They say that getting married is one of the most expensive lifetime events that you will experience. It’s up there with buying a new house and car, believe me!

To reign in the costs we sat down and assessed how much money we had to spend and allocated funds where we thought that we should spend the most, such as the reception, flowers, photographer and my dress (of course!!). Where we could we did a lot of the stuff ourselves and bought a lot of wedding paraphernalia very cheaply on eBay and similar websites.

The thought of DIY-ing bits of your wedding may sounds scary at first, especially as this is supposed to be the most perfect day of your life. Anything out of place would be anyone’s worst nightmare and I personally felt that everything would be scrutinized. However, I actually quite enjoyed all of my wedding DIY projects as it was a chance to put our own personal stamp on our wedding day. Also, a lot of the props we bought are now scattered around our home as little mementos of our special day.

In this post I thought I would share with you some of my DIY projects and some of the bits and bobs I bought for the wedding and how they are being used in our home.

Wedding Card Box

Rather than the standard decorated cardboard box for our wedding card box we wanted something a little bit different. Our reception venue offered us their own card box which was a wishing well, but this really didn’t fit in with our vintage theme so we opted to make out own.

I had seen on some wedding blogs the use of old battered suitcases as card boxes and I was adamant that we would have one at our wedding too. I scoured high and low mainly on eBay and spotted a poor dilapidated tan leather suitcase that needed a new home, for a mere £10. I then covered the interior with a pretty floral fabric, added some accessories to decorate it and a luggage label with “Wedding Cards” written on the front.

We really love the way it turned out and our guests seemed to appreciate the extra effort we had gone too. The suitcase is now used to store all of wedding cards, messages and keepsakes from the day which we will cherish forever.

Sweetie Buffet

Now forget the Cookie Monster, my husband is a Sweetie Monster and is quite partial to Haribo in particular. It was almost inevitable that we would have sweets at our wedding. After spotting the wonderful sweetie buffets of Leonie Gordon we decided to base our own on her designs.

Luckily there was a sweet cash and carry nearby where we lived so we headed there to get our supplies. It was great getting all of the sweets at cost price. All of the huge vases were bought from TK Maxx some as cheap as £5. I picked up some ribbon that matched our colour scheme from Hobby Craft and picked out the broaches and props from eBay.

With very little effort we created a lovely sweetie table that everyone enjoyed! We had lots of comments on it. To save even more money and to prevent filling up our tables with clutter we made the sweetie buffet our wedding favour and provided our guests with cute paper bags to take sweets home in.

Menus, name place cards and seating plan

We also made our own wedding stationary such as menus and name place cards for very little money. It was easy to find a template of a wedding breakfast menu on line- we wanted the menus to be folded inside the napkins. Then it was off to Hobby Craft again for some card stock to print out the menu. It does take a little bit of tie to perfect the design and margins, but it’s so worth it to produce something that is personal to you. We used luggage labels for our name place cards made out of recycled card. Each guest left a message on the back of their label and we have kept every single one.

The seating plan was also something that we felt that we wanted to so ourselves that was unique to us. We have lots of pictures around our home so decided to put each seating plan in an individual vintage frame which we picked up from TK Maxx.

The picture frames are being put to good use and we have placed some of our favourite pictures form the wedding in them, making a collage on the wall. The previous family that lived in our house left a load of screws all grouped together on the wall, so we thought we might as well copy their idea.

Wedding Breakfast Music

We had a lot of live music at our ceremony and evening reception which everyone loved. Even though we got some great deals on out live musicians we didn’t want blow the entire budget on music. Rather than having live music during our wedding breakfast meal we made up a CD of our favourite songs. I often go back to this playlist and it evokes so many different emotions and memories from the day.

Veil and head band

Our budget crunching ideas didn’t stop there! There are many brides looking to pass parts of their wedding day outfit to make some money. Although I could never part form anything from mine, that didn’t stop me buying someone else’s.

I always knew that I wanted to wear a veil and put some vintage sparkle in my hair. After trying on a few veils in the same bridal boutique I bought my dress from I found this gorgeous scalloped edged veil with crystal droplets. I was in love; however the £145 price tag put me off. I couldn’t justify spending that amount of money on essentially a piece of netting I will never wear again no matter how beautiful it was. Instead I picked up exactly the same style of veil and of the same quality on eBay for £42!! It had been worn only once by the previous bride and she wanted to get rid of it. Happy days!

My heart strings have been pulled many times over the beautiful Jenny Packman head pieces, however some come in at £300. I found an alternative Matthew Williamson side tiara that had been bought by a bride but never worn again on eBay for £10.50. I know a good bargain when I see one! =)

Guest Book

We also wanted something different for our wedding guest book.  I found a lovely fingerprint tree on eBay and snapped it up straight away.  Nearly everyone added their print to the tree and signed their name.  It is now framed and lives in our dining area.  We think it turned out really well.

Final Tips

Remember to barter! Alfie is extremely good at bartering so he put his skills into practice a lot and it really paid off as we got a lot of discounts on most of our suppliers. Don’t be embarrassed to barter as you won’t be the first one to try it.

Take advantage of who you know. We had a big band at our wedding that actually belongs to our university. Due to our affiliation with the university we got a massive discount and everyone really loved the atmosphere the live music brought to the evening.

Check out any recommendations made to you. Our wedding co-ordinator actually recommended a DJ for the evening reception. We took a chance and enquired and mentioned that we had been referred to him by our wedding co-ordinator and scored a discount!

Are you getting married or are married?  How are you/did you find it trying to stick to a budget?