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(Warning: As you can probably guess, this post will be picture heavy)

I’ve never discussed our budget much on my blog, but the Mister and I decided when we got engaged, that we wanted a small wedding with a very moderate budget. We just didn’t understand the need to spend tens of thousands of dollars on one day when the point of the day was a lifetime commitment. (I recently read about a bride who was so proud of keeping her wedding budget under $30,000 and nearly choked on my coffee. In South Carolina, that can easily be a whole year’s salary.) This is not meant to offend anyone who does in fact have a larger budget — it just wasn’t realistic for us.

In the interest of keeping our expenses down, we had several do-it-yourself projects to the big day. In fact, we had more than I initially thought we would have. I also have to say the Mister’s mother was awesome and helped us with so many of these projects; without her craftiness and style, I think I would have gone crazy trying to get things done.

I’ve previously shared our Save the Dates and our Invitations. Here are some of the other DIY details that helped save our budget and keep our day unique to our vision:

The Mister and I had decided that we wanted to make a donation to the National MS Society in lieu of wedding favors to honor my mother. However, my MIL was kind enough to bake wedding cookies as a little something sweet for our guests to take home. We told her to surprise us so we didn’t know if it was going to be cookies, Jordan almonds or dinner mints until we got there.

Another picture of the centerpieces. We tried to keep it simple – candles and sea shells.

I cannot take any credit for the cupcakes; you’ve read before about my friend Erin baking them for us as a wedding gift. She made from scratch lemon with lemon meringue pie filling, lime with key lime pie filling, orange with orange meringue pie filling. She also made the frosting from scratch at the restaurant when she got there that morning and decorated the cake stand herself. She’s awesome!

The final and probably most stressful DIY for me was the flowers. I just wasn’t sure what I wanted. In the end, my MOH and I bought about 75 dollars worth of flowers at the local grocery store and put together the bouquets and boutonnieres the day before the wedding. We were going to make corsages for the mothers and grandmothers as well, but it just didn’t happen.