By Jenna – By the Oaktree
The biggest appeal of a DIY event? It’s creative and cost saving, right?
Creative, most definitely! You can find endless projects online these days, especially with inspiration from Pinterest and Instagram. DIY allows you to add your own personal touch to your event — and if done well, it can produce amazing results!
However, the biggest consideration for DIY is the cost. That’s the main reason why people opt for DIY — to save money.
So, I now write to you as a bride who did everything DIY for her own wedding. We spent SO much time and money sourcing paper, fabrics, vases, jars, chairs, crockery, glassware and so many other vintage pieces to create our own unique wedding. At the time we thought DIY would be much cheaper than forking out money for a wedding planner and hiring all the decorations and wedding pieces ourselves.
My husband and I knew we wanted to do it ourselves, but we were faced with 2 options. We could either buy everything and then try and sell it all afterwards (to get our money back). Or, buy everything and start our own vintage styling business afterwards, hiring out everything we bought for our own wedding.
We chose the latter and this is how By The Oaktree started. In our case, it worked out very well for us, because it was a business expense. But from experience, I can tell you that it was a costly exercise — time consuming, expensive and required a huge amount of storage space.
So, does DIY REALLY mean you save heaps of money?
By the time you pay for materials, spend time working on projects (this can be days or even months), and possibly making some mistakes along the way, it actually doesn’t end up much cheaper at all. Unless you’re a DIY wizard with magical powers, DIY weddings, can actually make your wedding planning more stressful and time consuming.
My advice, as someone who has been there; leave it to the professionals. Let them use their knowledge to help you create a beautiful event that you can enjoy the lead up, as well as the actual event, whatever that may be!
I hope that helps, if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me,
Jenna xx
