With many couples now eschewing the tradition of having their parents pay for their wedding, saving money is more important than ever. Brides and grooms are now choosing to DIY many elements of their wedding, so today we’re featuring some of our favourite DIY wedding ideas to give you some inspiration!

Candy Buffet

This has been a really popular option for weddings in the past number of years, but if you can’t afford to pay a couple of hundred euros to have someone create a professional candy buffet at your reception, you could give it a go yourself with some help from friends and the staff at your venue. While many suppliers will display the candy on a cart, you could just use a table from the venue and decorate it with a colourful table cloth that matches your wedding theme. See if the venue has any boxes or crates you can stack underneath the cloth to create different heights to place jars and bowls on. You can get some great jars in discount stores and IKEA; and if you know of someone with an account at a cash and carry, ask them nicely if you can use this to buy boxes of your favourite sweets. For a really impressive and professional look, work with your colour scheme and use sweets in varying shades of that colour, or decorate the jars and bowls with ribbons in your theme colour. Don’t forget scoops or spoons for the jars, and paper bags for people to collect their sweets in. You could also jazz the table up with LOVE signs, balloons and tealights, or even a personalised poem.

 

 

‘Will you be my bridesmaid/groomsman’ kits

Ask your bridesmaids and groomsmen to be part of your big day with cool DIY gift boxes. A heavy duty cardboard or a wooden box can be filled with colourful tissue paper or raffia, and filled with the following:

For the girls

• mini bottle of champagne
• necklace or bracelet
• nail polish in the colour scheme of the wedding
• votive candle

For the guys

• mini bottle of whiskey
• cufflinks
• socks
• bottle opener

On the inside lid of the box, decorate with the question ‘Will you be my…?’

 

 

Photo Booth

If you can’t afford to splash out for a photobooth, set up a stand with a polaroid camera that also saves the images to a digital file you for to keep but lets your guests keep their polaroid as a keepsake; or alternatively ask them to take two photos and stick one of the pictures to a pinboard for you to take home after the wedding. You can get great props online or in joke shops such as mustaches, crowns, silly glasses and noses, feather boas and signs.

 

 

Do you have any great DIY wedding ideas? Share them with us here!