Brides these days can truly do it all. Look gorgeous and DIY the heck out of their wedding all without skipping a beat. It’s really amazing if you think about it. Take this wedding from Michelle Lange Photography for instance. Not only is every.single.detail sitting in this gallery crafted with love by the lovely Bride, but that lovely Bride managed to whip up the prettiest of weddings all while looking downright stunning. I’m in awe, and I am sure you will be too – once you see all the gorgeous images waiting for you right here.
From the Bride, Amanda of LittleMissMrs… Some brides have been planning their weddings since they were little girls. I wasn’t one of those brides, but it is safe to say that Ive been practicing for my DIY wedding since I was a little girl. Endless arts and crafts projects, using whatever I could find around the house, which developed into a passion for handmade cards, were all clear signs that I would design and conquer my DIY wedding.
First and foremost, I wanted a wedding that would capture the unique love Drew and I share. I started with the invitations. After gathering much inspiration from Style Me Pretty and other wedding blogs, I decided on a theme, colors, and little details that reflected our personalities. For example, I included the great state of New Jersey on our invitation because on the day we met, we were both on our way to NJ (from Baltimore), where we both grew up. I was planning on taking the bus but instead Drew gave me a ride!
I taught myself Adobe Illustrator and dove into designing our invitations. Our RSVP was a mad-lib postcard, which reflects our lighthearted dispositions, as well as our inner-English teachers (we are both Teach For America alumni). The mad-lib RSVPs were not only so fun to read when we got them back, but they also made for a neat decoration at the wedding, and a great keepsake. Leading up to the wedding, I went on to design and conquer the ceremony programs, place cards, table numbers, and station banners and signage. One tip for future DIY brides is to consistently use the same 2-3 color codes (HTML is you also have a wedding website), as well as fonts. I also recommend choosing one graphic detail (for me it was a heart) to include on every piece of wedding stationery. Although it was a time-consuming process, the finished products were exactly what I had envisioned.
Our flowers were DIY with a ton of help from my lovely bridesmaids. Since we had the luxury of staying at the inn all weekend, they worked on bouquets and centerpieces the day before. For brides wanting to save money with DIY (not always the case), flowers are definitely a manageable project. For the centerpieces, we wrapped mason jars with ivory lace to match my dress, which had an ivory lace overlay. One of my favorite moments of the wedding weekend was walking into the barn on the day before the wedding to see the beautiful floral arrangements my bridesmaids had completed.
The beauty of DIY is that every last detail on your wedding day can be exactly how you imagined. My shoes are a perfect example of this. I searched for months for shoes, but could not find a pair with all three of my requirements: 4 inches, blue to match the bridesmaids color scheme, and a little pizzazz. I finally settled on a pair that met requirements one and three, but not two. Then, one week before the wedding I found these amazing teal shoes at Marshalls. I told my bridesmaids that they were the perfect height, color, and comfortable (added bonus!), but they needed a little more personality. My bridesmaids found rhinestones at a craft store, which we super-glued to the heels. The finished product was my dream wedding shoe!
I won’t say my DIY elements made wedding planning any easier, but I will say the time I invested in designing and conquering my wedding was well worth it. In fact, I had so much fun designing for my own wedding that I’ve opened a wedding stationery boutique on Etsy, Little Miss Mrs. I hope future brides will find inspiration from my wedding photos, captured by the incredibly talented Michelle Lange.
Photography: Michelle Lange Photography | Invitations: LittleMissMrs | Hair + Makeup: Ore Makeup Design | DJ: Tri-State Unique Productions | Wedding Venue: Raritan Inn | Day of Coordinator: The Bride Organizer | Other DIY Projects by Bride: LittleMissMrs | Photography Second: Cassidy Parker Smith | Programs: LittleMissMrs