By Sara Cotner, 2000 Dollar Wedding

I undertook several DIY projects for my wedding, including our embroidered life story around the bottom of my dress, my partner’s tie, our invitations, flower pins for the wedding party, name tags for the ‘Welcome Picnic’, program fans for the ceremony, wedding favors, a wedding quilt, cloth napkins for the reception, our wedsite,  and a ring pillow.

Dress with embroidered life story.

DIY wedding tie.

DIY wedding favors: hand-made cilantro seed packets with directions on the front and our personal guacamole recipe on the back.

Not only did these projects help us save money, they also allowed us to infuse our wedding with meaning. With each project, I found myself working through the same stages.

Stage One: Pure Excitement

I love the brainstorming phase. I love conducting research on Google to read how-to tutorials (I usually undertake projects I have no experience with). I love searching for ideas and sorting through pictures of other people’s  amazing crafts.

Stage Two: Self-Doubt

Sometime during the brainstorming stage, I look at everyone else’s stuff and wonder if I’ll be able to make something half as good. I start to get mired in all my ideas and flounder a bit because I’m a perfectionist and I’m always striving for the one perfect thing.

Stage Three: Commitment

My Jiminy Cricket voice reminds me that there’s no such thing as “the one perfect thing” in arts and crafts (I haven’t gotten to the stage in my development where I’m willing to admit that about everything else in life…hmm…). I decide on an idea and I commit to doing it.

Stage Four: Pure Fun

It can be relaxing and meditative to do crafts. Sometimes I reconnect with friends or family while I cut or sew or embroider. Sometimes I just think through the day. Other times I just let my mind go blank and sing along to the stereo. I think, “This is fun! I’m so glad I started doing this.” In my highest moments, I start scheming ways to turn my crafts into a business. I start thinking through the details of making millions of them.

Stage Five: Regret and Frustration

Sometime in the middle of all the fun I’m having, I start to realize that I have undertaken something that requires way more work than I realized. And it’s hard. And it stops being fun. And I’m making mistakes. I even play a little game with myself. It goes something like this: Self, “How much would someone have to pay you to get you to make one of these for them?” Depending upon how deep into the stage of regret I’m in, my answer is usually along the lines of a thousand or a million dollars (that’s how frustrated I am!).

Stage Six: Sheer Pride

And then the damn thing gets done. And it’s not perfect. It’s crooked or smaller than I anticipated or not as comfortable as I thought it should be. But I am so, so proud of producing something useful with my own two little hands. I end up feeling more connected to myself and the world around me. The best part is I get to re-live the sheer pride stage over and over again whenever I pass by the aforementioned craft.

When Sara Cotner and her partner-in-crime/crafting decided to tie the knot, they resisted the pressure to create the wedding of someone else’s dreams and instead forged their own path in a budget-minded, eco-friendly, hand-crafted way. Attempting to steer clear of the Wedding Industrial Complex and avoid losing their sanity and savings, they pulled off a weekend wedding extravaganza in the mountains of Colorado for a whopping $2,000 and bought their first house two days later. Sara advocates daily for meaningful and memorable weddings that focus on community, commitment, connection, and fun at http://2000dollarwedding.com. Her part-memoir, part-how-to handbook is due out this spring.

When she’s not thinking about weddings, Sara is a tomato-growing, yogurt-making, vintage pottery-collecting, Scrabble-playing, document-producing, fondue-eating, bloodhound-babysitting, dishtowel-knitting crafter and creator who spends her days closing the achievement gap as an educational consultant.

Her crafting compulsion started at age eight when she read Ramona Quimby and decided to take up sewing. She proudly produced her first scrunchie (it was, afterall, the 1980s). Now she dabbles in knitting, sewing, stamp-making, embroidery, appliqué, graphic design, magnet-making, and anything else that has an internet tutorial.

By Jaime Haywood, It’s a Jaime Thing

DIY BOTTLE & VASE DECOR, WINE CORK DECOR & MORE

 Using Modge Podge and a paint brush, you can apply anything from tissue or wrapping paper, magazine clippings, pictures and more to decorate wine bottles, vases, glass candle holders, gifts and other items for your wedding!  I’ve enjoyed making personalized bottles for friends using Modge Podge, as a little keepsake of memories all glued together.

 Recycled wine bottles are wonderful to use as vases for your wine themed wedding!  You can also dress them up by tying ribbon around the neck of the bottle, complete with a bow, brooch or rhinestones appliques! 

 Ask friends and family members to save their bottles or wine corks for you.  With wine corks, you can create cake stands, picture frames and placecard holders or use them as fillers for the bottoms of your centerpiece vases!

 DIY PHOTO MAGNETS, ORNAMENTS AND PICTURE CONFETTI

Using metal favor tins, you can create all sorts of fun little treasures to use as decor, favors or gifts.  To make the ornaments, I just popped out the plastic from the lids on the favor tins, tied a ribbon, then popped the plastic back in.  I cut photos into circles to fit the shape of the tin, then popped the picture in.  I used the white round stickers that came with the favor kit to place on the back of the photo and write things such as “Christmas 2008″, etc. 

Ornaments don’t have to be used only at Christmas, either!  Use them to hang on tree branches for your centerpieces, perhaps with a picture of each guest or as the start of a family tree.  When the wedding is over, let one family member from each table take the tree home as a keepsake!

To create magnets as favors, use the back of the favor tin, you know – the part that holds the candy.  Place the picture (with tape on the back) inside the tin like you would candy.  Then cut old magnets from your fridge and superglue them to the back of the tin…wa-la!  Instant photo magnets!

 Looking for something a little easier?  Print out special or fun photos from your computer and use a round object to trace a circle over the center of your picture.  Cut the circles out and scatter across your tables to use as large photo confetti.  Fabulous, creative and fairly affordable!

 DIY SEXY CANDLES IN A CINCH!

These candles are so fun to make and make excellent bridesmaids gifts or bachelorette party decor!  All you’ll need is a hole puncher, some pretty cardstock or vellum in the pattern or color of your choice, ribbon and whatever embellishments you’d like to add.  Simply cut the paper to fit the candle, leaving a small space so you can show off the ribbon when you lace it up like a corset!  Gorgeousness.  Throws a whole new spin on the phrase, ”mood lighting”!

 DIY DO NOT DISTURB DOOR SIGNS 

Create adorable “Do Not Disturb” signs for the guests to hang on their hotel doors after the wedding is over.  Print a funny message like we did for my cousin’s wedding saying, “Do Not Disturb, We Partied All Night At The K.S..R Wedding!”

 Simply design the message on computer paper and place over cardstock and secure with ribbon through the top long enough for guests to tie around the door knob.  They’ll love being able to sleep in the next morning!

 The fun doesn’t stop there, visit the wedding blog I write at www.itsajaimething.com for even more wedding inspiration, ideas and all things creative, including several other of my favorite DIY Ideas.  Happy crafting!  ~Jaime

“Hi Everyone!  My name is Jaime, I’m a wedding blogging, high-heel wearing, dark chocolate loving, red wine drinking Chicago girl who loves to plan, create, try to inspire and make people smile!  I write the wedding blog at It’s a Jaime Thing I created ”It’s A Jaime Thing” to help organize all of my ideas, creative findings and inspiration into one spot.  I continue to write daily not only because I enjoy it, but also to hopefully inspire others along the way!”

By Kathryn Storke, Snippet & Ink

Here are some of my DIY favorites:

CAKE STAND BORDER

I love paper, and all of the many forms it takes. This pretty cake stand border is such an easy way to dress up an otherwise simple cake, and all it costs is the price of paper and a pair of scissors. For complete DIY instructions go to Craftstylish.

FAVORITE DIY WEDDING

This is one of those weddings that comes together so perfectly, you would never know that the bride did almost everything herself – and on a reasonable budget! It doesn’t hurt that one of my favorite photographers (Punam Bean Photography) captured it all on film. See more photos of this DIY wedding here.

CREPE PAPER FLOWERS

Not only are these beautiful, but they won’t wilt, so you can make them as far in advance of your wedding as you’re able, and they will stay a fresh keepsake for you or your guests long after the wedding is over. (Crepe paper daffodil by Jordan Ferney; Shaped crepe paper flowers by Martha Stewart Weddings.)

Snippet & Ink started as a creative outlet for fun, but I’m lucky enough that something I enjoy so much has also become my full-time job. Snippet & Ink is a blog of daily wedding inspiration, in the form of inspiration boards and real wedding features. It’s a place where, hopefully, people can see how many different ways there are to have a wedding, that there’s no one right way to do it, that simple can be beautiful, and that inspiration can be found anywhere. I suppose my sense of color and design comes from my mother, an artist and interior designer, and her various creative friends – I grew up surrounded by women who taught me an appreciation for beauty and thoughtful details.

Looking for DIY wedding ideas to add a personal stamp to your wedding – and to cut costs? Look no further! It’s DIY Wedding Week here at IntimateWeddings.com.

I asked some of the best wedding and craft bloggers on the web to contribute their DIY wedding finds and tips and they responded with some fantastic information.

Here’s who we have lined up for DIY Wedding Week:

Today: Amanda Colyer from Della Stella will be offering a fan program tutorial.

Tuesday: Kathryn Storke from Snippet & Ink will be sharing some of her favorite DIY wedding finds.

Wednesday: Jaime Haywood from It’s a Jaime Thing will be sharing some of her favorite DIY wedding projects.

Thursday: Sara Cotner from 2,000 Dollar Wedding writes about the six stages of the DIY process.

Friday: Justine Ungaro from The Unbride will be offering helpful tips on creating a personal website for your wedding.

Saturday: I will be sharing some of my favorite DIY wedding finds.

Check back later today for Amanda’s awesome program fan tutorial!