Continue reading DIY Guilt DIY & DIT
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DIY Guilt
May
2008
When Aimee sent me the Save The Date cards that she and her fiance had come up with, she sent them with a little apology, a apology I think all DIY couples are way too familiar with. She said "We went the uber-casual/simple/inexpensive route with a postcard we made from a photo, here are our silly Save The Dates." And then I opened this awesomeness:
Continue reading DIY Guilt
Continue reading DIY Guilt
02
You Are Not A Bridal Island
Jun
2008
So, I've been thinking about "DIY Weddings," and I think that "Do It Yourself" can be a bit of a misnomer. The idea of a bride sitting at home doing everything on her wedding by herself makes me a little sad. Weddings can be one of the greatest excuses in our lives to get our communities together. Its a great time to get our kick *ss friends and our crafty family members together and helping out.The traditional wedding idea perpetually floated by the bridal media is that your wedding is a great day, because it's the day that you get to be a bridal dictator of your own bridal island. Ick! Who wants that? So lets collectively just skip the bridal dictatorship idea, and move on to something a little more healthy. How about instead of Do It Yourself weddings, we have Do It Together weddings? And since weddings are all about weird acronyms, we can call it DIT.
Continue reading You Are Not A Bridal Island
20
DIY Flowers – The Dry Run
Aug
2008
One of the cool things about our year and a half engagement is that we have lots of time to test things out. This week brought one of the wedding chores I have most been looking forward to - the DIY flower test. We went to the San Francisco Flower Mart to see what was in season in August, and then tried to figure out what the heck we were doing making bouquets.
First DIY lesson - when you are having friends and family helping out, it's key to be flexible. Our friend Beck, mistress of the flowers, couldn't make it. So at the last minute, my mom and I tried to figure out what the heck we were doing on our own. This video helped. Other then that we relied on trusting our eye and some carefully selected inspiration pictures. I'm pretty pleased with the results. (And don't worry, I won't bore you with long tales of gocco next. Generally I'm too lazy for intricate DIY projects, and I ask people to help.)
Continue reading DIY Flowers – The Dry Run
09
Amateur DIY Wedding Flower Tips
Sep
2008
Everyone seemed excited and interested by my DIY flower dry run, so I thought I’d post wildly unprofessional tips, tricks, and thoughts on floral decorating.
- Don’t be scared. I’m not sure how we got so convinced that flowers were scary, but flowers are not scary. People have been doing flowers for weddings for thousands of years.
- Forget this “I’m an amateur, I should do something really simple, and not mix flowers” idea. Where did we even get that?
- Pin up pictures of arrangements you like and let them inspire your decorating.
- Mix textures, mix flowers, mix color. Be brave.
- Use crazy flowers! And herbs! And spiky things! And leaves! And twigs! And feathers!
- Too much of just the colors you love will be bland, use something different to make it pop (yellow or white for dark colors work really well)
- Work in pairs. One person will be your eyes while you are the worker bee. Then switch.
- Remember scale. Just because you can afford to have flowers the size of your head doesn’t mean you want to have flowers the size of your head. Or maybe you do. Just remember that flowers are heavy.
- Make your peace with the fact that your flowers will not be perfect, and that you’ll need to make them the day before (hot tip: if you paid for the flowers they wouldn’t be perfect either, but you would pretend that they were).
- Every time you make something, sit back and guess how much a florist would have charged you for it “$75!” you’ll say, “No, maybe $150!” Then applaud your cost savings (feel free to be wildly inaccurate with these numbers).
- Throw a flower decorating party the day before your wedding. Provide lots of wine and/or tea. You are not there to be the flower slave driver, you are the guest of honor, and are there to be spoiled. Remember that.
- On your wedding day, enthusiastically throw that bouquet in the air on the way out the door. Forget having a “tossing bouquet.” After all, if you want your wedding bouquet later, you can just make a new one!
12
DIY versus the WIC
Nov
2008
A commenter wrote this on my recent post on economic uncertainty:I definitely have made sure not to buy into the WIC, but at the same time I don't think I can do the DIY route either. My new career is more travel intensive (and 8 weeks before our wedding it will be at its most intense period). I don't craft. I'm not a designer (I can barely sketch!) and I don't have friends or family who are designers or seamstresses. While I really like this post, I feel like the opposite of the WIC is the DIY movement. I guess I don't really feel part of either.
Continue reading DIY versus the WIC
23
Why I DIY
Nov
2008
This was Project Wedding Weekend. We shopped for wedding dress fabric, we put together our Save The Dates, we finished our wedding website. At one point, late on Saturday night, I looked around the living room and there were scraps of silk, stamps, card stock, and inspiration pictures all around us. It was such a happy feeling. It was my first moment of wedding planning where I thought - ah, this is what I've always dreamed of.Some moments from the weekend:
- I had lots of time as I sat hand addressing Save The Dates to think about our discussion about WIC vs DIY. Why do I DIY (or 'make stuff" as I call it in my head)? I realized sitting there that I make stuff because I want it to be mine, to be ours. I want something that's not a product someone marketing to us, but something we thought through and put together with our own hands. It was particularly nice to feel like we were sending something we'd thoughtfully created out to guests. It felt like sending them a little bit of us.
- Each time I walked into a fabric store someone would ask me "What project are you working on?" and I would flinch. I'm used to trying not to tell people that we're getting married in stores, because I hate that moment when it seems like dollar signs flash across their eyes. So, I sighed and said guardedly "we're shopping for fabric for my wedding dress." Each time there was a pause, and then shear un-guarded delight beamed from their face. "That's so wonderful!" they'd squeal, "Thats so exciting!" That reaction was reason enough to DIY. And if you ever go to Britex, look for Douglas on the silk and lace floor. He's my guy now. He told me, "When you find a fabric that speaks to you, that's your fabric. Just no point in looking after that." And he was right.
