One of the first ideas my mother and I came up with to save money was doing our own centerpieces. We had heard how expensive it can be, and after realizing we would need at least 22 we thought we could do this ourselves.

So one gloomy Friday morning mom and I head down to the LA Flower mart and start grabbing flowers that were inexpensive and in our color scheme. I always liked spidermums for their texture, and the button mums are always so cute to me. Another one I love is the fabulous Dhalia. Other then that we just went for the gerbers that day knowing they were affordable and would last the time needed to make it to the wedding.

Besides buying about $25 worth of flowers we also picked up a few oasis’ and some 6×6 inch vases to put this whole thing together. In order to hide the oasis in the vase we bought some tea leaves that could be stripped and wrapped along the frame of the vase for more color as well.

We headed home and got to work. Next thing you know we had our kitchen looking like a florist shop. We did some rough drafts and just tried to see how different things looked, it took us about 15 minutes per centerpiece and we made three. We figured we would want them perfect for the wedding and estimated maybe 30 minutes max for each making that 11 man hours right there… assume it’s me, mom, and maybe one or two others. Wow, we can crank out all of the centerpieces in about 3 hours probably.

Before I continue with this story why don’t you check out a few angles of some of our drafts…

As you can see we ended up putting some rocks at the bottom just because the leaves wouldn’t totally stay down so the rocks were a way of covering up the oasis as well.

As a whole, I was totally satisfied. I knew that we could do another draft with the actual flowers I wanted (maybe adding a couple different ones, wasn’t really sure) and be completely happy with it. I wasn’t IN LOVE, but I was happy with my first DIY project.

With the price of a vase, rocks, oasis, and flowers we were looking at about $12-15 per center piece which compared to quotes at $35-45 originally that seemed like a great deal, plus the vases could all be resold on Craigslist or something. And for the deal that we got those vases at I was sure I could get them back for the same amount we purchased them as long as they were in just as good condition.

Making a long story even longer, that night my dad said we did a fantastic job but no penny was worth losing our sanity. In a nutshell he said we would be crazy to try and take on this task on our own. He knows us better then anyone (we are both infamous for being stressed) and also knows that the day before the wedding we will have 1,569 other things to do.

Conclusion: They made lovely centerpieces in my condo, a lovely desk arrangement at work, and a great little surprise to my FMIL… but they will not be replicated the day before my wedding on April 16th.

Have you tried to tackle a huge DIY project? What about one that could only be done the day before the wedding?