DIY Wedding Transport

Wedding transport on your wedding day is a must - unless you are staying over the night before, getting married and having the reception all in one place (If that is you then well done - one less item to plan!). Transport can get expensive - especially if you leave it to the last minute! Some ideas to help you save on your transport:

Do you both need a fancy car?

You and your partner may have fantasies of both turning up in a fancy wedding car fit for the Queen - but do you need it? Consider if one of you can compromise on the fancy car for a more subtle vehicle - this will help you to reduce your costs straight away!

Can your Bridal Party make their own way to your venue?

If you have quite a large bridal party you don't have to transport all of them to your chosen venue - arrange a car pool between them, in advance, to ensure they can all get to the venue.

Could you Decorate your Own Car?

If you know anyone with a bit of a fancier car than usual - could you ask them if they can drive you? You could decorate the car how you want, even give the driver a hat to wear! This would mean you get style without the cost - and nobody needs to know!

Consider Coach Hire for Guests

When getting all your guests from the ceremony to your reception venue consider hiring a coach to transport. You could ask for everyone to chip in too - they would be saving money on getting themselves anyway! A company like VIP Coaches provides luxury coaches - ensuring you don't compromise on your ride!

Black Cab's can be Vintage

If none of the above tips are useful then why not go for a Black Cab? This may be a cheaper option then hiring a fancy car and you can claim it is 'vintage'!

If you have any more DIY tips for wedding transport then let us know!

DIY Cake Stands

Now that you have got your cake you need to make it look magnificent on display. We are going to look at some top tips for ensuring that you can create a lovely looking cake stand yourself, on a budget!

Know What Size of Cake you Need to Display

Obvious - but true! Make sure you know the sizes of the cakes you are making and double check - you don't want a last minute nightmare trying to squeeze your cake on a stand you made too small!

Decide on a Cupcake or Cake Stand

Before you can begin you need to decide what kind of cake you are going to be baking - are you looking at a traditional wedding cake or a contemporary cupcake tower?

Traditional is great if you are having a large, elegant function where you aren't too bothered about the cost - or a cupcake tower is perfect if you are having a more casual do where you can have your cupcakes as dessert.

Decide & Purchase your Materials

If you are having a themed wedding then your cake stand can reflect this - allowing you to decorate exactly how you want to match your do.

If you have decided to go with cupcakes, rather than a cake then cardboard may be a cheap and cheerful material that is perfect to hold your cupcakes. You can cut the cardboard to size and cover in any paper you want. Items like soup cans can be covered and used to separate the tiers - no-one will ever know!

When looking at materials for a cake stand try to look for something that is quite sturdy - you don't want your three tiered cake to fall off your stand due to it's weight. Materials such as wood, plates and tins can all work well.

www.brit.co/cake-stand

www.thedeaddollsclub.com

                 

bugger-dixonline.blogspot.co.uk/

www.joshuatrent.com/clay-pot-cake-stand/

                                                                       












See what you can do with a few materials and a lick of paint!

Give Yourself Enough Time

When making your cake stand for your do make sure you give yourself enough time beforehand to dry out your materials, apply a number of coats and save time for any mishaps.

Enjoy Your Creation

Last, but not least, enjoy looking at your creation and get as much use as you can out of it - don't put it back in a cupboard afterwards!

If your on the last minute, or maybe don't have the creativity to make your own stand - you can buy a multitude of stands from various outlets - Wedding Acrylics have a great range.

Do you have any great ideas for a cake stand? Let us know!

DIY Wedding Cakes

In our first instalment we take a look at DIY Wedding Cakes - giving you a number of ideas, tips and tricks to start designing and creating your own wedding cake.

With the average 3 tier wedding cake costing around £400 this already takes up a large proportion of your wedding budget. A cake is standard at a wedding - you cannot just take it out of the wedding altogether - but there are a few different ways that you can save some of your budget:

Compromise on Flavourings
Fruit cake is more expensive than sponge - that is a fact. A quick way to take some money of the cost of the cake is to change the filling - most places will allow you to have a top tier as a fruit cake and the second and third tiers as sponge. This gives a great variety for your guests and helps you to save some of the cost.

 Wedding Cake as Dessert
Instead of having a dessert at your wedding breakfast serve your cake! This will help greatly with the cost of catering at your venue and with all the goings on of the day your guests are sure not to notice too much! The only issue with this is that your chosen venue may require you to have a dessert from them to make minimum spends. However if you can get away with this then this can cut your budget and can even be combined with the below suggestions to cut the costs even more.

Buy the Cakes, Make the Decorations
There are a number of places nowadays that allow you to just buy the fruit or sponge cakes - allowing you to take these home and decorate how you want. This will certainly lower the cost of your cake - however it may still cost more than you think to buy the cakes and decorations.

Design the Wedding Cake Yourself
Designing and making your own wedding cake is the most cost effective way for the creation of your wedding cake - allowing you to get the exact cake you want at the right price. There are a few drawbacks with creating your own cake - we give you a quick guide below to creating your perfect wedding cake:

Practice Makes Perfect - Make sure you practice your dream cake a couple of times before the big day - allowing you to get the flavourings and decorations perfect.

Find your Strengths - You may not be brilliant at every aspect of creating your cake - you may be better at the creation of the filling than the decorating. If you find this when practising recruit some friends to help out - they are sure to have different skills to you that can help.

Plan & Start Early - When it comes to creating the actual wedding cake make sure you have a plan of action ready. You need to create time scales to make sure that all aspects of the cake will be ready in plenty of time.

Pick the right Tools - Make sure you find the right tools for the job - somewhere like www.weddingacrylics.co.uk has a wide array of wedding specific wedding cake creation tools - from a cake stand to cake decorations.

Do you have any more tips for a cost effective wedding cake?

DIY Weddings

Welcome to the home of Do-It-Yourself weddings! Let's face it weddings are expensive - when you add up the venue, the food, the photographer and the entertainment you have probably already reached your budget's limit! That's where DIY comes in!

There are lots of little things that can be created more cheaply than companies would charge you for and on this blog we are going to run through some of these - showing you how you can create the same for less!

I hope you enjoy - feel free to share your own ideas on DIY weddings!