Wedding Crafts
Wedding crafts encompass a variety of handmade items and decorations specifically created for wedding ceremonies and celebrations. Traditionally, such crafts were a significant part of wedding customs, with families often contributing handmade goods like linens, garments, and decorations. In contemporary times, many couples are opting for artisanal approaches to their weddings, crafting unique items that reflect their personal styles while often reducing costs compared to mass-produced alternatives. These crafts can range from bridal garments and floral arrangements to custom invitations and decorative centerpieces.
Couples often enlist the help of friends and family to create these personalized touches, fostering a sense of community and collaboration. The techniques involved in making wedding crafts can vary widely, incorporating skills in sewing, paper crafting, floral arrangement, and even cake decorating. With the rising costs of weddings, many modern couples view DIY wedding crafts as a way to express individuality on their special day. Additionally, for those who might lack the time or skills, there are opportunities to hire artisans who specialize in custom wedding crafts, making this a viable business avenue as well. Overall, wedding crafts serve as a meaningful way to celebrate love and creativity, offering a personal touch to each event.
Subject Terms
Wedding Crafts
History
Only a few decades ago, before mass-produced wedding invitations, decorations, and favors were available, weddings filled with handcrafted items were the rule, not the exception. As embroidery, sewing, and other traditional handcrafts were passed from generation to generation, richly embellished household goods, linens, and garments for use in wedding ceremonies and later in daily, married lives were primarily created by potential brides and their families. Relatives of the bride often labored over handcrafted bedspreads, quilts, tablecloths, gloves, tea towels, and baby clothes for future children.
Although every item needed for the typical wedding is available in a professionally produced form, many brides and grooms are choosing to create carefully planned, personally expressive celebrations that reflect their own style and taste. Handmade wedding crafts allow couples to have a highly individualized wedding, often at a fraction of the cost of purchased items.
Wedding crafts fall into a variety of categories. Handcrafted garments and items for the wedding day such as veils, headpieces, bridal bouquets, a bride's heirloom garter, flower girl baskets, and ring bearer pillows can be special additions to a ceremony. Unique paper crafts like save-the-day cards, wedding announcements, invitations, place cards, and thank-you notes can be a great way to save money while adding a unique touch to the event. Decorations for the ceremony, such as pew accents, or for the rehearsal dinner and reception, such as table centerpieces or tabletop topiaries, napkin rings, or handcrafted candles can bring the marrying couple's unique personalities to every aspect of the celebration. Handcrafted items can even be given as gifts or tokens of appreciation by the bride and groom to wedding party, or by family and friends to the couple.
To bring an element of collaboration to the festivities that echoes the family spirit of traditional weddings, some couples may choose to ask friends and family members to lend a hand by helping to create the decorations, paper goods, floral arrangements, garments and other handmade wedding craft items needed for the wedding day. In this way, every detail of the event reflects not only the individual style of the bride and groom, but also the time, energy, and talent of those who helped create the unique, handmade wedding crafts.
Techniques
The techniques required to create wedding crafts can be as varied as the crafts themselves. For sewing and handwork projects like sachets, embellished pillows, handmade gloves, bridal garter, or old-fashioned heirloom linens for a hope chest, the techniques involved might include basic sewing machine skills, simple embroidery stitches, and transferring patterns from paper to fabric. For paper crafts like the creation of custom invitations, save-the-date cards, place cards, scrapbooks, a decorated box of memories, or a honeymoon travel journal, techniques such as collage, painting, stamping, embossing, and calligraphy may be required. For table top topiaries, corsages, boutonnieres, bouquets, and floral decorations and centerpieces, arrangement skills and familiarity with color theory are helpful tools.
Kitchen techniques like cake decorating and confectionery skills can come in handy for wedding crafts that involve the wedding cake, party favors, and small edible gifts. Handmade soaps, handcrafted candles, origami, etched stemware, napkin rings, and handmade jewelry are all examples of wedding crafts that use a wide range of skills and techniques.
Trends
Many modern couples don't feel the degree of pressure that their parents and grandparents did to uphold tradition on their wedding day. More than ever before, today's couples use their special day as an opportunity for personal expression, creating an unforgettable celebration that is perfectly suited to their unique style, taste, attitude, and personality. These individually crafted occasions can be as elegant and formal or as casual, inexpensive, and fun as the happy couple wish, and the handmade wedding crafts can be as beautiful and classically romantic or as hip and trendy as the imagination allows. Furthermore, as the average cost of having a wedding continues to increase, couples are choosing more and more to incorporate handmade decorations and features or to have a complete do-it-yourself event. In some cases, brides have chosen to make their own dress, either from scratch or by altering a purchased gown to give it a more unique or personalized look.
Wedding Crafts for Fun vs. Profit
Wedding crafts can become a fun way for a creative craftsperson to make a very enjoyable living by helping others to express themselves on their wedding day.
Not everyone has the time, creativity and skill to create the kinds of favors, invitations, decorations and gifts that they would like to feature in their own wedding celebration. Couples who value self-expression and really want to celebrate their love in a way that reflects their tastes and personal style may be willing to pay handsomely to make their wedding day into a completely personal reflection of who they are. For couples who have the desire, but not the knack, for unique wedding crafts, the option exists to hire someone to help create the one-of-a-kind items for a wedding celebration that reflects the individual taste of the happy couple. For the talented person who enjoys creating crafts for weddings, custom decorations, favors, invitations and gifts can become a source of not only creative fulfillment, but also substantial income. Online craft-friendly sites such as Etsy have become popular for selling such custom, handmade items, particularly for events such as weddings.
Learning More
Books
Kopp, Linda, editor. Michael's Book of Wedding Crafts. Lark Books, 2006.
Matthews, Bette, et al. The Complete Book of Wedding Crafts. Quarry Books, 2005.
Nelson, Teresa, editor. Creative Wedding Decorations You Can Make. Betterway Books, 1998.
Paffrath, April L.,et al. Wedding Favors & Decorations: A Stylish Bride's Guide to Simple, Handmade Wedding Crafts. Quarry Books, 2004.
Perry, Elaine, editor. Handcrafted Weddings. Creative Publishing International, 1999.
Rye, Terry L. and Laurel Tudor. Creative Wedding Keepsakes You Can Make. Betterway Books, 2000.
Rye, Terry L. Creative Wedding Florals You Can Make. Betterway Books, 2000.
Tyline King, Heidi and Nancy Worrell. Beautiful Wedding Crafts. Lark Books, 1998.