Let’s face facts- weddings are expensive. You may want a Mercedes Benz wedding, but be on a Honda budget. That’s totally fine, you just have to know where you can save and where you should spend. If you’re doing your dream wedding on a budget, we can help you save a few dollars here and there. These five DIY projects for your wedding will help you save some cash and still make the big day special.

Custom Stationery

One big expense that can rack up faster than you realize? Stationery and mail-related products. There’s a quick way to get around the high costs of printing out certain things. You can download free templates online and create your own return labels or guest address labels. It’s quite cheap to get label stickers from any sort of customized label you’ll need. Return address labels and guest address labels are probably the easiest thing to make at home. They can be quite costly to custom print, so just do it at home!

Bridesmaid Bouquets

You may want to spring for an arrangement for your bouquet, but for your bridesmaids it’s easy to actually do at home. Do some research on pinterest or flower blogs and go downtown to buy some loose flowers the day before or the morning of. It’s best to task this to one of your bridesmaids. It may feel a bit tedious, but it can seriously save you some money. If you want to get super fancy, you can do boutonnieres for the groomsmen too!

Have Your Friends Marry You

It can be a surprise cost to hire someone to marry you- you may not realize it but there can be a cost associated with almost everything. It can save you some money and make it much more meaningful to have a friend or family member do the ceremony. It can be sweet to ask whoever set you up or aided in you two meeting, or whoever has known you two as a couple the longest. It can be pretty cheap to get certified to officiate weddings, so you can save a few dollars here.

Lower the Lights

Renting or buying big extravagant candles can be seriously pricey. Candles are so beautiful and romantic, so it’s kind of hard to skimp on them. One easy way to get around the cost of something too extravagant is to take the same concept and shrink it- literally. Skimp the huge pricey candles and buy a few packs of tealight candles. You can get a ton of these for seriously cheap. Arrange the tealights on different levels to create depth and a sense of flow or drop them in water to have floating candlelight. It’s super romantic, creates gorgeous lighting, and is cheaper than springing for huge candles.

Stencil Yourselves

A quick way to ‘brand’ your wedding favors is to create a stencil and paint it over blank favors such as cards and small gifts. If you’re thinking of doing a little favor such as a tote bag, a candle, a selfie stick, any sort of favor for your guests- it will almost always cost a little more to put your name and/or date on it. You can actually get discounts or better rates on items to get items that are blank or not marked yet. You can make your own stencil using cardstock and some creativity and brand everything at home. It’s a fun art project that can save you money!