DIY: Wedding

February is the month of love and friendship. This is also the time when one might get engaged. Yea, you might get overwhelmed. Yet am pretty sure that once you decide to get married, you also start to envision your dream wedding.

Hosting a wedding party might be very stressful physically and economically. However, it doesn’t always have to be the latter. In this blog, I will share with you how Robin and I managed to throw our intimate and beautiful wedding party without hiring an expensive coordinator.

First of all, Finland is a very lavish country to get hitched. By that, we already knew that we have to be prudent with all the details of our party. Whilst most of our wedding expenses dragged from food, venue, and drinks, we were still able to save up few pennies through our friends’ help and doing most of the decorations by ourselves.

Theme: RUSTIC WHITE

From the very beginning, I am always fond of floral, rustic, and monotone theme. I shared it to Robin and he liked the idea as well. Did we pick color white coz why not? You can never go wrong with it. It is simple yet elegant.

Party Venue: TYKKIHALLI

We searched random places within the vicinity of our home but Tykkihalli captured our hearts immediately. The moment we laid our eyes on it, we knew that this would be our venue place. Tykkihalli is an old cannon storage house and now used as private venue gatherings. It was pricey as compared to the other places available. But, some decorations and cleaning service after the party were already included in the price. So, It was an advantage for us coz we didn’t need to worry about the after party mess. With only candles, few led lamps, and garland lights in the middle of the ceiling as a source of light, this is indeed a perfect place for a romantic yet intimate wedding party.

Decorations and other party needs

• Invitation:

Nowadays, most people are active on different social media platforms. That’s why without a doubt, we settled for a paperless form of invitation. We just made it at Microsoft word, saved it as a pdf file, then sent it right away to our invited guests. Voila, it saved us time, money, and effort.

• Table set-up:

Luckily, we have friends that work in the restaurant industry so they have much knowledge in setting up a table. They achieved the elegant long table set-up without a question.

Instead of a traditional table cloth napkin, we used paper material to ease up our job afterward.

• Flower centerpieces:

We just ordered fresh white roses and baby’s breath flowers from plantagen, a famous plant shop in Finland. I set it up just by mixing one stem of the rose and some baby’s breath flower and put them in a small borrowed flower vase.

• Wedding program and place card:

We just customized our own wedding program at google docs, printed it out on the paper that my sister brought from the Philippines, and cut it according to our desired size. For place card, we bought a laser-cut love name card on the internet and just wrote our guest’s name manually.

• Wedding signs:

Another inspiration from Pinterest and DIY, we bought few Ikea cheap photo frames and transformed it as our wedding signs. We printed out words that we wanted to trace, attached the printed paper at the back of the glass, and traced it using a water-based white pen.

• Photo backdrop:

Pinterest inspiration once more, my friend set our rustic photo backdrop by using white curtains, lights and fake flower garlands that I asked my sister to buy from the Philippines (coz it’s cheaper there)

• Guest favors:

We gave our guests a mini cactus as a token of appreciation for being part of our wedding. Why cactus?! Well, it can live longer, it’s cute as a display, and can always bring back happy thoughts from our wedding whenever they see it in their house. Fresh from plantagen shop, we just added a touch of the rustic theme by wrapping it with brown paper and putting thank you sign that we bought from the internet.

• Guest book alternative:

Instead of the traditional guest book, we asked our guests to sign their names on Jenga wooden blocks.

• Wedding cake:

Naked cake always comes along with rustic theme wedding. Thanks to my cousin that spent quality time making it.

• Alcohol:

For a special occasion like this, Finns usually buy alcohol from Estonia. However, we didn’t have time for that. Together with our friends, we purchased most of the drinks from the supermarket in Finland.

My cousin also told me about discandoo site. It’s an online shop based from Germany wherein you can purchase alcohol for a very reasonable price(inclusive tax from Germany) and deliver it to you. I was skeptical about it coz I thought that I might pay extra tax in Finland. I searched about it and found out that there are no restrictions between EU members when it comes to buying and importing products as long as it’s for personal use. Despite that, I was still suspicious but I bought wine boxes and ciders anyways. Luckily, it came right in front of my doorsteps.

• Music:

Well, it might be very posh to hire some professional music band or DJ on your wedding party but it’s really, really big-ticket. So to save us money, we just made a Spotify playlist and played it for the rest of the evening.

So, those were the cost-effective things that we did on our wedding party. Being practical is nothing to be ashamed of. Plus, I also love the idea of DIY coz it gets more sentimental.

Ours was indeed full of love and appreciation. It was also an evening wherein two cultures had a chance to unite and collide. It was really an unforgettable evening that we’d always treasured.

Until now, Robin and I are so thankful that we have the full support of our loved ones. ❤️

How about your wedding party? Are you also hands-on? Do you also love DIYs?Please comment below your own experience.

Till next time❤️