Making it YOUR Wedding | Midnight Musing
“The wedding coordinator I spoke to told me that I can substitute any decorations for my own choices…”
It’s pretty obvious by now that I’m not your average bride. I’m already planning on adding three different versions of the song Ghostbusters to my wedding playlist and the song I’m using for my first dance is by Green Day! Unfortunately, my pride in being alternative doesn’t convert to currency, so if I want my dream wedding, I’m going to have to save and get my hands dirty on some DIY bits and bobs!
Doing things yourself when planning your wedding depends entirely on the amount of effort you put into it in my experience. My hopeful date won’t be until 2021 or 2022 depending on how much money we save and the status of the Covid lockdown, so while that should mean I have plenty of time to work things out, it also means I have plenty of time to work out what I can do by myself and what I should ask a professional to do.
I’m surrounded by creative people — I’m an artist myself and I love creating and designing things, but my family is also incredibly creative. My Auntie creates greeting cards that are so much more meaningful than the odd high street card (I might be biased but hey-ho) and my Mam makes such lovely crocheted goodies. With this in mind, you can understand how I’d wanna take things into my own hands when planning my wedding! In the wedding package I’m going to pick, some decorations are provided already but the Wedding Coordinator I spoke to told me that I can substitute any decorations for my own choices, whether they’re brought in by me or by an outside vendor of my choice. So, of course, I started imagining the wedding breakfast tables covered in red linen cloth and cobweb lace — both of which are easily obtainable from fabric shops — and since viewing the venue I’m hoping for (no spoilers!) I’ve been buying loads of little Halloween goodies that will go great with my plans!
High street shops and supermarkets will often have little cheesy Halloween trinkets like crow skeletons and plastic lanterns that are great for Halloween parties, but also great for fancier events like Weddings if you know how to recycle them. Take the crow skeleton for example; they’ve usually got a little visibly screw on the back that you can cover up with a bit of air-dry clay or milliput, then spray paint the whole thing and add a little paint wash to it for that skeletal feel. Hobby painters do this a lot with miniature painting so if you wanna have a go at this I highly recommend you head to your local hobby shop (such as The North East Model Centre) to get the best materials and advice. You can do similar things with lanterns to make your own centrepieces, or you can always go another route and carve your own pumpkins for centrepieces! The only reason I’m not going for carved pumpkins is purely because I won’t know what to do with the pumpkin innards other than putting them in a compost bin, and upcycling cheesy decorations is something I can work on in my own time without worrying too much about a looming deadline.
I’ve been toying with the idea of my partner and I making our own wedding cake to save on costs but I don’t think I’ll go through with it. It’s something that seems like it needs to be perfect, despite the fact that if it wasn’t a good cake I would still have a wonderful day. I have to admit though, it would be wonderful to have a perfectly decorated gothic cake, with black icing and bloody red flowers flowing around the tiers — double points if the flowers are edible! I’ll admit, there are still things I can’t do on my own. I’ve still got to organise a DJ who can fit with my style and understands what I need, find my perfect wedding dress in a sea of white and cream, buy my wedding rings, and find the perfect florist! To be honest, these are the things I do actually need help with so I’d most likely need to find a couple of vendors and go through what they can offer me. I have such an expensive style (mostly because it’s niche) so I’d have to find either a specific vendor for my style or go through a lot of vendors to see what kind of prices I can get that fit with my budget. If a vendor has something outside of their normal style, they might end up charging extra — totally understandable of course! I’m not too worried about this kind of thing though. I’ve worked in the wedding industry long enough now to know that vendors will do their utmost to create whatever you need for your wedding; it’s just the price tag that’s on my mind. I’m using Uplanit’s budgeter at the moment to see what kind of overall price I should be saving up for; it automatically calculates the end price and shows the cost for each individual section in case I want to find a cheaper option. I’m using the comparison list too, it’s a great way to compare the different base prices from vendors to find what I need that’ll fit in my budget expectations.
Wedding planning is a hard task, especially when your eyes are bigger than your wallet, and there’s not much chance to go window shopping in the current climate. In the meantime, I still have the time to create my own wedding invitations, save-the-dates, thank you cards, and wedding favours!
There’s so much to do when planning a wedding!
Guest written by Erin (erin@uplanit.co.uk).
See you next week.
Facebook: UPlanIt / Twitter: @uplanit_online / Instagram: @uplanit_online
If you’d like to plan your wedding with ease, check out Uplanit.co.uk and sign up to check out our fantastic planning features!
