There are plenty of great reasons to add some DIY flair to your wedding. DIY elements allow a couple to express their unique personalities at their wedding, show off their creative side, and save some money (and you can’t argue with that!). So if you’re looking to spice up your big day with some handmade elements, here are our predictions for the top DIY wedding trends for 2017:
- Potted Plants and Succulents
- Hand-Written Invitations
- Fashionable Bridal Accessories
- Surprising Favors
- Non-Traditional Guest Book
- Dance Floor Canopy
- Tagged Wedding Photos on Social Media
- Reception Music Playlist
- Dessert Bar
- Just married Car Sign
Floral centerpieces are beautiful, but they’re not the most practical element to have at a wedding. Cut flower arrangements are expensive and they’re hard for family or other guests to take home afterwards. And, if you’re planning a wedding that’s not climate-controlled, they can end up wilting and looking crummy. Plus, they don’t last very long! But instead of just forgoing live centerpieces altogether, potted plants and succulents offer a wonderful alternative. These can be purchased and prepared ahead of time and then simply placed on tables the day of the wedding without fuss or hassle. Feel free to dress up potted plants with ribbon, colored foil, or anything else that makes them worthy of taking center stage on guests’ tables.
Formal invitations can be one of the most expensive parts of planning a wedding. Between the invitations themselves, pre-addressed envelopes, the response cards, the matching thank you cards, and any other stationary add-ons that you may get, costs can end up soaring. Instead of buying all of these elements, why not hand-write some of them yourself to save on costs and add a more personal touch? You can hand-address invitations to guests and easily create cute DIY response cards for about as much time as it takes to create them online and much less money!
Bridal accessories like hair adornments, garters, and jewelry are so expensive when you get them in bridal shops, but many of these elements can be made without much fuss. If you don’t feel crafty enough to make them yourself, ask a friend, your Mom, or your mother-in-law to do the honors. This is a great way to invite someone close to you to put their stamp on your big day.
The favors that you can order off of a wedding favor website are fine, but they typically don’t say much about the newlyweds. And guests have likely seen all of them before at previous weddings. Instead of just picking something unoriginal and meaningless, choose a more personal favor that you can create yourself. Find really cute little boxes or tins and fill them with something you both love, like gourmet coffee, cinnamon candies, or flavored olive oil.
The days of the stuffy old guest book are gone! These days couples are opting guest book substitutes like framed canvases, their favorite children’s book, wooden furniture, or mock passports that guests can sign. These create a keepsake that couples actually want to have around their home after the wedding and may actually look at years later.
Create a special ambiance on the dance floor by taking strings of lights and sheer fabric and making a DIY canopy over the dance floor. It’s an easy and quick way to create a romantic setting on the guest floor an encourage people to get out there for those slow dances.
More and more these days, people are forging the expense of a wedding photographer in favor of crowd sourcing photos. Asking guests to take lots of pictures and post them on social media with a themed hashtag or with the newlyweds tagged is a great way to get lots of pictures from many different perspectives. Then, all you have to do is sort through the images and find the ones that you like best to get printed or turn into a keepsake coffee table book.
A DJ is a great asset to any wedding, but if you don’t have the money in the budget to hire someone professionally, you can use the time leading up to your wedding to create a playlist for the reception. Include all of your favorite classic dance songs as well as current jams that will get guests moving and then vary them from slow to fast to keep it lively.
No wedding is complete without a wedding cake, but that doesn’t mean that your guests will want to eat whatever you’ve picked out. Consider doing a dessert bar in addition to offering cake to give guests more options. You can do something fun like an ice cream sundae bar, cookie buffet, or anything else that will get people’s mouths watering. This is a great way to keep kids interested too if you plan on inviting a lot of families to your big day.
There are tons of great templates and tutorials online to make a really beautiful “Just Married” banner to hang from the car that the bride and groom will take to leave the reception. They’re relatively simple to make and are very versatile throughout the reception. For instance, before hanging the banner from the car, you can hang it behind the head table to get it in the background of any pictures that are taken of the couple during the meal, or on the outdoor luxury restroom trailer to add some newlywed cheer to every last element of the wedding.
Kerkstra Luxury Portable Restroom Service Inc. provides portable restroom service across Michigan and luxury restroom trailers for all of the states surrounding the Great Lakes. Take a look at our mobile restroom trailers and request a quote today!