Do It Yourself DIY Wedding
Have you ever heard the old saying “if a job is worth doing, it’s worth doing it yourself”? While I was writing BIG Weddings SUCK! I got to thinking about that and asked myself why it couldn’t be applied to weddings too! The conclusion I came to was that choosing a Do It Yourself Wedding could be a great way to save money! After all, a big part of the expense of a traditional wedding is the high fees many wedding vendors are charging. The more I look into the costs of a big wedding, the more I keep circling back to that Wedding Industrial Complex I have spoken about in the past. A DIY Wedding seems like a great way to escape it, so I dedicated an entire chapter in BIG Weddings SUCK! to the concept!
Why Choose a Do It Yourself DIY Wedding?
The term ‘do it yourself wedding’ is pretty far-reaching and could cover lots of different aspects of the wedding. It could mean writing your own vows or even making your own wedding cake. I think for most couples a DIY wedding is about creating their own wedding to fit their own personality. When you make your own decor, arrange your own flowers and write your own vows you are stepping away from that cookie-cutter wedding everybody else has and making it all your own!
There is no rule to say that you couldn’t make a big wedding into a DIY wedding. However, it just works better on a smaller scale. Think about it logically. The bigger the wedding is, the bigger those DIY wedding projects are going to be and it can be overwhelming. It can also get expensive! Hand-making invites, favors and decor for a small wedding can be relatively inexpensive. If you have a large wedding those costs start to multiply and so does the stress level! DIY on a small wedding is much more achievable and is another reason why BIG Weddings SUCK!
Taking the Do It Yourself Wedding a Step Further
Something else that I stumbled on while researching the idea of a do it yourself wedding is self-uniting or self-solemnizing marriages. This is taking DIY to a whole new level! It essentially means that you can get married without an officiant which will eliminate yet another cost from the budget! These are non-denominational marriages and are sometimes refered to as a Quaker wedding since they originated within the Quaker faith.
If the idea of a self-solemnizing marriage appeals to you then you do need to be aware that this is only available in a handful of states. The regulations differ by location with some states only offering self-officiating marriages to certain faiths, while others just require some extra paperwork to be completed. The states where self-uniting ceremonies are currently available are:
- Pennsylvania
- Wisconsin
- Colorado
- District of Columbia
- California
- Maine
- Nevada
- Kansas