By Jacquie DeSisto
The latest wedding crazes seem to center around Do-It-Yourself everything. When I got engaged I had a friend who gave me one piece of advice – if you didn’t do it in the first six months, it’s not getting done. Josh and I completed a few DIY projects, but she was right: A lot of the big projects we planned to complete that weren’t done in the first six months, never got done.
I took on three major DIY projects during the wedding, two with A LOT of help from professionals.
Photo Project
I really wanted all of our family and friends to feel like they were a special part of the wedding and I thought we could celebrate the start of our marriage by recognizing the wonderful role models we have all around us. Therefore, when we sent out the Save the Dates, I included an insert card asking family members to please send me a picture from their wedding day. We received close to 40 pictures that we printed, framed, labeled, and placed around the venue. Everyone really enjoyed finding their pictures and seeing others. It was a great way for everyone to get to know each other and was so much fun to see weddings through the years!
Invitations, Escort Cards and Programs
On this particular project I had to hire an expert, Design by Sofia. As we looked for invitations, we had a terrible time finding exactly what we wanted and they were often incredibly expensive. Sofia allowed us to design our own invitation from scratch using the exact font, colors and paper we wanted. Not many invitation companies offered black invitations, but she made them look elegant and exciting!
The invitations had a pocket inside that held all of the pieces, and the black and white stripe theme with our monogram was carried through to every single paper product. This included the escort cards and programs that Sofia also designed and several other items I designed myself, such as the bottom of the photobooth strips, the cards marking the desserts, signs for the DJ and social media hashtags, and our SnapChat filter. Our favor — a bottle of hand sanitizer since Josh and I are germ-o-phobes — even had a matching label!
Flowers
You might remember my aunt Gail did all of the arrangements for my bridal shower. Well, she also did every single flower arrangement, bouquet and boutonnière for the wedding. I think she worked for 48 hours straight putting everything together, not to mention all of the prep work. Brides handling their own flowers is also a new trend, and one that saved us a lot of money. However, I needed the help of someone who really knew what they were doing. Gail said that putting together the arrangements isn’t the hard part. The hard part is knowing which flowers to choose.
Since Josh and I were married in August there were not many flowers in season. Those in season tend to be desert flowers that thrive in the August heat, so they have a rustic look to them. With a preppy wedding theme, we relied heavily on the always classic rose in different varieties, and some other surprises like hypericome berries, orchids, and lots of greens. We were able to grow a lot of the greenery ourselves in the gardens of family members and we jazzed up the arrangements by spray painting and adding glitter to some of the heartier plants. The real crown jewel of my bouquet was the pink peonies, my favorite, that my aunt purchased from a grower in Alaska. Right now, I am attempting to dry the flowers from my bouquet and our cake in silica gel. I hope it works out!
