A good friend recently contacted me regarding the dessert table that I had for my wedding last year. She had been impressed by the whole display, and wanted to find out all the details such as who did I hire / what did that person do/ how/ where, etc:
Imagine her surprise when I told her that I had envisioned and created the whole thing for less than $100 (excluding the desserts which my wonderful sister aka maid of honor offered to get from ExtraOrdinary Desserts ).
The most expensive items were: the gold VIRSERUM frame from IKEA for $9.99, the frame stand on sale from Michael’s for $5.99, the two marshmallow containers from Target on sale at $10.99 each, and the lilac-colored M&M’s from Amazon for $12.99 a pound ( I got two pounds). The two silver scoops were $1.99 each from Amazon, the marshmallows at $1.47 per pack at Walmart (I got two packs), and the copper tablecloth was provided by the venue.
Everything else was purely DIY. The dessert stands are old shipping boxes and Kleenex boxes wrapped in lilac paper ($1.99 at Walmart). The plastic open container was a candy bowl I already had on hand, which my sister embellished with a copper ribbon around its rim. All the dessert signs were printed on thick ivory paper using the Bauhaus 93 font, except for the “Love is Sweet, Enjoy These Treats” sign, which was printed on regular 11 x 17 paper using the Edwardian Script font.
I should mention at this point that our wedding theme was Art Deco/Vintage-inspired, and our wedding colors were copper and lilac.
The cupcake holders were the piece de resistance. Super easy to make, and they came out beautifully! All the plates are mix/match, and were thrifted from various Goodwill stores, and AmVets.
You do have to take time to sift through all of the offerings, and find nice plates that aren’t too faded or chipped. One plate was typically .50 cents each, and I got 20 plates for a total of $10. I also found a few small and medium clear candlesticks at 20 cents each, and I got a total of 9 candlesticks for a total of $1.80.
Finally, I stopped by Home Depot to pick up Super Glue which cost $1.47:
Putting the plates together was relatively simple. I decided to do three to four tiers per dessert holder/stand. I measured out the largest plates, and used those as the base, with slightly smaller plates as the middle tier, and the smallest plate on top. It was a lot of fun mixing and matching the plates to see which patterns fit best with each other! After deciding which plate went with which, I took the clear candlesticks, and used that to hold up each plate. I do recommend doing a pseudo-arrangement of the plates and candlesticks so you can center the candlesticks, and make sure the plates are stable. Super Glue is called super glue for a reason. Once you stick the plates and candlesticks together, there is no going back:
Once you commit to your plate patterns, and tier arrangements, you can now go ahead and glue everything in place:
See what I mean about mixing and matching the patterns? Only your own creativity can limit you! For my other dessert holder/stands, I used bowls as the top tier:
I made a total of four dessert holders/stands, all for less than $15.00 😀 The wedding venue loved these holders so much they offered to take them in exchange for our full deposit back (we had a few, ehem, wedding venue items destroyed by enthusiastically-inebriated guests). We did the exchange knowing that I could totally make new ones for super-cheap 😉
What have you DIY’ed lately?