Considering a DIY Wedding? Our Top Tips!

DIY Weddings are increasingly popular and we have over five years of helping couples make their big day special, as well as first hand experience too! My first wedding flowers were for my own wedding! The DIY spectrum is broard; some couples like to take on all elements of their big day, others choose just one or two elements that they can get creative with and there are examples of everything in between! Magazines will tell you that DIY is a way of cutting costs, but often couples spend a lot of money (perhaps in smaller amounts over a longer period of time) doing more than they would otherwise have! And where you reduce financial costs, you dramatically increase the amount of time that you’ll spend planning and organising, as well as installing and tidying up! It can very easily escalate into a stressful frazzling experience - so here are our top tips for a frazzle-free DIY Wedding Flower experience!

TOP TIP 1: Keep it simple!

It is so easy to get carried away and try and do ALL the things you have seen in magazines and love… pinterest makes it very easy to collect everything, it’s a lot more difficult to do them all! Please try not to get carried away - it can be frazzling. Once you have collected all those inspirations and ideas, fine tune the vision to the key things. And keep it simple.

What do you need?

The most successful DIY weddings I have provided flowers for are the ones where the flowers have been used simply, for maximum impact. Less is often very beautiful! Repurposing bottles is a very easy way of creating table centres that look great with minimum stems. Jam Jars are used a lot too, using more flowers, but very prettily and can be given away as gifts to guests. Table Centres AND favours: TICK.

One big vase on a round table, full of what is seaonally abundant looks stunning and is simple to implement.

When it comes to arches and Milk Churns, they require practice and additional planning, and a lot of time. If you are going to do your own, design and plan at home and practice installing under a realistic time pressure. Think about how far in advance they can be made - we would install on the day, unlike vases that can be made up the day before, as the flowers aren’t in water. Be sure that you have thought about safety - will it stay up in cumbrian weather? Is it safe if people go near it? Don’t leave these things until you do the installation... and even if you’ve done all the planning, add time for faffing and surprises! If you do incorporate bigger items, choose what will make most impact. If you’d love these elements but worry about the amount of planning required, perhaps think about buying in these styling elements. We are very happy to provide arches/milk churns alongside our DIY Buckets, so that you can mix and match to suit you.

TOP TIP 2: Think Seasonally
Eucalyptus is the first thing that I think of when I think of the importance of seasonality; in the UK eucalyptus is a winter foliage that is cut from October to April/May. In the winter it lasts well out of water for installations, in the summer it wilts like any other freshly cut foliage. A florist that uses imported foliage will be able to access it all year round, but you won’t find it in our summer foliage buckets. So rather than getting fixed on eucalyptus perhaps look at what is seasonally abundant… in early summer our foliage buckets will include herbs, alchemilla mollis and frothy ammi. These things won’t last out of water but will look fantastic in jam jars or bottles dotted down a trestle table. Similarly there are colours that are much more appropriate to some months than others. Plummy maroon colours are abundant in October, very limited in the spring. We can work to specific colour themes, but the broader and more seasonal your theme, the more varied your DIY Flower and Foliage buckets.

TOP TIP 3: DELEGATE!

Even when you keep everything simple, you’ll want a team to help you implement your vision. We recommend that you have a group of trusted family and friends to help you with the venue decorating the day before - that way it should only take a couple of hours (as you’re keeping it simple, remember!) and you’ll be able to relax as well. With the excitment of the next day, it can be a fun, calming thing to do. I would personally remember that its probably not the time to win over somebody who doesn’t like DIY or entrust something centre stage to somebody with a different style to yours…. Think about who can do what in advance, and let them know what they’ll be doing. On the day, have a timeline of what is to be done and who is responsible, and when, and then delegate. Delegating requires you to give clear instructions that are SMART (Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Relevant and Time Specific) - “Please can you fill each vase with water from the kitchen, using this watering can, so that *somebody else can fill them with flowers in half-an-hour.” or “Please can you put 3 stems of foliage and flowers into each bottle, to look like this one, using these secateurs if necessary. We will finish this element in an hour.” Don’t think you can do it all yourself - you can but you won’t be a vision of peace and serenity!

On the wedding day, delegate any actions still outstanding to another Chief. If you’re having lots of DIY / seperately arranged elements - food, drink, entertainment, decor etc - then this is ESSENTIAL! Otherwise you’ll have a clipboard instead of a bridal bouquet! And if you don’t have somebody that you can delegate to, think about involving a wedding planner. There are several in Cumbria who can take on smaller weddings - not just big lavish affairs - and help it run smoothly.

TOP TIP 4: Practice and plan for surprises

Surprises (sometimes called disasters, accidents or problems) do occur. Have a toolkit with things you hope not to need in it, as well as extras and alternatives! You can reduce the number of surprises you’ll encounter if you plan ahead and practice all the elements of your DIY. (Which is why we say keep it simple! Less is less to stress you out!)

In 2023 we’ve introduced different types of DIY Buckets so that you can order to suit your specific designs. Bud vases require totally different stems to a milk churn! We can’t tell you exactly what will be in your buckets - it depends entirely on whats looking good on the field when we come to pick - but we hope that by being more specific around size and function, we can eliminate some of your concern around what you’re going to get.

That said, we can’t help with the weather, the uneven floor, the sunlight - there are so many unexpected factors that can prove tricky when you are installilng your DIY decor! Having a plan b and some ideas about how you can overcome these things is a really really good idea…. And remember, it can be hard to firefight unexpected issues but it’s almost impossible to delegate to others if you’re not organised and still working out how to do things, on top of dealing with unexpected surprises. Try and eliminate as much ‘unknown’ from your DIY in advance by planning well and practicising in advance.

TOP TIP 5: Keep it Simple! (Yes, really actually do!)
It is our No.1 Top Tip but it needs saying again: Simple is best! The most florally abundant weddings take a lot of professional florists working right up until the wedding ceremony to perfect. What looks simple on instagram takes practice, experience and time. DIY is a great way to create a beautiful wedding, one that we highly recommend, however there are times when it is clearly stressful for the couple and it is usally because the vision is ambitious! Trust that our flowers are beautiful and will look great.

Simplify. Practice. Delegate.

Then you will be able to relax and enjoy your special day.