r/DIYweddings

I'm getting married next spring and we're trying to keep costs reasonable while still having the wedding look nice. My fiance and I are paying for everything ourselves, so every dollar matters. Our venue is beautiful but pretty bare-bones. We're responsible for all the decor, linens, and tableware.

Started getting quotes for table settings and nearly passed out. Charger plates alone were $3-5 per plate to rent. We need 150 of them. That's $450-750 just for decorative plates that sit under the actual plates. For one day. Felt absolutely ridiculous.

I looked into buying them outright and reselling after. Checked party supply stores, restaurant supply shops, HomeGoods, anywhere I could think of that might have bulk options.

Did a deep dive comparing prices and quality levels. Looked at plastic, acrylic, real metal. Even browsed wedding charger plates on Alibaba while trying to understand the full market.

Found acrylic chargers that looked like silver or gold metal for about $2 each in bulk. Ordered 150 for around $300 total including shipping. They arrived last week and honestly looked way better than I expected. Substantial weight, nice finish, don't look obviously cheap.

Even if I can't resell them after the wedding, I still spent less. And if I do manage to sell them for even $1 each on Facebook Marketplace, I've saved even more.

My mom thinks I'm crazy for buying instead of renting, but the math makes sense to me. Plus I'm not stressed about breaking or losing rental items.

Anyone else buy wedding stuff instead of renting?

Hi all so I am getting married in October and will be doing my own makeup…I’m nervous but all the MUAS are booked or way outta budget so we’re makin it work! I need any and ALL the advice/tips/product suggestions you guys have. I am going for like a soft glam look, want flash lashes (notttt great at these pls help) and a glossy brownish lip. My normal routine is skincare, brow gel, mascara, concealer under my eyes, powder all over, powder bronzer bronzer all over and some powder blush lol i will do some eyeshadow on fancy nights but nothing crazy. i want to wear somethinggg on my skin like a skin tint or something? I have never in my life worn foundation so I don’t wanna go full coverage but want to even out my skin tone and have a lil something extra. Pls help 😭

Asking because I’m genuinely confused where to invest.

So far I already have DIY’d wedding invites (will print from Canva and ordered custom envelopes) and the wedding video. I have tried to print (from Canva) fan shaped information cards and then cut them on Cricut but the positioning is very hard to achieve so I’ve wasted some of them (I only ordered a few to test).

Now me confusion is;

Do I DIY the wedding menus, the information cards and place cards by purchasing a good printer that can handle up to 350gsm paper and use the Cricut to cut (I tired the print and cut function and it worked but my printer printed horribly). This also involves buying all the materials (paper).

OR do I just get the fans and everything else printed by a professional which will be how much I end up paying for materials, printer (need better quality with rear tray) and my time and effort (might cost extra?).

Hi all,

I am trying to decide if a MOC is worth it ($2500, on top of having already paid $8k for a venue fee). For context, the venue is very blank space style. We are doing DIY flowers, and 3D printing items for our table scapes. Trying to avoid buying disposable, new junk as much as possible in favor of making and doing as much as we can.

Our venue mainly offers the coordinator with the explanation that they take over all vendor contacts the month of, give you an extra staff member the day of, and will allow you to early drop off of decor/day after pick up. They handle linens, tables, chairs, etc separately as part of the contract, independently of this.

My issue is that I want to do DIY flowers as our primary decor, and the venue will not any touch flower objects as part of any decor set up unless you use their in-house florist. I LIKE and enjoy doing flower arranging, so this is really important to me. To me, this guts most of the value of this service, since some of us will still have to go over to set up our primary decor items and any arch flowers that I DIY.

Other context:

- New England wedding, early October

- Venue requires us to use their coordinator, if we hire any planning/coordinator at all. So no flexibility to hire a day of person.

- Caterer, rental co, and DJ are well acquainted with the venue and handle their own set ups

- We can technically afford the $2.5k, but I’d apply it toward subsidizing bridesmaid hair and makeup, favors for guests, or helping sponsor a hotel for some of our lower income relatives if not spending the money on a MOC.

- 6 bridesmaids, one of which is a brides-bro so I don’t think he will take long to get ready. 5/6 are traveling to attend.

- Fiancé had 6 groomsmen. 4/6 traveling to attend.

- We are all getting ready 10 minutes from the venue, so we are thinking it might not be so bad for a subset of us to do the quick set up. I’m thinking groomsmen do this, and then bridesmaids and I pop over quickly to make sure we are happy with it.

- We have four hours before the event and one hour after for setup/breakdown.

- Night after, staying ten minutes away the same hotel. I think it would be fast to clear arrangements into totes with family and friends at the end of the night?

- I am a super type A, organized professional in my day job, so I am not worried about organizing/locking down vendor timelines early

- My MOH is married and this isn’t her first rodeo; she can definitely help out as a day of point person. I have other close friends who can also.

- All family and most guests traveling from out of state. Many of the in state guests (~20%) of wedding that we co-organize events with are also willing to help out.

- Wedding is outside, with venue provided bathroom trailer, so there aren’t buildings that are locked that vendors need to get in and out of.

Thoughts? It just seems like a TON of money for not actually getting most of my decor set up anyway. Also, given that we have DIY flowers, I assume those would be better in a cool hotel room for as long as possible before being put out anyway. The main issue I foresee is if anything goes wrong with vendors.

Hi there!

My fiancé and I had an idea for our wedding, but I am not sure if anyone has executed this before or has any advice on how plausible this is.

We are getting married in a restored theater with about 150-200 people and the ceremony will be up on the stage. We wanted to do something special in honor of our loved ones who have passed away, so our idea is to have an “in memory”/dedication table at the entrance where guest walk in and have buckets of flowers and two large vases. The idea is to have each guest in memory of those who have passed to place a flower in one of the vases, which will create arrangements that are made by our loved ones and friends. We will then have one of our moms carry the vases up to the stage to stand on pedestals on either side of us to symbolize the presence of our passes loved ones with us on the special day.

I am already a very DIY bride and have been looking into getting wholesale flowers and DIYing bouquets anyway, but my only hesitation for this plan is that I would likely need someone to help spruce up the arrangements if they feel wonky or imbalanced.

If someone has done something similar or any florist with insight into if this feels feasible, I’d love any advice!

I just shared a post about not wanting my sister to be a bridesmaid after she helped plan my engagement party because it was so stressful. (Feel free to go read it)

People are downvoting all my comments and I think it’s because I said I’m a DIY bride and want my bridesmaids to help me (my friends have offered to help because we all help each other and we love each other like that). Multiple people have said I’m expecting free labor or expect them to be “slaves” and now I don’t know what to think.

I just wanted support about something unrelated and now I feel like I’m an asshole. Am I?

As a DIY bride, do you have people in your lives that are willing to help or do you ever feel like you’re making them do things they don’t want?

Curious what people think about this…

Would you actually use an app where you can scan your wedding venue and it builds a to-scale layout so you can plan tables and seating?

Or is seating not that big of a pain?

I had a very diy wedding in March, and pretty much everything that could go wrong went wrong. I’m less upset about those things going wrong than with feeling abandoned by my family in the midst of everything, particularly because I had this wedding for them (my first mistake, obviously) and because I’ve always dropped everything to help them. I love my husband and I’m so glad to be married to him, and I just want to get over this wedding grief of the lost dream day and feeling abandoned by my family because I recognize it’s not worth crying over (and I have cried every day since and feel a gaping void in me…).