DIY wedding decorations on a budget
Searching Pinterest for some DIY wedding decorations on a budget and endlessly pinning beautiful images? The thought of decorating your venue might be exciting or it might be daunting, but I have some great ideas to share with you that are super easy to recreate and you can shop straight from this post. Here's what we did for our wedding decor, the wedding themes, and I promise you it's budget-friendly.
those Pinterest hangers
I was in search of pretty Pinterest wedding decorations on a budget, like DIY hangers for the photographs of my dress so we ordered some wooden hangers and my sister, who does pyrography already, used this pyrography kit to write our names on the hangers. We did 'Bride', 'Groom', 'Bridesmaid' or you could do people’s names.
ring box, keepsakes + thank you gifts
To keep our rings safe before they were slipped onto our fingers, I found this little wooden box with a sliding lid which was ideal for the Bestman to hand over and Minister to get into. Again, I asked my sister to help and printed out our wedding crest and date so she could trace it onto the box. She then varnished it and we used it in the ceremony. We were going to pass it around and ask people to bless the rings but there wasn't really enough time on the day. The box is a lovely keep-sake and now sits on my dresser.
For thank you gifts, we stuck to our Iceland and Scottish wedding themes and got a bunch of personalized gifts and cards which we hand wrote. We also wanted to give a little gift to the people who had helped us throughout our wedding preparations, something small but on the theme for our Icelandic-Scottish nuptials. I found these cute golden deer broaches and ordered a load of them. I wrapped them in green tissue paper, matching all the other gifts, and found little wooden boxes to present them in.
wedding hall decoration + wall hangings
Our wedding hall decoration needed to be done relatively quickly so took a bit of forward planning. For the tables, we kept things pretty simple and used a lot of ivy found on site, this didn't distract from our wedding themes but added simplicity to the decor and didn't cost us anything. The table linen was all white, we hired gold chairs with green cushions and everything was tied together with the wedding calligraphy font. The wedding room decoration had to conceal the large cupboards on all four walls so we looked into easy, budget-friendly ways of concealing them. I wanted to create a wall hanging to cover the cupboards and drape ivy down the sides, framing some calligraphy. The fabric was too heavy and worked out expensive so, after trying a few other options, we opted for paper. I ordered a large flip chart from Amazon and found some garden canes to hang the ivy from. Wedding room decoration is done.
First, the paper was taped over the cupboards concealing them, then we hung the canes from the ceiling on fishing wire and wrapped the ivy around them so it fell to either side, framing it. Using our wedding calligraphy font, I printed out some wedding-themed words and phrases to decorate the wall hangings and we stuck them to the paper. With a few extra pairs of hands, we had them up n no time - so simple, relatively inexpensive but very effective.
the cake topper
The wedding cake, made by my wonderful sister-in-law, sat on a table at the top of the room with a wall hanging behind it. The three-tier marble cake, Ingimar, and my favorite were simply iced and decorated very with a few flowers to match my bouquet. The cake topper was a simple laser cut 'Mr & Mrs' sign and we added in some artificial thistles too. Around the cake sat my bouquet, the Icelandic drinking horn, ring box, and some horseshoes given for good luck.
our table plan
The table plan was displayed on a table as you entered the reception. Guests’ names were typed onto a list, under their table number, and this was stuck onto small blackboard signs. As an architect and lover of model making, I designed the table plan to look like an abstract landscape of lava rocks brought from Iceland, dried moss from my Mum’s garden, and sticks from Netherurd. Scattered amongst the lava were little scale people tying in my love of architecture - the Icelandic and Scottish landscape - and a little bit of fun.
table numbers
For the table numbers, we used these blackboard signs on sticks and a chalk pen to write the numbers on. These sat in the middle of the table alongside a lava rock with some dried moss glued onto it, a glass with some fun icebreaker questions or dares in, a circular length of Icelandic knitting, a branch of ivy, a reused wine bottle for water with our wedding crest as its label and a bottle of white and red wine.
name place cards
As this is something I offer in my shop, I have a lot of experience creating other people’s wedding calligraphy so it was fun to now do my own. Our name place cards were written on kraft gift tags with little scale people glued on. I had written out all of the names and organized the scale people and tags per table a few weeks before the wedding so the day before, all we had to do was glue dots down the scale people to match the names.
Self-taught in lettering, I recommend the Nib + Ink book to help you learn calligraphy and brush lettering.
polaroids + guestbook
Outside the main room was the bar area where people could gather and chat. This is where we put the guestbook and our 'photo booth' area for polaroid fun. I ordered a Paperchase kraft scrapbook for our wedding guestbook and hand drew our wedding crest onto the front cover and added the date of our wedding. People could take their own polaroid pictures and stick them into the book, signing with their wedding wishes. The props were leftover from my hen weekend so we put them out in glasses and left the FujiFilm camera (with spare film) out for people to use.
our fingerprint tree
Breaking away from the norm of a fingerprint tree, we had a fingerprint wreath which I drew and personalized with names in the middle and the date of our wedding day. Guests could add a leaf to the wreath by stamping their fingerprint and signing their name beside it. I bought two blocks of green ink pads for people to create their leaf - make sure to leave out some baby wipes so people can clean the ink off their fingers.
a sweetie bar
The current trend at all weddings but we weren't going to say no to sweets. For the kids, and adults alike, we had a sweetie bar where you could pick-n-mix a selection of treats and take them away in a little paper bag. Aside from this, we had wedding cake, dessert, chocolate champagne truffles, and Scottish tablet - we covered all bases.
It took a few lists, a couple of Amazon orders, a dining room full of boxes, and a few extra hands on deck to pull it all together but the end result was ace, we nailed our wedding decorations on a budget and loved it. It was everything we wanted, full of our own touches - so personal.