In defense of mason jars

So you've decided to do it yourself. Let's take a moment to make sure this is a good idea.

My wedding DIY journey went something like this:
1. Book the venue
2. Ask for referral for a florist
3. Set up phone call with florist and fiance
4. Florist says the "bare minimum" will be about $4,000
5. Politely tell the florist to go fuck him or her self
6. Decide to just do it all yourself
7. Do it all myself
8. Die

Ok, that might be a bit dramatic. Actually, I don't think it's dramatic enough. There were way more steps until I got to number 8.

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If you're going to do the flowers and decorations and everything yourself, you need a few things:

1. The will to spend 97% of your free time working on them until your wedding

2. At least one friend/family member/bridesmaid that is willing to do all your bidding

3. More money than you'd expect, but definitely less than if you pay someone else to do it

Doing everything yourself is totally do-able, but it's stressful. Not only does it take a lot of time, energy and money, but it's stressful before AND during your wedding. Don't forget that you have to set everything up yourself, transport it to and from, load it, unload it and load it all again.

If you do more than minimal decorations and flowers, you're going to have a least a car packed full of stuff. I had like four cars, two of them completely full.

If you're starting to realize that weddings aren't always all about the bride, you're getting there.

Despite it being, like really hard, I'm still pretty glad I did it all myself. And you can too!

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First, let's talk theme. Do you have one? Great! I didn't really have one until I was like 2/3 of the way done with making stuff. So it's ok if you haven't decided exactly what you want the finished product to look like. Just go to Michael's, wander around and pick out some stuff you like that's generally wedding themed, and go with it. Now do that eight to ten times and you'll be good.

Allie Brosh knew what she was talking about

My final theme was "sorta love birds even though that's kind of cheesy?" I really liked the unfinished birdhouses at Michael's and made a bunch of them. Then I built the rest with help from Pinterest. Our venue was pretty rustic, so I used that vibe too.

Yes, there were mason jars.

The "jam" sized ones are great for candy!

I know, even at the time, they were totally overdone. But did you know they're cheap and easy to hot glue stuff to? I'm pretty sure that's why so many DIY weddings feature them. Seriously. They're like $20 for 100 (or 12). I got a bunch of pretty lace ribbon (on sale) and glued that shit to some jam size ones (candy dishes) and to the pint ones (extra flower vases). Add a flower and you almost can't even see the mason jar-ness.

Most of my work went into the centerpieces, the dessert table and cute stuff to go everywhere else. My approach was to make lots of everything and then just find places for it. It worked out sort of well. I hardly did anything for the ceremony because it was outside and the view was good enough on it's own.

So first: centerpieces:

Look at those beautiful old books

The base was made from book boxes I got at Michael's. They had birds on them, so they were very on theme. I bought as many as I could find in the Northern Virignia area and my mom helped to get some in Rochester.

Over a year later, I still have them and am planning to do something with them any day now. I gave a few away, but I couldn't just part with all of them... I worked so hard to get them and you can store stuff in them!

On top of that were: votives, table numbers (made by hand, but more on that later), birdhouses, bird figurines and photo frames and milk vases with flowers. I ended up with way more stuff than needed (notice two types of votives and two candy dishes and the general crowding on the table). I definitely have an issue with doing too much. I just can't help myself. If you can keep yourself in check, that's probably a good idea.

Banner says "Treat Yo Self". I stand by that decision.

The dessert table was the thing I was most excited about and it shows. We got all the desserts the baker had. If you're not into desserts, go ham somewhere else. Maybe get some actual ham. Actually we might have had ham since it was brunch food.

Anyway, find a part of the event that you are really excited about and make it beautiful. We had a mini two tiered cake that we cut for the crowd (no we didn't smoosh it into each other's faces) and a lot of other stuff. We had pumpkin cheesecake, cake pops, mini apple pies, homemade marshmallows and cupcakes.

The "guest" table had shadow boxes with little wooden hearts for people to write their names and "best wishes" on.

I still can't believe how gorgeous they are. Just a quick reminder that if you pick a really sweet, really crafty lady to be a bridesmaid, she might make you stuff like this.

She also made us this beautiful box to store all the cards in. We didn't do a registry, just a "honeyfund", so there were lots of cards and very few actual gifts.

Fall weddings lend themselves to really easy decorations from Home Depot. Our venue supplied these, but you could literally spend like $30 and have enough to add a weekend after halloween vibe to the day.

The reception space had two fireplaces so we used one mantel for photos of us and the other for photos of relatives that had passed away. The candles are electric so we didn't have to worry about monitoring them.

We knew we didn't want a "dancing" wedding, because that just not our style, so we had friends of the husband's brother do some live acoustic music and then just plugged in a playlist later. It was perfect for our event.