DIY or DON'T?! These Brides are either GENIUS or CRAZY

Shut your face. This is the kind of DIY stuff that I freaking live for. Hi, if you're new here, my name is Jamie Wolfer. I'm your online wedding planner. And in today's video, we're going to be going over some DIYs on the internet and whether you should or should not be replicating them. Because listen, some people out there have high amounts of ambition, but some of their DIYs are very difficult. So in today's video, I'm going to be reviewing a handful of popular DIYs that are often touted on TikTok to see if they're actually worth your while. And in my opinion, a good DIY needs to be quite feasible, quite affordable, and easily replicated. Okay, so without further ado, let's just jump right on into it.

I'm going to show you guys how I DIY'd the staircase signage for my wedding. This was a video that came across my For You page that had me intrigued, and I was quoted over $600, and I thought I could do this myself. I started looking for fabric at Hobby Lobby but ended up going with Fabric Wholesale Direct. I ended up going with this gorgeous polyester satin in this martini olive color, and I got up to 15 feet because it was going to hang down from the staircase. I do not own a Cricut, so I ended ordering this custom iron-on from Etsy. I ended up doing like a 22-inch, but I honestly could have gone—

$52 for a 22-inch vinyl? I'm in the wrong business. If anyone wants me to custom cut you some vinyl, you just— for $52, you just let me know.

I went with this awesome seller and I was able to send in my logo and she printed it exactly how I wanted. The vinyl was actually so much easier to use than I thought. I was able to stick it right onto the satin and I put a piece of parchment paper over it and I started to apply heat with my iron. My biggest recommendation for working with satin and an iron is to make sure on the lowest heat setting and make sure you're applying more pressure than you would initially think you would need. After about 10 minutes of just applying heat onto it, I was able to peel it off and this is what it looked like. We ended up hanging it up on the staircase with two industrial clips and it held up so well. I absolutely love how this came out and it cost under $100.

This is primetime DIY. This is exactly the kind of hustle that I'm talking about. When you see something that cost hundreds of dollars and you do it for what, a 6th of the cost. This is incredible. A couple notes on how we can make this a little bit better. One, try to put a towel, whether it's a kitchen towel or something, in between your parchment paper and your iron when you're ironing. It makes for a much more smooth experience, and it provides just a little bit of an extra barrier, uh, between your hot iron and your vinyl. I do agree, you want this on the lowest setting, and you want to hold and press for longer than you think you need to. Why do I know this? Because your girl loves a good Cricut craft, and I've messed up quite a few. Additionally, I would have preferred to see it hung a little bit differently, but I do like that it's kind of taut enough so you can really see the letters there. Then lastly, I want you to please, please hear me when I say this: bring a steamer with you for a situation like this because it looks so good, but it definitely feels a little bit more DIY because it's wrinkly all around where the letters are, and that's not ideal. A good DIY also looks pretty polished, right? I forgot that my criteria earlier, but we want it to still present as if a professional did it. So this is close, it's super close. The color is gorgeous, the font on this is perfect. Her execution is nearly flawless. I just— this is why you need a steamer, okay? And on the subject of a steamer, as a side note, um, you need longer to steam your dress than you think you do, okay? And maybe bridesmaids' dresses as well. So you might want to do that like the day before, okay? So don't count on the steamer to handle and fix everyone's dresses the morning of your wedding, okay? Okay, now this next one is listed as a haul, but she has quite a few DIYs that I think are very interesting.

Part 1 of everything that I've made or I've gotten for my wedding. My wedding is in less than 30 days. I wanted to take you guys through everything that I have. Okay, first thing I'm super proud of are these welcome signs that I've created. So I have my welcome party for the Thursday toast and then my wedding entry one as well.

Brilliant. Love those. Super easy, really lightweight, easy to transport, easy to put together. Another reason I love these banners is because the wind doesn't strongly affect them. Yes, it could kind of, you know, cause them to be tilted, but it's very unlikely that it'll knock them over. And if you can weight them at the bottom, I strongly recommend adding like a little, a couple of fishing weights kind of subtly, maybe behind the fabric if possible, to keep it from really blowing a lot. If it's outside. One issue we see with any sort of DIY backdrop or any sort of large display like this is wind, like just knocking it over, knocking off the easel, shooting into the stratosphere. So we want to be mindful of if we're making large signage, especially ourselves, that we are doing something to anchor it in place. So this is cute. Love it. If it is outside, maybe try some fishing weights.

I've been putting pictures in picture frames. I created this audio guestbook sign.

Frames are brilliant. Frames are so good. It's such an easy, inexpensive DIY to keep going to your local thrift store, Sourcing frame after frame after frame that then you can display in your home afterwards. This is big brain energy, people. I love this. And you can spray paint them all the same color, so it feels very cohesive. It's an excellent way to add a little bit of personalization to your event without adding an insane extra cost, especially because she can then carry that branding and theming over into the audio guest book frame. So everything looks super cohesive and well branded.

Jake and I got these gifted. They're custom wine flutes to cheers in, and they have our name on them. Gifted this beautiful engraved cake cutting set. It has our name on it and our wedding date. I created these little bathroom boxes for the men's and women's restroom, so I love how these turned out. All the essentials.

Mm, okay, I've talked about this before, but like, you don't need bathroom baskets. I really don't think you do. You don't. If you are bursting with creative energy and you want to put something together, it is a nice touch, but never, please never, never, never feel like you have to do something like this. Let me de-influence you for just a second. You do not need a bathroom basket. I myself am a generator, so I like to build and create and craft, so this would me. This would soothe me. I would like to do something like this, but if that is not a bit of you, please feel free to skip it.

Two of these beautiful bar signs that say the bar, and then they have our signature cocktails, the wine and beer list, and the spirits list. I love how these turned out. They're super classy and they're just gonna look so perfect.

Okay, okay, yes. And, and what I love about bar signs this size is people can start reading them from 10 to 15 feet back. The font is a little too scripty in my opinion for something like this if you want it to be read from far away. If you want to stay on and you want to keep using your font, feel free to do so. But ideally you want people figuring out their drink like way ahead of time before they even get up to the bar. I do like the little bar menu signs, they're great, but usually it's only like 2 or 3 people deep that can even see those. So what you end up getting is you get a bottleneck at the bar where people are, hmm, uh, I don't know, what's the— what are the drink options again? But with a large sign, people can start making up their mind a little bit further back, okay? Because we've all been stuck behind that lady at Starbucks who's like Mm. What's a latte? Okay, so that has milk in it.

Okay.

Okay. What about— what are the flavors that you have? Can you walk me through those? So if you want to avoid that at your wedding, let's have large bar signs with very readable fonts.

Then I got a bunch of matchbooks created. They have our name on them. It's Sierra and Jake. And on the back it has like a little disco ball and says The Perfect Match. I have so many of them and they're in these beautiful glass vintage bowls that I thrifted. Look how adorable this bowl that I thrifted is. It has little swan heads as like the handles. Ah, it's just so cute. And then this is the other beautiful big thrifted bowl that I got. I'm so in love with this bowl. It's real crystal and I'm obsessed.

These are great. They're not essential, but they're great. This is something that just adds a little bit of visual interest on random tables like the card table, the gift table, which are usually the same thing, um, where your guest book is. Again, that can all be on the same place. I'm not sure where all of these are gonna go if we have 3 of them. If a client brought me 3, I'd probably get creative of where to put the other 2. Maybe there's table in the foyer or something, or location in the cocktail hour area, or maybe on the bar top so people can just grab one if they're standing right there. That would be really wise in my opinion. Those are going to be the locations that I would think of just to add that little bit of je ne sais quoi, that little element of like, oh, there's intentional details in an area that I wasn't anticipating. This is a good DIY. It is not necessary. This is a good DIY. You can totally replicate this. I actually think matchbooks fall into the category of favors that I truly do enjoy and like, and I think a lot of other people do as well. This is also wonderful because you can use it after your event in your home forever, right? So even if you have excess, it doesn't have an expiration date. So I love that matchbooks are making a comeback for sure, because one, they're so cute, and two, they're so practical. And definitely prefer them over other branded kitschy favors.

These beautiful velvet bar menus created off Etsy, like, look how cute these are, guys. Here's a better angle of it so you guys can kind of see it up close. I'm obsessed the way these turned out.

Love the texture of these. That green velvet is giving luxury. I just don't know why we need it if we already had giant bar signs. And when we get up to the front, we don't want someone fiddling with a book. We just want it sitting there ideally, and maybe in some of those frames like you have the, the audio guest book in. That would be a much simpler version of this DIY and probably a lot more cost effective. And this is probably— it's less of a DIY, right? Because we outsource it to Etsy, but we're going to call it in the wedding haul DIY category. Very cute. Not practical in the slightest. Very cute. Not practical. This is like—

and I created these myself. I cut them out using Cricut and I used like Canva. I followed a tutorial of some girl on here. I can tag her as well. I just love the way these turned out and they'll be for our bartenders to put into our drinks.

This is very cute. This is very cute. It also could be one of those things that just falls through the cracks. Just want you to know that. Just want you to hear that unless you're very clear and very explicit with those bartenders. Hey, please use these. Sometimes DIYs like this get missed. There was one that I did however long ago where this gal like hand-stamped every single cocktail napkin that she had at her event with their custom monogram that they got and then ended up with like hundreds of cocktail napkins afterwards. That can feel very disheartening. I love intentional details like this and I love that this is a very well-branded event. If you don't know this about me, your girl loves branding. So anytime someone uses the same font across the board, across all their DIYs, across all of their printed messaging, across all their stationery, I Chef's kiss. I love it so much. And this is no different. This is a very simple, easy upgrade. My guess is this would be pretty affordable based on just how it looks put together. This is a very feasible DIY. Anyone can replicate this, but this would also fall into the de-influence category if you're not the type that likes to do extra crafts and stuff like this.

I cut out all these ribbon for the ceremony chairs so that they could be tied to the edges.

Cute, cute. Very, very impractical to do at the last minute. Also, that's like a ton of ribbons. How many How many chairs do you have? Okay, this is a great DIY to prep ahead of time. So instead of just leaving them as loose ribbons, I would recommend that you get an actual roll of that twine, the twisty ties that you get from the grocery store. I actually use it in my garden. I have a whole roll of it to like keep tomatoes up and trellis them and whatnot. So you can order a roll of that, pre-do the bows, and then put like an 8 or 12-inch section of that twist tie so someone can simply go and twist tie it directly onto the chair itself as opposed to trying to work and zhuzh the bow until it looks great especially if you have someone putting it together like a groomsman who doesn't necessarily have an eye for this. That fabric also looks like it would become quite easily wrinkled in the process, so I would suggest trying to find a very loose way of storing them and not compacting them because like we noticed with the first sign, when it's not ironed, when it's a little bit wrinkly, it kind of cheapens the overall look of it. So we want to make sure if you're doing a DIY like this that one, it's done ahead of time so all the bows look exactly like they should. Two, it's really easy to put together. And three, doesn't end up looking cheap because they got wrinkled in the process. Also, also, you do not need this many. If you just want them lining the aisle tiles, you only need it for the inner chairs. If you're trying to do this on every single chair for your entire event, that's going to be an extended period of time, and you should probably warn your coordinator or planner that you're doing this, or have a crew of people in place to put these on there, because that's just— it's gonna take way more time than you think.

I got these little reserve signs. This was like one of the first things I ordered. They look like they'll hang on to the chairs of like the front row for our parents and family.

You only need one reserve sign for the inside of the row. You don't need one for every single chair. So it looks like she quite a few going on in this. I can't count them because they're acrylic, so I can't really tell, but you shouldn't need more than 4. So that would be for the first 2 rows on each side.

I have this basket of fans that I bought off Temu. This is another sign that I made using the Cricut, and it's going to be for the ceremony. I ordered these custom vow books off Etsy, and I love how they turned out too. They're so adorable, and I can't wait for us to write in them and use them on the day of.

Cute. Here's my bone to pick with vow books.

Okay.

You have this big thick book for possibly 3 to 4 paragraphs. Just some food for thought. Just some food for thought. So people think that it's going to be this keepsake and then it's a little bit weird because like 98% of the book is not filled at all. So if you're going to get a vow book, I recommend you get one that's a little bit slimmer so it makes more sense. In addition to that, I highly recommend having your vows actually printed and taped on the inside of a book like this because sometimes handwriting gets a little bit harder to read, especially if you're nervous or you're crossing things out. I suggest practicing outside the book and then handwriting it in if you absolutely want to do the handwritten version. But if you really want to make sure it's very, very legible, I highly, highly recommend putting it at a slightly larger font, printing it out, cutting it up, and taping it in there. Is this as nostalgic? Is this as cute to look back on? Absolutely not. It will 100% look better in photos though than a folded up piece of paper. So that's the ideal case scenario here.

I got a bunch of disposable cameras and I have these custom wraps. That I got off Etsy as well, and they like say our name on them. And I got these little gift boxes and printed out stickers with our name on it and our little logo. Give people at the end of the night— I'll share what's inside. Cheez-Its, his and hers favorite candies, water, Liquid IV, and some ibuprofen, our matchbooks, and some mints. And then if you guys have any other ideas of what I should be putting in these, let me know. But I think what I have is pretty good so far.

These thank you boxes so cute, but also they're over the top. Please don't feel like you need to do anything like this. Again, like all the other things on this list that I've mentioned, if you have room in your budget and you really want to express yourself creatively in this capacity, go for it. I like the custom sticker, but if we're going to put on there, let's make sure it's not, not as crooked. Okay. Especially if you don't want them to know that you DIY'd it. I do like the his and hers favorite candy. I love the snack in there. I love the water bottle idea, and I love that you're absolutely waterboarding your guests with matchbooks everywhere. Like you're leaving with a matchbook whether you want it or not. Do you need to do this? No. It's feasible. It's probably not super affordable, but anybody can replicate it. Overall, it's a really good DIY if you have room in your budget and you want to add that little luxury high-end touch at the end. Uh, I would recommend making it a little bit fuller. That's a pretty big box for so few ingredients. Look at me speaking outta both sides of my mouth. If you're gonna do it, commit. That's my point. That's my point. And don't feel like you have to do it for every single person that comes to your event cuz you will have leftovers cuz some people will not make it to the end of the evening to grab those unless you have them set out earlier in the night, which I kind of don't recommend cuz it could just add visual clutter all over the space.. So I would set that off to the side. I would have a wedding planner, a coordinator, or someone put that on the cards and gifts table, which is usually near, uh, the entrance of wherever your reception is, and people can grab those on their way out. Also be sure to put a sign out or have the DJ make an announcement or both. Okay, next.

It's really hard to pick a favorite thing for my wedding day, but this is definitely one of them. If you haven't been following along, I'm a 2026 groom who loves a good DIY, and I've been working on this gallery wall seating chart situation for my wedding over the past few weeks. The project did have to come to a halt just for a little bit because as much as I had the vision, I did not really have the means to make this possible. But the person that did is my oldest brother Shane. My brother is talented in multiple ways, and one thing he's very good at is building things. So I of course asked him, and he did an amazing job, as you can clearly tell. And it was super nice because he actually already had this dark brown paint from a home project he did, as well as the stain that we used for the base. And I love that we decided to give it that contrast. I just think it makes it more visually appealing for sure.

Can you guess what I'm looking at with this thing? The base. The base. You know what I love about this? The sucker's not gonna blow over, okay? It's not. Looks to be really well constructed, which a lot of times when people do backdrops, they try to make sure there's no feet in front of it, which means you have to weigh it down in the back with weights or sandbags, etc., something to hold the back of it down from falling forward to give you that overall clean look. This, they embrace the feet. They're like, no, that's okay, we want the balance of both directions. And on top of giving it a very solid, rigid base to work with, it actually is aesthetically pleasing. I do not mind the two tones of what we got going on here.

And now it was time for the fun part of actually hanging everything up on the wall, and this is really where I saw the vision starting to come to life. But of course, with things like this, there are always things that come in the way, so this project actually ended up taking us about 3 to 4 hours. I thought it was gonna be pretty straightforward, but that's just never the case, now is it? Anyways, after we got those little hiccups out of the way, we were moving nice and smoothly, just hanging everything up, placing them where we wanted them. Throughout our wedding, we also had some ribbon detailing, so I thought it'd be really fun to include that on the seating chart as well. And I think it's pretty safe to say that having this like cascading bow down the side was just a super nice touch. I would say it's pretty easy to tell what this is, but just in case our guests were a little bit lost, I added "Find your table" on the side. I didn't want the words to take away from the gallery wall itself, so I wrote it just a little bit smaller, and I think it looked perfect. I also have to give a shout out to my mom because she actually designed all of the names that went on these frames and made all the colors match the table numbers, and it was just a really nice touch. After Tiffany and I got engaged, this was one of the first visions I had for our wedding, and to see it come to life was truly surreal. In the way it matched the The space and the vibe of our wedding was truly everything I could have asked for.

Okay, this is 100% giving Southern California. I was going to say when they were painting it outside in the driveway and now seeing this, like, this wedding happened in Southern California, didn't it? Okay, don't personally love the overall design of the finish of this particular DIY, but it is extremely feasible, extremely reportable, and very repeatable. Also, sir, your handwriting, your handwriting is nigh on impeccable. That's gorgeous. I'm jealous a lot. A whole lot. I couldn't even replicate that in my wildest dreams. So hats off to you. I also love the concept of putting table numbers in frames because this can be adjusted at the last minute. You know those giant seating charts that you see where it has everyone's name listed either in alphabetical order or via table number and it's all one big sheet and one big board. That means if someone gets added on or removed at the last minute, there's nothing you can do if you've printed it in advance. Now it's not really that big of a concern if someone has to drop out. Out or can't attend and their name is still on there. But it does become a bit of an issue when you need to add someone on in the last 2 weeks or so, which, which probably will happen for some of you because people just don't know how to RSVP, okay? Or plans change or life changes. So by utilizing a technique like this, this can be done at the very last minute, which is great. I do not think that from a distance it is obvious what this is. I personally feel a little bit as though it's unfinished. I kind of want a little bit something on the other side of the arch. However, I trust and understand, and just by giving a little peeky-poo at this guy's page, He has a very specific style and a very artistic eye. So I'm definitely not trying to yuck someone else's yum right now. My issue is people will not know what this is because it does not look like a standard or traditional seating chart. So I personally would have done Find Your Table in larger font, maybe even following the curve of that to kind of fill in that negative space. Again, that might be his design. It is his design. He might have done that empty space on purpose or made all the colors of the different backgrounds and frames more cohesive so it presents like a seating chart because this is a very unique take, right? We're already not presenting it in a traditional way. We're not presenting it with traditional colors, which is fun. I'm glad you're leaning into this. I totally love this for you. But then we need to have at least one traditional element that people can cling to, like the Find Your Table. They need to be able to see that. They need to be able to understand that that's what that is, because most people are not going to know. They're not going to know. It's very cute and it's very artsy and you're very creative. Also, you have the coolest suit I think I've seen in a very long time. So hats off to you. I do think that you got real crafty with this. I just would have made a couple of tweaks, but overall Great DIY. And last but most certainly not least—

oh my God, if you can't find a vendor, you find a father-in-law with a power drill. We had a vision for our wedding altar arch but couldn't find any vendors to make it happen, so naturally we handed Pete a Pinterest board because we knew he could make it happen. And you bet he treated it like a full engineering project— windproof, perfectly stable, every detail thought through. That's the handyman he is. He even did a practice run-through to make sure everything looked perfect, and seeing it official on wedding day was so fun. Oh my gosh, that's awesome!

That is insane!

We had big wedding dreams and ideas we hadn't really seen before, one being an over 10-foot-tall linen drape square arch backdrop accented by custom florals alongside. It ended up being the perfect statement piece to help fill our outdoor bluff wall ceremony space. We brought the vision, Pete brought it to life, and our wedding altar dream completely came true.

Shut Your face. When I say that this is top-tier DIY material, I mean this is top-tier DIY material. It's super simple, it's easy to put together, it's feasible. Anybody can do it. I want to know what that fabric is because it has the perfect amount of crinkle to it. It's absolutely delicious. And based off the footage we just saw, very, very easy to replicate. I want to see this arch everywhere, okay? The only issues I see with something like this is obviously, yes, you will need to practice it and you will need someone to set it up on your wedding day. I would hazard a guess that if someone has done a run-through of before, it might be like an hour and a half to set up, maybe 2 hours. But if they haven't done this before and they're trying to figure out the pleats of the fabric and how to wrap it and everything, it could take several hours to complete. This is the kind of DIY stuff that I freaking live for. So that's all we have for today's video, guys. Thank you so much for watching. How about you? What are you DIYing for your event? Let me know in the comments. As always, I love hearing from you guys. If you haven't done so already, jump on down there, like the video if you like the video, and subscribe to this channel for more Tips and Tricks for the Modern Day Bride. And until next week, bye guys!