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Contents of this issue of Do It Yourself Weddings Guide

• What's New at Do It Yourself Weddings - New Articles
• Question from my Email Bag: Deciding How Much You Can Handle Doing Yourself

What's New at Do It Yourself Weddings

Question from my Email Bag

Great question! There are so many things you can do yourself for your wedding that you may be tempted at first to do everything, only to later realize that it takes too much time and energy.

Think about it, you could design your invites, programs, make your veil, even make your dress, arrange your own flowers, create your decorations, create your own favors, do your own music and even cook all the food for the reception. Should you do all this? Unless you are superwoman, have a long time to plan, have a helper staff or are only inviting 10 people I’d say no!

It is so important to pick and choose your How carefully so you don’t get overwhelmed. I’ve heard too many “do it yourself” wedding disaster stories where a bride takes on too much by herself and gets burnt out and stops enjoying the process. Worse yet, she ends up being so stressed out on the wedding day that she doesn’t enjoy herself at all.

These are the top four questions you need to ask yourself to decide what and how much you can handle.

• How much time do I have before the wedding? If you have more than 6 months it is much more feasible to do all your favors and decorations yourself than if you only have one month. If you have only one or two months stick to just one or two DIY wedding projects. Doing your own flowers are great because you can’t do too much ahead of time anyway, it all happens the day before.
• How many people are invited? This question is key for certain wedding DIY projects, such as food, favors, invites and programs. The more people you have, the more of those things you’ll need. A smaller guest list (less than 50) really frees you up to do more because you only have to do 50 favors, 50 invites and 50 programs. If your guest list is huge (more than 150) you may want to focus on DIY wedding projects that aren’t affected by the number of guests, such as venue decorations (although more guests mean more table centerpieces) and your own attire.
• What are my skills? This one is plain common sense. If you know what you are doing on a computer then printing invitations might be right for you. If you have sewing skills, creating a veil or embellishing a dress and shoes will be a breeze. If you are good baker then consider tackling the cake. If you have no specific skills, stick with favors and perhaps decorations.
• Do I have help? How much help can you rely on getting from friends and family? If you have a team of people willing to help you do things then you can certainly take on many more projects than if you are going solo. Talk to your friends and family and see how much they can commit to helping you. You need to make certain you can trust them to help you and not flake out at the last minute.

Good luck and remember to start small. See how long it takes you to accomplish one thing before adding on other projects. Wishing you many (but not too many) hours of happy wedding crafting and planning!

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