Posts Tagged ‘Budget Wedding’

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

Posted in: DIY & DIT, How To, Life, Meg's Thoughts, Planning, Weddings | 36 Comments »

Sep 2008

Amateur DIY Wedding Flower Tips

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!

Posted in: DIY & DIT, How To | 17 Comments »

Jan 2009

How To Make A Wedding Dress

Remember how I said that experience arranging flowers was not necessary for doing your wedding flowers? Well, I still think that. However, when it comes to sewing a wedding dress, I think experience is a very very good thing. If you've never sewn a dress before, go out and sew a few. Figure out what you are doing, and then decide if you want to take on your wedding dress. It's not an impossible project, not at all, but it's complicated, and takes skill. My sister, my mother and I (and yes, David too) tackled Project Wedding Dress over Christmas break. It was more complicated and more time consuming than we expected (of course). It lead to Project Runway like, down to the wire, midnight sew-offs. And, in the end, it was far more rewarding than I'd ever imagined. The dress isn't quite done yet, and I reserve the right to complain about it later (remember that!) Sadly, you are not going to see the finished project till August, I'm afraid, just hints and whispers. But! I've had requests to walk you through the process, so here we go! Step 1: Pick Your Pattern

Continue reading How To Make A Wedding Dress

Posted in: How To, Life, Meg's Thoughts, Style, Weddings | 73 Comments »

May 2009

How To: DIY Wedding Photography

I’ve been meaning to write about alternatives to professional wedding photography for ages, but this week I got two emails on the subject, and I decided it was time for us to chat. Here is the thing: I love photography as an art form, and wedding photography was really high on my list of priorities. BUT! I do not think that professional wedding photography is for everyone, and I don’t think it needs to be. Here is a snippet of an email I got this week:

We’re getting married in 4 weeks, and yesterday I made the daft mistake of going for lunch with a lovely friend who is getting hitched in a few months. We’re having very different styles of wedding, but both really excited for each other. Here’s the problem: over a cup of green tea, she confided in me that she is really worried about our decision not to have a professional photographer. She has a couple of friends of friends who did the same and now regret it. She was dead serious, very concerned for me, and encouraged me to reconsider, and even though I was sure we’d made the right decision for us, I’m now fretting. We decided not to have a wedding photographer because:

We have loads of friends who are handy with a digital SLR. We’ve put together a list of important shots for the big day, and will divide them up, so nobody has to take more than 5 key shots (they have already agreed). Is this a mad idea?
The cost of the photos would add an extra 10% to the wedding budget, and we don’t want to get into debt. And frankly the average price of wedding photography makes me feel unwell.
We’re applying the infinite monkey theorem, whereby if we have enough people taking photos, we’re bound to get some album-worthy shots.
My parents’ photo album is really 70s, only has about 30 photos in it,* but is beautiful, and to be honest that would be good enough for me. Continue reading How To: DIY Wedding Photography

Posted in: Ask Meg, Budget, How To, Meg's Thoughts, Weddings | 88 Comments »

Sep 2009

How To DJ Your Wedding With An Ipod

From day one we knew we were going to DJ our own wedding, mostly because we *could.* As far as we were concerned, ipod’s were a small gift from the wedding gods. Halfway through the planning process though, I started to get nervous about our ipod DJ plan. You see, David and I like to dance, or more precisely we like to daaaaaaaaaaaaannnncccceeee. If you’re playing dancing music, you will not be able to get me off the dance floor. The hora? Hip-hop? The electric slide? I’m there. Heck, I’ll do country line dances, and I’ll lead a dance floor full of people in a funky Macarana if I’m forced into it. So I started to get very concerned, because people said, without a DJ there is no flow, without a DJ there is no energy, without a DJ people will take over your play list, without a DJ you have to work at your own wedding.

In sum: without a DJ, no one will dance. And I believe the technical term for that story is Bullsh*t. Continue reading How To DJ Your Wedding With An Ipod

Posted in: DIY & DIT, How To | 94 Comments »

Oct 2009

How To Do Your Own Wedding Flowers

First of all, let me be clear. As far as I'm concerned there are two ways to do your own wedding flowers. The first option is to do your own bouquets, and skip the rest. The second is to do your own bouquets and all your own arrangements. These are two totally different projects. While flower arranging is never scary, bouquets are a pretty easy project. Heck, you can pick up the flowers at Trader Joe's and be done with it. If you're taking this option, please don't listen to all the, "You can't, you can't, bouquets are HARD you'll be too STRESSED" nonsense. They are not hard and you will not be stressed.

If, like me, you are taking on the whole kit-and-caboodle, that is another thing all together. Not a scary thing, but a big thing. For our wedding we made 5 bouquets, 50ish small centerpieces, 6 bigger square centerpieces, 6 tall centerpieces, and an ENORMOUS arrangement in a bucket. So if you're counting at home, we did about 70 pieces. And it was fine. In fact, most of the time it was pretty fun. But if you are taking this on, it should be one of your *few* big wedding projects. There are some who are stronger than me who can do their own flowers and self cater at the same time without breaking a sweat, but I wouldn't recommend that to us mere mortals.

Continue reading How To Do Your Own Wedding Flowers

Posted in: DIY & DIT, How To | 63 Comments »