Our Charmeng Wedding: The 411 on the DIY

Reliving the wedding is so fun, but in order to truly appreciate our wedding (for me, at least) I wanted to make sure to document all the small details of our wedding. Well, honestly, this post is all about the “do-it-yourself” items that I slaved over for the wedding, but I really feel like I didn’t do THAT many things. I’m constantly amazed at how creative and crafty some of these brides are. I see pictures of DIY brides weddings, and some of them look so professionally made that I’m in disbelief. But not to diminish any of the work that I did, I wanted to share them with you. Keep in mind that my strength is not craftiness. And some of these things I like to call semi-DIY, meaning someone else made all the elements and I (and my team of dedicated volunteers) put it together.

Unity Candle:

Our moms walked in with the side candles, which is why there is no side candles, but they were plain white candles.

Ceremony Programs:

You can see our tears of joy packets inside

Reserved signs:

A total last minute decision. I think they turned out cute.

The ring bearers’ pillows made by John’s sister/bridesmaid:

I didn’t want plain white pillows, and these matched our colors beautifully!

Cocktail coasters:

My fellow knottie Marion helped me stamp what felt like a million of them.

Cocktail table center pieces:

Escort envelopes

Menu placecards

Table Numbers

Reception programs

Then there were the things that we didn’t have professionally photographed:

Bridesmaid Newsletter:

Save the dates:

Rehearsal dinner invite:


Our invitations:

Note:The bad bride that I was, I forgot to bring an invitation to our wedding, and have no professional pictures of our invitation. But I have many talented friends who have offered to photograph our invites, I just need to bring it to them one of these days. So unfortunately, I won’t have professional pictures of my invites, and I can’t share how much we slaved over assembling them!

Guestbook pens & holder:

Reception signs

That pretty much sums up all the things that I slaved over. You know, when you put it in a list like this, it really doesn’t look like much. I was engaged for 18 months, and this is everything I did. And for the most part, I wouldn’t change a thing! Something I found funny is that when my photographer posted my teasers on her blog, she put that my colors were black, white and red. Obviously, those weren’t our colors. I thought I integrated the brown, red, and ivory throughout our wedding, but looks like I didn’t! Or maybe she just saw that the groomsmen tuxes were black with red vests, and assumed that my colors must be black, red and white. Oh well, I liked it.