DIY Project: The Recap

A little DIY wisdom from little old me!
Print available on Etsy at NayArt's shop

All in all, I picked three DIY projects for our wedding: the hotel welcome bags, the ceremony poms & the K & R decorations. I've stressed the importance of choosing your DIY projects carefully. Looking back on mine now, I want to share some advice & wisdom on my projects.
Do I have regrets? Do I wish I had done things differently? Do I have any advice? Read on!!!

1. Hotel Welcome Bags: I'm glad we did the hotel welcome bags ourselves & I'd make the same decision again in a heartbeat. Because we only had to make 30 bags & deliver to one hotel, it was manageable. Even fun.

But I do have tons of advice. Due to our limited storage space & curious beagle, we didn't have the option to shop for our treats & supplies in advance. However, I could have written & printed our welcome letter & wedding itinerary long before I did. Start any & all tasks early!

We were fortunate to have 30 bags, one delivery & a Jeep. If you have 30+ bags, multiple hotel deliveries &/or a small car, I would seriously consider hiring a professional or delegating this task to willing friends.

2. Ceremony Poms: I loved the poms so much & I adored having my personal touch on our wedding ceremony. I noticed them as I walked down the aisle, I spot them in our wedding guests' photos & I'm proud of them.

There are no regrets here, not even that I didn't finish eight poms. Remember it's okay to let go if a project doesn't go as planned. Well, one regret: the ceremony poms are the only things that did not get collected & returned to us at the end of our wedding. I wanted to keep one as a memento in our home. Luckily, I do have the extra pom that never made it to our ceremony. Make sure you take the time to check & account for everything at the end of your wedding!

3. K & R Decor: This project was quick, easy, inexpensive & personal. Plus we can enjoy the painted initials in our home for years to come. Love, love this project!

However, the K & R didn't look quite right at our reception because I didn't double-check the placement of the guest book table. I did my due diligence by taking a site tour & noting the set-up for our wedding. I wish I had asked again, then I would've bought freestanding letters. But the real lesson? Things may not go or look as planned & just go with it. As long as you keep smiling, nobody will notice anything is amiss!

Are you tackling DIY projects for your wedding? Happy crafting!!

DIY Project #2: Ceremony Poms

The final look of our ceremony poms

White poms with ivory ribbon for our winter white wedding
& swirls, my favorite!, on the ribbon!!!!

My longest-running DIY project was the fabric poms for our ceremony. After making the sample in September, I ran into two problems. One, the sample had taken forever. It was an easy fix: I used 4-inch styrofoam balls instead of 6-inch styrofoam balls. Two, I had no fabric. It wasn't an easy fix. A failed attempt for a NYC fabric hunt. An overload of Internet sources for fabric. Lots & lots of procrastination. About two weeks before the wedding, I finally purchased small balls, swirl ribbon & white organza from an excellent source, Save on Crafts.

My supplies arrived six days before the wedding. I was really determined to finish this DIY project but I had many tasks & little time. In between gift bag assembly, dress appointments, airport pick-ups, table assignments & more, I found scraps of time here & there to cut circles & glue petals to create poms. I cherished those moments because I could free my mind of the wedding to-do list & just relax. However, those freeing moments were few & far between!

At our ceremony rehearsal, I handed over four poms to our wedding planner to place on the church pews the next day. My goal was eight poms. After our rehearsal dinner, my cousin/bridesmaid kindly helped me finish another pom & started the sixth pom when she burned her hand with the hot glue gun. I officially called off the project.

So I had four pretty poms at our wedding ceremony, four shy of my goal. Two poms decorated the first two pews by the altar & the other two poms hung near the last two pews by the church entrance. & you know what? It was just fine, nobody missed those four poms- including me!!

DIY Project: Welcome Bags

Our Wedding Welcome Bag

My Mom is a gift basket-maker by trade. She makes creative, beautiful gift baskets for charity raffles, first-time home owners, wedding gift bags & more. Give her a theme & she churns out a perfectly-themed gift basket. By the time we tackled our wedding welcome bags, we had less than one week to the wedding & a never-ending to-do list. We never considered skipping the welcome bags because we still wanted gift bags to greet our guests at the hotel & provide them with information & treats. We had to make welcome bags & keep our sanity intact. My Mom was probably a tad disappointed when I told her the theme for our welcome bags was "simple."

But she went with the flow as she realized I may have a meltdown otherwise & we kept it simple. The basic idea was a plain bag decorated with our leftover "Greetings from Hoboken" save-the-date postcards tied with an easy bow & filled with a welcome letter, wedding itinerary & plentiful snacks. We snagged glossy, white bags & white grosgrain ribbon for an awesome price at AC Moore. We went to Sam's Club & grabbed anything & everything that looked good- water, apples, granola bars, cookies, pretzels, chips, etc- also for a reasonable price. We bought white paper decorated with silver swirls at Staples. I had already collected Love mints & wedding tissues.

Thank goodness this project was not so much DIY as DIT- do it together. While I worked on the letter & itinerary with our painfully-slow printer, my Mom & cousin/bridesmaid worked the bag assembly line. I can't thank them enough for their valuable support & help! Each had to be tagged with the postcard, hole-punched for the ribbon, stuffed with the treats & information &, finally, tied with a bow. Between the shopping, the assembly & the delivery, this DIY project ate a lot of time. Quite a project even on a simple scale!

The hardworking welcome bag team

Yes, I wrote "Welcome" on every treat

The tagged welcome bags waiting to be finished

The welcome bags may not have been as fancy as my Mom would have liked but I thought they were just perfect. With the "Greetings From Hoboken" postcard, they managed to perfectly welcome the guests to our beloved home & carry through our hometown theme. Plus they looked cute & simple, they were filled with yummy snacks & they had pertinent information. What more could you ask for from a welcome bag?! RZ & I delivered them to the hotel on Friday afternoon to be placed in each of our out-of-town guests' hotel rooms as a hearty welcome to our wedding weekend. The fun was just beginning!

The finished product- I loved them!