4

Oct

2013

Diary of a Boho Bride – Louise and Chris, Entry 1: To DIY or not to DIY?

diary of a boho bride

This afternoon it’s the turn of the lovely Louise to take her place on the Blog. Last week we heard from Kate as she discussed her dream wedding vs her reality wedding and it seemed to strike a chord with a few of you! Today Louise discusses DIY weddings and whether she can see her self as a DIY bride or not. As you know I am a big supporter of DIY weddings on the blog, but not everyone is crafty, or handy with a needle and cotton! Some people’s idea of hell would be an afternoon crafting and getting cakes made for their big day! So today Louise discusses her journey with being a DIY bride and where she is with it all. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, are you a lover of DIY or does it scare you silly and just stress you out even more?
You can read Louise and Chris’s full introduction post HERE 

Louise and Chris

 

I’ll pass the Blog over to Louise……….

So, to D.I.Y or not to D.I.Y? The modern couple’s dilemma I reckon. Especially with the rise and rise of wedding blogs; we see weddings that look fabulous on a minimal budget and of course, we want to get in on the act ourselves; I mean who doesn’t want to save a couple of grand?

As you will have seen from my introductory post, we didn’t want to get married in an identikit hotel and I think it’s safe to say that Kelham Island Museum is pretty unique and in fairness, I think we could get away with minimal decoration as the venue does speak for itself but please note, I probably am the Queen of the half-finished DIY project. (Note, the balls of wool cluttering up my shelves when I had my crochet phase last Autumn, the cross stitch the Autumn before and oh yeah, that sewing machine that gathered dust for a few years….) and the beginning of our wedding planning, I wanted to do ABSOLUTELY everything ourselves; cake, hair and make-up, flowers. You name it, I had a blogpost bookmarked. Then, when I stopped thinking about weddings for a while, and took a step back I realised what I had potentially let myself in for. Did I really want to be rushing around the week before the wedding frantically trying to sort things out? Thimbles-on-my-thumbs hand-sewing bunting? Baking a cake the morning of the wedding?  And I realised that err, no I didn’t. I want to look serene, calm and have a fun day, not worrying about some bunting fraying! I can see that some brides would take this in their stride, that it would be easy for them to do this and still be relaxed and stress-free on their wedding day but I kind of had to bite the bullet and accept that I would have to do D.I.Y on my terms. There will be things that we’ll do ourselves; the streamer backdrop that I have set my heart on for the reception room, the table plan, those massive light-up letters that I will manage to make on a budget and the table flowers (but not the bouquets and buttonholes) but we’ve accepted that it’s ok to seek help from those whose job it is! We’ve even gone one step further and booked Laura from The Mrs Makes  to help us style the venue the night before. Up until a couple of weeks ago, I had been determined that we would dress the venue ourselves but after some soul searching we decided that we’d want the night before the wedding to be spent with family, friends and each other sipping prosecco in a nice restaurant rather than running around like a headless chickens barking orders at people and to be honest, I’m now relieved to be leaving it in Laura’s capable hands!

DIY wedding

Photo source  – Cake Topper / Ribbon Backdrop (Photo by Fresh in Love Photography) / light up letters / table plan 

 

The one thing that we are still umming and ahhing about doing it ourselves is the music. We are quite prescriptive about the music we want at our wedding, initially I wanted a band but Chris wasn’t taken with that idea, thinking it would limit our song choices. We have obviously thought about a DJ but then that’s risky if you’ve not had any experience with them and we’re a bit clueless. And so, we come to the D.I.Y aspect – should we just do a super duper Spotify playlist and hire a PA? Our special songs will all be played which is a massive plus but we can’t guarantee when people will be dancing ( note to guests: all night please) and we would definitely take it personally if people didn’t dance to our faves and honestly, do we want to be faffing with a laptop when we could be on the dancefloor ourselves? So, while we’ve been decisive about so many aspects of our wedding, the music is still to be decided; To D.I.Y or not to D.I.Y?

What about the rest of you, did you D.I.Y your wedding? And how far did you D.I.Y-it?

Love Louise

x

 

 

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Comments

    Kate

    I love DIY, especially things to do with weddings! But yes, I agree that as a bride you can only do so much. I have a list at the moment, well 2 lists really – one for DIY things I definitely want to do, and another for things I’d like to do but won’t be too upset if I just don’t get time! There’s definitely a balance that needs to be made.
    My problem will be handing over the running of the day to someone else! It’s all in my head but I need to let go! Hmmm maybe that should be my next blog post!
    Thanks Louise,
    Kate xx

    Reply

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