Handmade Wedding

April 22, 2012

Our biggest DIY project/thrift haul to-date would be the series of projects culminating in our wedding reception. I had never even heard the term "DIY" until it was time to plan the reception, and began to draw inspiration from some of the handmade weddings featured on Ruffled Blog.

I won't bore you with all the details of vintage china, dated chapel furniture, handpicked daisies, secondhand bowties, or typewriter guestbook. But we are proud of our humble, "handmade" wedding. We had many contributing hands in addition to our own.

Our wonderful, talented Montreal-based photographer and friend Crissy Jarvis (her husband is the king of DIY) took all of our wedding day photographs.

Here are a few highlights:

The Ring
It began with the engagement rings (sorry about the poor photo quality - this was taken with Patricio's old camera when it was in it's last days), which my husband, Patricio, made from a recycled skateboard (Jeremy Fish/Max Schaaf, Pez Series, Real). My ring is very precious to me, not only because my husband made it for me, but because I told him I didn't want a ring, and he proved me wrong with something beautiful and unique.

The Dress
I found my wedding dress at a vintage boutique called Silverfalls on Ossington Avenue, Toronto. The shop owner gave it to me for $65. It hung down to my ankles, had sheer, poofy sleeves, and was a few inches wide.

This is not exactly a DIY, as I did not do the sewing and tailoring myself (not the time or material to try to recall my twelve-year-old sewing lessons). I took the dress to a local tailor to be taken in, have the bottom two tiers removed, and the sleeves "un-poofed" and filled with material from the removed tiers.

The part that I did do myself was the headband. I bought a dollar store headband and covered it with leftover lace and fabric.

The Invitation
Our invitation cover and inside looked a little something like this. Patricio illustrated it, and I made a simple layout. We printed them at home on card stock, then cut and folded them ourselves.

The Reception
I spent months hand sewing hundreds of delicate flowers from scrap fabric my mother used to make Barbie clothes from, and a bag of buttons from Value Village. My best friend, Sacha, also crocheted many of the flowers. We pinned them to the sisal rope halls of our "reception hall"/church gymnasium.

Patricio hand-painted these darling wooden dolls/caketoppers that I bought from Goose Grease, and...
 ... my talented aunt made this delicious cupcake covered in fondant flowers for them to sit on.

We asked a few friends and family to make handmade, painted, or photographed contributions to the small art gallery we had. Patricio's friend Rob made this coat rack out of wooden planks and recycled skateboard trucks. Unfortunately the dry wall in our apartment is too weak to support it.

Our good friend Nirvana gifted us with a photo session before our wedding while we were shopping in downtown Toronto. As we never got around to having engagement photos taken, these photographs are very precious to us!

The Honeymoon
We traveled back to Montreal with our photographer, Crissy Jarvis, and her husband for our honeymoon. Crissy spoiled us and gave us a tour/photoshoot of the area around her industrial loft.
She had us leave our mark in an alleyway with chalk and Sharpie fabric pen.
  
Take care! Good luck in all of your future DIY projects, no matter how big or small.

1 comment :

  1. Three cheers for DIYs! I also love how good you feel when you know you made it yourself. It makes it so much more special. I had never seen that photo of the 'before dress' before! It's amazing how it turned out. I love that you saw so much potential in it when others would have just skipped it!

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