-looking piece was done in forty five minutes. And she made twelve.
I share this story to demonstrate that no matter how crafty you might be, you might not be able to make your preferred project, no matter how hard you try. And in the event that you don’t have a crafty backup person whose strength just happens to be in the area of your weakness, you might have to come up with a backup plan.
Repeat this with me: It’s okay to use my backup plan.
If you’re struggling, slogging through hours of DIY without getting good results, getting angry at yourself and your supplies, or completely unhappy with your finished pieces, don’t forget it’s okay to stop. Set yourself a time limit or a specific date (at least a week prior to your wedding day) by which you must finish all your projects, so that you’re not still trying to furiously work on DIY projects at 3 am on the day of your wedding. Trust me on this one: it’s better to substitute your original plan with something more doable (buying or renting napkins instead of hand-embroidering them, hiring a graphic designer instead of creating your own invitations, or buying decorations instead of making them, for example) than to stress yourself out over finishing it.
I promise.
So if you do decide that you want to Do It Yourself, keep in mind the simple rules I laid out above. Choose wisely, plan ahead, do a trial run, start early, leave plenty of time, work efficiently, embrace imperfections, be realistic about costs, and know when to go to plan B. And don’t be afraid to ask for help, from a more experienced friend or family member, an online advice forum, or your wedding planner (who has probably already done this sort of thing!).
Oh, yes, and have fun! 🙂
Happy crafting!
Photography credits:
Events by Elisa 