My DIY Program

The title of this blog should really be: My Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Wedding. I didn't have unlimited financial resources to have things made for me. Invitations, tags, welcome letters, OOT bags, survival kits, pre-travel brochures - I made them all myself. I couldn't afford the really nice designs that I saw online or at the stores. And the ones that I could afford were mediocre at best. So I decided to just make things myself using simple but elegant designs that reflected our tastes.

A great resource for ideas was bestdestinationwedding.com. I could definitely not have done what I've done without this website. A great many ladies on the site did a lot of their own stuff themselves and posted templates. I got a lot of ideas from there and sometimes mixed and matched what people had to make things my own.

An example is my program. After weeks of hemming and hawing, and figuring out how I wanted it to look, I decided upon the minimalistic style. I saw a program that someone posted on bestdestinationwedding that I liked and saw other program samples online. I mixed and matched and made something so simple but I really like it.

I forgot to take a picture but I also added a Pablo Neruda poem in the back which I really love. Pablo Neruda is a Chilean poet and has great love poems. I used his poem Love Sonnet XVII:

I do not love you as if you were a salt rose, or topaz
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
So I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

- Pablo Neruda

Love Sonnet XVII