Our Wedding | DIY Wedding Reception Decor Tutorial

Today’s post is giving you some insight to how we made our DIY wedding reception decor. Before we get into that, though, I’m just going to let you in on why we made it.

As every new bride does, I had lots of new Pinterest boards organizing all my ideas and pins of wedding decor that I loved. Now, as awesome as Pinterest is, it’s also so overwhelming in situations like this where you’re looking for inspiration. There are just so many beautiful ideas out there and I loved all of them. Of course, no budget could possible accommodate all of those wish list items so I really had to narrow down why I loved certain decor elements.

A lot of the wedding inspiration I found on Pinterest involved some kind of hanging element: hanging greenery, hanging lanterns, hanging something. My husband and I are both math nerds so we were very strict with our budget. I knew that our budget wouldn’t be able to accommodate hanging greenery so I decided another hanging element would be good enough. Some people definitely thought I was crazy when they heard my idea, but after seeing this picture on Pinterest, I was sold on the idea!

And you know what? I love our DIY wedding reception decor so much more than the hanging greenery I saw in my most favourite pins.

All photos were taken by the incredibly talented Natalie Elyse Photography!

Reception Hanging Installation DIY

I had no idea what to call this, so we’re just going to go with a hanging installation. Sooo follow these steps if you want to recreate this for your wedding or event!

STEP 1

Purchase different fabrics in the colours of your choice. We went to Fabricland and bought yards and yards of fabric (that just so happened to be on sale, score!) that fit our wedding’s colour scheme.

STEP 2

From the edge of the fabric, measure the width you want your fabric strands to be. The strands we used were roughly 1 1/2 inches wide.

STEP 3

Cut once with scissors and rip the material until you reach the other end of the fabric.

STEP 4

Place the ripped strands in a plastic bag. Use a different bag for each colour. I know, such a glamorous organization system, right??

STEP 5

Repeat Steps 2 – 5 until all the fabric is ripped into ribbon like strands

STEP 6

Choose one colour to be the ribbon you want all the other ribbons to be strung from. Let’s call this the “anchor”. Cut these so that they’re all the same length. This will be how wide each swag will be. For our wedding, our swags were around 6 m wide.

STEP 7

Finally, cut the rest of the ribbons with scissors to your desired length. These will be the ribbons that hang down. Let’s call these the “danglers”. Personally, I think this looks better when all the ribbons are slightly different lengths, so just estimate and cut away!

STEP 8

Tie the anchor to two posts so that it’s taut. Make sure to tie it several feet off the ground. Trust me, your back will thank you for this! Now, I use the term “posts” loosely. Just tie it between two things that won’t move so that you can tie all the danglers to it easily. Our “posts” were the door knobs of the furnace room and the laundry room. The distance between them was large enough that the anchor was taut. So it doesn’t have to be a fancy set up!

STEP 9

Tie the danglers of the same colour randomly to the anchor. Continue to tie danglers of all the other colours in random order so that there’s a nice mix. And you’re done!

I’m also including how we stored these in the tutorial because these can get so tangled if you’re not careful.

Step 10

When all the danglers are attached, gather the anchor and the danglers and place them in a plastic bag (again, such a glamorous storage system), making sure that the ends don’t get lost in the bag.

Step 11

Finally, tie the ends of the anchor around the handles of the plastic bag.

Storing them this way made it so easy for us to transport and set up the installation. All you have to do is untie the anchor from the handles of the plastic bag and pull it out!

(By the way, I’m just now realizing there are so many other words I could’ve used instead of “danglers” BUT I’m just gonna stick with it!)

So there you have it, that’s the low down on our DIY wedding reception decor! Is this something you think you’ll be making for your wedding or event?