What NOT to DIY for Your Wedding

Tiffany Holmes Photography

As coordinators, we love a good DIY. One of our favorite pastimes is scrolling through Pinterest for event inspiration and hacks. However, as much as we love DIY projects, they’re not something we recommend to our brides often. Having done many DIYS ourselves, they take a lot more time and energy than many expect. They can become stressful fast. Since wedding planning can already be stressful, we don’t recommend doing more than one or two simple DIYs for your wedding. Here are some things we recommend NOT DIYing for your wedding.

1. Anything Large or Time Consuming
If you are planning on DIYing at least some of your wedding, we recommend sticking to small projects that you can start months in advance. Skip the larger and last-minute projects. As gorgeous as a flower wall may be or as delicious a cupcake display is, those are projects better left for the professionals who have the time and expertise.

2. Photography
While wedding expenses can add up fast, the one vendor we recommend not skipping is a photographer. Your wedding pictures will last the rest of your lifetime together, so we recommend investing in a good photographer. Your cousin who just got into photography most likely won’t produce the high-quality photos that professional photographers capture. Plus, you probably want your close friends and family to enjoy your wedding and spend the day celebrating with you rather than running around trying to get all the shots.

3. Floral Centerpieces
DIY flowers sound fun – and don’t get us wrong, they can be – but they can also be one of the most stressful DIY wedding projects. Florals are one of those projects that has to be left until the last minute, and they are very time-consuming. It is challenging to find all the flowers you need in stock days before your wedding. You’ll end up spending the last few days running from store to store trying to find all the supplies you need, worrying about whether your flowers will still look fresh day-of, and spending hours putting together all the centerpieces. If you’re going to do flowers yourself, we recommend sticking with just a handful of bouquets and boutonnieres and enlisting your bridal party or family to help. For everything else, we recommend going with the pros.

4. Favors
Normally, favors can be easy DIY projects. There are many places you can order pre-made favors where your only task is adding customized stickers. However, the more complicated your favors get, the less we recommend them. Additionally, once your guest count grows larger than 100 guests, the time and money saved really doesn’t make a difference. We recommend ordering favors that are mostly ready to go, or skipping them altogether.

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Find more wedding tips on our blog!

​*NOTE: This post was inspired by Gardenia Wedding’s blog post Things NOT to DIY! See what they recommend you avoid DIYing for your wedding

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