Making more than vows: the joys of a DIY wedding

I don’t know if there is such a thing as a low-key wedding. We planned on having a quiet get-together with close friends and family and amazing food and drink. My partner and I are both from large families, so by the time our nearest and dearest were included it had become well over 100.

The amazing food and drink has remained, whatever about our expanding guest list. The talented Eunice Power from Dungarvan is creating a Lebanese feast with a procession of hot and cold meze followed by slow-cooked lamb, sticky with pomegranate molasses and a date-sweetened chicken pastilla. At the tasting, my one-year-old daughter sat on my lap, her eyes glazed with pure joy as her chubby hands clutched the warm flatbread, her face covered in beetroot hummus. She approved. The rosewater meringue with pistachio and lemon curd had us wishing that Power would just take us all in to live with her, but we had to head home and finish the wedding preparations.

I am amazed at how many times over the past few months I have been asked about “the wedding”. How are things going with the wedding? Are ye all set for the wedding? Each time I panic a little, then remind myself that we will be with our closest friends and family and the most amazing food I have ever eaten. Then my heart begins to flutter all over again with excitement.

The weeks are ticking by, and now that the food is taken care of, I have turned my attention to decorating and styling things. We have an incredible florist, west Cork-based Hanako, so there will be no worry there.

I have put myself in charge of candles. I think every bride loves a bit of DIY and I'm no different. I have an aversion to jam jars at weddings, though, and the thought of hours spent gluing lace around them just gives me the shivers. I practised the dark art of graffiti as a young teen and spent my nights hanging around with groups of boys spraying my "tag" around Cork city and farther afield (apologies to Cork City Council and thank you for eventually providing us with a designated area to express our creativity).

So I was delighted to discover on Pinterest that being a bride-in-waiting gives you full permission to spray gold paint on anything and everything. My fingertips have been sparkling for the past few weeks as I have gone on a gilt trip.

My spare room is crammed full of food-styling props and crockery. Some of it I know I will never use again so I have sprayed gold stripes on some plates and saucers to give them a modern facelift and will be placing candles on them.

The same goes for chipped cake stands, glass vases and old-fashioned serving dishes. Just spray them and fill them with fruit, flowers or candles for instant beauty. Old candlesticks, especially those terrible black wrought-iron ones, can be bought for next to nothing in charity shops. Always browse through the bric-a-brac section for candlesticks and other useful items at times such as this. Clean them well, then spray with gold paint. For an added glittery effect you can coat the candlestick in glue, then dip it in gold glitter. In an everyday situation, gold glitter can be a little too, well, glittery but when the lights are turned down low, and the candles are flickering, it just works. I’m hoping.

In the spirit of upcycling, I have collected a number of tankards and silver cups over the years, which look lovely when filled with summery posies. I first saw it done in a seaside restaurant on a Greek island. The engravings are a great talking point, as each one is different, whether it’s a prize for being the best at under-14s rugby or a christening mug with the only weight you are happy to share (I was a sturdy 8lb 5oz). They add a little of the personal history of the bride and groom.

I initially wanted grey strips and maybe some mustard yellow or rose gold as our colour theme, but I have slowly and surely headed down the path of full-blown romantic wedding with pinks and ivories, and I’m adding some modern bright elements with neon pink and green. Tiger is a good source of brightly coloured candles that burn well, but I have also bought some good-quality church candles from Meadows & Byrne.

As the daughter of a builder, I was delighted to get my hands on a bag of cement to try making my own cement candleholders. I have seen so many planters and pots made form cement over the past few years, and I love them. I think the smooth, cool cement sets the warm rose gold, pinks and neon green off really well. It’s a messy but rewarding process. There are some great tutorials online and so many ideas.

I saved lots of cardboard containers to use as moulds and had great fun mixing it up. I painted some with geometric shapes and others with stripes, and bursts of gold here and there. I want food to feature, so I am using fruit and vegetables that suit my colour palate of creams, pinks and greens to decorate the venue. Pomegranates, limes, apples and avocados are perfect. It’s almost like a throwback to Victorian days, when pineapples would be used to decorate the tables at feasts. In the 18th century you could even hire pineapples as centrepieces for your social events. Some pineapples did the rounds of urban dinner parties and appeared several times before eventually being eaten.

Creating a paper pompom in under five minutes is surely a must for the DIY bride. It should be yet another box to tick before you become legally married. I have now mastered the art. It’s really enjoyable the first few times and then you realise that six pompoms does not an impact make and that your dream of an 8ft-high arch made entirely of ethereal paper creations will have to be a project for another day. It couldn’t be simpler and there are fantastic tutorials online. It is very repetitious, however, so enlist your other half or some friends and make an evening of it.

I loved lino printmaking when I was in school and I used my wedding as an opportunity to break out the lino set and invest in some new paints. I spent a shocking amount of money on things to make the invitations, but I ended up with unique invitations and I really enjoyed making them. My sister brought me back dried rose petals from Iran that smelled incredible, so I tucked a few into each envelope.

It’s great fun to spend some time making things for your wedding and a lovely way to spend time with your partner before the big day, whether it’s having a glass of wine together while putting stamps on envelopes or my betrothed cleaning up the cement that I splashed all over the garage floor. It’s all part of the process and the beginning of married life together.