Ever since I got the official photos, I’ve been meaning to share a couple of wedding DIY projects that I did for my wedding. I already posted the boutonnieres, but I thought I’d also share what I did for the table centerpieces.

It boggles my mind when people talk about spending hundreds (or thousands!) of dollars on wedding flowers. We didn’t have that kind of budget, so when I was in Portland visiting a month before the wedding, I went to several thrift stores in the area and collected several dozen small jars, vases, bowls, and pots. I mainly stuck to ones that were $2 or less, although I splurged on a few more expensive ones. You could probably find even cheaper ones if you had the time to devote to garage-saling, but I did not. Anyway, a couple of days before the wedding I bought cactus potting soil and a couple of flats of succulent plants from local gardening stores, and with the help of my dad, grandpa, and brother, planted the succulents in the vessels.

The postcards were another DIY, which I talked about here. In case you don’t feel like clicking, I scanned vintage Oregon postcards that I bought on Etsy, altered the back to ask people to write marriage advice, and had them printed on moo.com*. They turned out exactly as I pictured, and on the day after the wedding we had fun relaxing in bed together and reading the things people had written.

To create variety in height on the tables, my dad cut small log slices from branches in their woodpile, and we arranged the plants on the tables in clusters. We made the table number flags from paper and bamboo skewers, and stuck them in the plants to mark the tables. At the end of the night we told people they could take home the plants, so they were favors, too.

The only plants that I didn’t play any part in arranging were the ones in my bouquet. I decided to leave that up to a professional, namely Blum Floral Design. The owner, Jordan, was great to work with and did a wonderful job on the bouquet. I just showed her pictures of what I wanted, and she did the rest.

*Full disclosure: That’s a referral link. But I’ve loved everything I’ve ordered from moo, and would be linking regardless.