Our DIY Beach Wedding

by Amanda Parham
(Hermosa Beach, CA, USA)

My fiance and I are on an extremely limited budget for our wedding -- so we're doing pretty much EVERYTHING we can ourselves. We are having our ceremony on a public beach - so that we save money on the location, and the ceremony in a hotel ballroom. Because of this, it's ALL about the details.

Our theme is beach bliss -- so we are making our own "message in a bottle" invitations. We're using small plastic bottles with cork closures ($12.50 for 24 bottles at www.sks-bottle.com), beach sand and miniature shells we collected from our favorite beach (free) and raffia ribbon to tie at the top ($2.95 per spool at ww.papermart.com). We're then printing our own invitations on parchment paper (a box of 500 sheets costs $20-30), and tea-staining them ourselves. We're then going to singe the edges for a worn look and enclose them in the bottles. We're also going to print our own bottle labels to complete the look and make it even more personal.

On top of this, we're making starfish boutonnieres for our groomsmen, starfish wrist corsages for the bridesmaids, a mini sandbox with cocktail umbrella escort cards (affixing stickers with guest names to cocktail umbrellas), sand dollar favors for our guests (hand-painting our names and wedding date on sand dollars for each guest) and tying starfish to raffia ribbon for elegant beach-inspired aisle runner. We're also printing our own program fans out of colored cardstock and tying them with ribbon. We're then tying the colorful program fans to the ceremony chairs to add just another hint of color.

For our reception decor, we're also making our own elegant centerpieces using Manzanita branches, faux pearl strands, freeze dried orchids, seashells and hanging tealight candles. For the hanging tealight holders we're recycling jelly jars, painting them our wedding colors and suspending them from the manzanita trees with wire. We'll put the manzanita "trees" into inexpensive vases with beach glass. Each elegant centerpiece will cost approximately $25 saving a TON off a floral display.

We're also going to break apart a forklift pallet and use the wood to make hand-painted beach signs directing our guests to the ceremony, as well as others that say cute little messages like "Happily Ever After."

Just because our wedding has to be on the cheap and chipper -- doesn't mean it also can't be cute and classy!