Wedding checklist for a diy bride

Can you define DIY bride? There is a wide range from someone only designing their own signs or making their own favors to self catering, doing their own flowers, their own hair and make-up, sewing their dress, making and setting up all decorations and so on.


What is your venue? Are you hiring any vendors? What is your budget (DIY can save a lot of money but not necessarily).
I DIYed most of my wedding in only three month. I had help from a friend. It was in our church's backyard and the only hired vendors were photographer and chairs. But I had a number of 'friendors'.
Happy to share my checklist with you or some thoughts if you give a little bit more details what you are looking for.

If you haven’t already, use the free wedding planning template at Google Sheets which has a ton of things to keep track of.

View Quoted Comment I’ve got my location picked out but I’m going to diy my centerpieces, bouquet, signs, and most of the decorations. We are still hiring vendors for most things.

View Quoted Comment
I second the Google sheets wedding planning template .


As far as DIY stuff. I think at this point I would only do some research like pointers boards etc.When you decide what you want to do for centerpieces and you want to upcycle e.g. glass bottles you could start collecting them.Some time next year you could start buying your materials when hobbylobby, Michaels, etc have sales. But I wouldn't buy stuff to early. You have to store it and you might change your mind on colors.

As far as flowers you can start doing your research and think about fresh vs faux, florist vs wholesale etc. But again I would not order too early.
For signs, save-the-dates, seating chart, ... I used canva.com to design.
If you have a venue and a caterer you'll have a lot less to do than me. Hopefully in summer 2022 you also don't have to worry about covid, so you don't need to prepackage snacks, silverware or make cute labels for hand sanitizer bottles.

Here is some of my check list - most things are optional and probably not all apply to you.
- design and sent save the dates (virtually)- order invitations
- make a list of all the signs
- design signs and print signs on home printer- buy frames for signs- order big welcome sign (foam board)- order flowers wholesale- maybe practice arranging flowers before hand if you choose fresh flowers
- make Playlist for music
- make table numbers and buy table number holders
- print seating chart (last minute)- center pieces (I did bud vases with flowers - super easy)- flower girl baskets and flower petals- ring box or ring pillow
- aisle decoration
- aisle runner?- reserved sign for ceremony
- arch and arch decoration
- sweetheart table decoration- card box- guestbook or guestbook alternative- favors if you want to do them- candy bar/popcorn bar/dessert table/...

Any other decorations... that really depends on your venue. We did lots of balloons and I loved it. But it was outside in the afternoon and the balloons were in our colors. But maybe some sort of lights or something.

But if you have a venue that takes care of most and some other vendors (like caterer, baker, etc) it's really not that much that is needed. You might want to hire a day-of-coordinator that helps with set up and decorating. They might also have some items you can use. Your biggest project might be flowers and centerpieces from what it sounds like.

If you're doing a lot of DIY, definitely be sure to add in checklist items for setup and teardown! Even if it's not you yourself who will be coordinating things, be sure there's a designated person and time for getting DIY pieces to the site, putting things up correctly, and making sure they come down in a timely manner.