The Handmade Wedding Series is proud to introduce the co-founders of Stitch Lounge (www.stitchlounge.com) in San Francisco, the country’s first urban sewing lounge (on Etsy they are at stitchlounge.etsy.com), and authors of Subversive Seamster: Transform Thrift Store Threads into Street Couture (Taunton, 2007) and Sew Subversive: Down n' Dirty DIY for the Fabulous Fashionista (Taunton, 2006).

Whether you see a wedding as a ceremony bonding your life to another's, a big party with all your friends and family, or just a way to get in on your partner’s health insurance, it is surely a reflection of you and your soon-to-be partner's personalities and values. Luckily, living a handmade lifestyle means throwing handmade parties, too! Whether you do-it-yourself (DIY) to make a individual statement, to reduce waste and consumption, for economic/budget reasons, or for the simple joy of making things by hand, you can definitely add handmade items to your wedding celebration.

Over the past 4 years, we’ve been delighted to connect with an ever-growing community of people that have let the DIY spirit infuse every aspect of their lives, especially weddings! (And the three of us have planned or are in the process of planning our own DIY infused weddings!) In this article, we’re going to feature a few of our favorite DIY wedding projects from in and around Stitch Lounge. On with the show!

The Big Ticket Item: The Dress  
A huge undertaking, but one that we see many requests for at Stitch Lounge, involves brides making their own wedding dress or hiring a designer to sew their dream dress. One of the founders of Stitch, Hope aka hopemeng, designed and made her wedding dress (and blogged about the process here). It was a ton of work, but she got exactly what she wanted and looked stunning to boot!

    
[photos by Felix Chu: www.chuphotography.com]

The lovely Lucid Dawn, one of our peeps at Stitch, went one step further and not only made her wedding dress and corset, but her husband’s suit and their daughter’s dress. Amazing!!!

[photos by Hilary Nichols: www.hilarynichols.com]

You can also use any extra fabric from your dress to make fabric flowers for the moms and grandmas like Melissa R. aka melicob did.

If you aren't a sewer (or don't want the challenge of making your own attire), we've seen our craftastic community get creative with their weddings in non-sewing ways!

Paper
An easy way to DIY (and cut costs) on a wedding is to make your own invitations, Save-the-Date cards, and thank you notes.

Melissa R's wedding reception was held in a log cabin in San Francisco’s Presidio, centered around a huge, beautiful fireplace and her first dance was to a song entitled “I’ve got a fire in my heart for you.” For her invitations, her awesome graphic designer friend cut a linoleum block with this design and handprinted each of her invitations.
 

If block printing is out of your range (or your bff isn't a graphic designer), consider designing your invites and printing on your home printer like Vanessa aka tckldpink or printing them with your Print Gocco.

Get creative with your Save-the-Dates, too! Hope also riffed on those Chinese tissue-paper wall calendars for her Save the Date, but changed the details so they were about her wedding. They were screenprinted on chipboard, but could easily be done with a Gocco or home printer.

For Hope’s wedding invitations, she designed this two-color silkscreen poster and hand-printed them with her (now) husband. The final product was a 14” x 24” poster, rolled up and mailed in a poster tube.
     
[photo on left by Jennifer Kloss Heffner: www.jenniferklossphotography.com]

And our friend, Kara, took photos in a photo booth, printed them on her home printer and glued them onto magnets for a fridge reminder of the fun to come.
 
If you’re not quite up for make your own wedding dress or designing mailed paper items, there are still plenty of other projects for the crafty-minded.

Other Accoutrements
Hope created a wish tree and asked that all the guests at her wedding participate by writing a wish for their marriage on a card and placing it in the red envelope (numbered by anniversary on which it would be opened). The bridespeople and groomspeople walked down the aisle with baskets and collected all the wishes from the guests, then placed these baskets at the altar. Hope and her Man were then married surrounded by everyone's good wishes for their marriage.

    
[photos by Jennifer Kloss Heffner: www.jenniferklossphotography.com]

You aren't limited by a wish tree, either! You can simply make time capsules cards for everyone to fill out to be opened on a future anniversary. (See the melicob Knot profile page for more details.) 

You can also get creative and a little silly! Melissa R. made these whiskey boutonnières for the groomsmen to wear at the rehearsal and champagne bouquets for her lovely ladies to carry for practice.

   
[photo by Melissa Rannels]

And Hope decided that in lieu of a cake, she and her man wanted a donut tower…topped with custom bobbleheads. They ordered the bobbleheads online and her husband built the tower using pre-cut plastic sheets and acrylic glue at Tap Plastics in San Francisco.

 
[photo by Brad Greenlee]

In lieu of flower centerpieces, Hope also borrowed an idea she saw on Design*Sponge (www.designspongeonline.com) and had vases with live goldfish!
 

[Photo by Jennifer Kloss Heffner: www.jenniferklossphotography.com]

In addition to the fun stuff we've seen and done, Vanessa Lane, a DIY focused Bay Area wedding planner with Tickled Pink Events (www.tickledpinkevents.com), also gave us her take on the growing DIY wedding trend. "At Tickled Pink, I am seeing a large number of DIY brides using their handmade projects as a way for guests to get to know them and their significant others just a little better. It gives guests a more intimate connection to the day and the wonderful union that is about to occur!"

Aren’t a DIY-er?
Don't have time to DIY? You can still have a handmade wedding!
If DIY isn't in the cards for your event, you can still support it by buying handmade wherever possible. Be like Hope and give everyone in your wedding party art prints by independent designers off of Etsy!

 
[photo by Jennifer Kloss Heffner: www.jenniferklossphotography.com]

Or be like Melissa A. aka malvarado and have your bridesmaid's carry handmade fans instead of flowers. Or buy your jewelry from your favorite Etsy pal! There are all kinds of one-of-a-kind wedding items out there (stamps, cards, etched champagne flutes, garters, hair clips... we could go on for hours!), just look around and see what inspires you.

Further Resources
For more ideas and inspiration, check out these books for DIY brides:
The DIY Bride: 40 Fun Projects for Your Ultimate One-of-a-Kind Wedding by Khris Cochran (see her post in the Handmade Wedding series)
The DIY Wedding: Celebrate Your Day Your Way by Kelly Bare
Offbeat Bride: Taffeta-Free Alternatives for Independent Brides by Ariel Meadow Stallings
Anti-Bride Guide: Tying the Knot Outside of the Box by Carolyn Gerin and Stephanie Rosenbaum

And a simple web search on "DIY Bride" will get you loads of ideas about the possibilities! Good luck and happy planning!

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