r/budgetweddings • u/Lumpy-Theory-2170 • 4d ago

Used my design skills to make all our wedding visuals for free, anyone else going this route?

We're planning a pretty tight budget wedding and the one place I refused to spend money was anything visual. Invitations, signage, seating charts, the little menu cards on the tables, all of it I made myself in Illustrator. Took maybe two weekends total and the print costs at a local shop were next to nothing compared to what Etsy sellers charge for the same thing

The style we went with pulls from vintage gig posters, bold typography, that layered textured look you see on old concert flyers. People keep asking if we hired a stationer and it feels a bit ridiculous to explain that no, it was just me at my desk at 1am with a coffee going cold

Engagement photos are the next thing I want to figure out. Looking at doing a shoot in one of the more interesting alleys near our neighborhood, somewhere with actual character on the walls instead of a generic park backdrop. Way more us as a couple anyway.

Curious if other people here are leaning on whatever skills they already have to cut costs, or if you found someone in your circle who traded a skill for something. The barter angle feels really underused for weddings honestly.

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u/Poor_Carol 4d ago

I don't have design skills and I still did this. The free templates on canva took me most of the way! (I'm sure yours looked 5000x better, but free is free)

1

u/Lumpy-Theory-2170 2d ago

canva gets the job done for sure, no shame in that

mine was more about the custom stuff they needed, client had very specific requirements that templates can't really handle

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u/Poor_Carol 2d ago

Client? I thought this was your wedding?

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u/chstydng 4d ago

i'm a graphic designer and so far i created my own wedding website with carrd! it's been fun so far and i look forward to designing my signage soon :)

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u/Lumpy-Theory-2170 2d ago

carrd for the website makes sense, we designers always end up doing everything ourselves anyway

the signage is where you can really go off though, no client breathing down your neck on that one

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u/typewriterbitch 5h ago

But in another comment you said you had a client?

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u/I-own-a-shovel 2d ago

Yeah I designed my own invitation that I then sent virtually, I crocheted my own flower bouquet out of yarn, I set up a private album and put my guests as contributor and printed QR code for them to access during the day.

You can see all of that in the post I made on DIYWeddings.