A Creative & Colourful DIY (Pinterest Inspired) Wedding: Emily & Adam

Today’s creative and colourful couple Emily & Adam, had a fun DIY (Pinterest inspired) big day and made lots of the vibrant wedding decor themselves!

Whatsmore, Emily threw away tradition and opted for a two-piece bridal ensemble that compromised of a home-embroidered top from Asos and tulle bridal skirt from Needle and Thread.

Wonderful images by Diana V Photography and words by Emily or Adam.

I knew I didn’t want a traditional wedding dress, and it turns out I didn’t want a dress at all! I finally decided on a skirt and top. The skirt I chose was a beautiful tulle full-length ivory skirt from an online shop called Needle & Thread. The top I found on ASOS for under £20!

My mum has always been so creative and very skilled with a needle, so I asked her if she would embroider the top for me… she was a little terrified at first, but we sat down and designed it together and I couldn’t be more happy with how it turned out.

As an addition to the flowers for the groomsmen buttonholes, I wanted to have small badgers. After spending a while hunting online for something that could work I came across some felted ones. However these were too big, so the backup plan was to make them myself by felting (after learning how to via youtube!).

I also found Badger cufflinks on Amazon and as a surprise present on the morning of the wedding Emily had got me a badger pocket watch which was miraculously decorated with the same badger as the cufflinks!

I’m lucky enough to have a good friend, Nellie Budd, who is a florist- so of course, she was our first choice. She understood what we wanted straight away and went above and beyond to make sure everything was perfect on the day. As well as helping us out with lots of ideas we hadn’t considered, she also welcomed our ideas and kept us updated with the whole process.

We spent hours looking on youtube for the right music. We love folk music and, in particular, the violin and piano, and we found a great channel called The Piano Guys. They ‘ve done covers of all sorts of music, new and old, and it was mostly their songs that we used.

Adam ordered my bridesmaids and I a beautiful white taxi as a surprise to pick us up from my parent’s house and take us to the venue. The company he used was Luxweddingcarhire.co.uk

We also hired a vintage Routemaster bus to take us and all our guests between the venues. It had to do 2 trips, either way, to fit everyone in, and this was one of the best parts of our day. It also saved us money as we were initially going to hire 2 buses, but the company were great and suggested multiple trips instead. We used Traditional-Travel.co.uk.

We booked Diana from Diana V Photography as our wedding photographer and our photos were exactly what we wanted, light, vibrant and colourful. They really portray the kind of day we had, absolutely fantastic!

Diana was great to work with, it was really helpful that she visited our venues before the big day and was always on hand to answer any questions. On the day it was really reassuring to have her expert opinion on timings, allowing our day to run as smoothly as possible. As we were delayed returning to our reception venue she suggested doing group photo’s whilst we waited, looking back now it was a great decision that saved us a lot of time.

Diana is great at getting pictures without you knowing, she moves quietly and professionally in the background. Also, her ability to get images from all angles and be open to any ideas was perfect for what we wanted.

Both Adam and I are creative people, so we wanted to do as much as possible ourselves – from designing the invitations to painting all the signage. Adam even made our confetti with real petals! The main theme of our decorations was colour – We went as bright as we could, and had no set colour scheme.

The marquee was very simple – we used 6 coloured draped overlays which made a big impact with little effort, and our tables simply had the log centre-pieces with painted jars of wildflowers and coloured wood chippings which we found at our local florists. We had a lot of fun with the barn – Another good friend of mine made hundreds of metres of bunting for us, and we even had another friend construct the bar for us using old pallets.

In the ceiling of the barn, we hung colourful paper lanterns, and we bought a dozen blankets from Primark to throw over hay bales to make seating areas.

We decided we wanted our first dance to be a Ceilidh dance with our bridal party and partners, so there were 12 of us in total. We let our band (Ceilimax) choose the track and the dance (which was Strip The Willow – very confusing but a lot of fun!)

Always try to plan to have everything finished and ready at least a month before the wedding, giving you some spare time for if certain projects over-run, or if you manage to stick to your plan then just some time to relax before the big day.

I would always recommend a spreadsheet of all your expenses – DIY weddings are a great way of keeping costs down, however, it is very easy for small costs to build up. Pinterest was a brilliant source of ideas for us, we were endlessly sending each other screenshots of flowers, signs, place names, decorations… anything and everything is on there.

And last but not least – let your friends and family help you! It’s difficult to let go of the reigns, but sometimes it just needs to happen – The week before our wedding we had the entire bridal party and all the groomsmen at our venue, with a list of jobs to do. It really brought everyone together and made the day that little bit more special knowing how many people had helped make it happen.