Budget Saving DIY Wedding Signs on Wood

Well, its been a few years since I wrote about my sisters wedding, but I wanted to share sone of the DIY projects we did for her outdoor summer wedding.  Today I want to talk about how we make simple DIY wedding signs on wood (salvaged wood) and saved a ton of money!

I am excited to be collaborating with some of my favorite bloggers for a wedding DIY blog hop!  I have been waiting for the perfect time to share some of the projects we created for my sisters wedding.

When my sister was getting married a few years ago, on e of the most important elements was to do it on a budget.  And what a great challenge that was.  I love to salvage, repurpose, and create something for nothing.  From the backdrop to the tables, pretty much everything in her wedding was repurposed or salvaged from some of our junk piles.  Looking back now, you would never know that we foraged thew woods to cut down our own greenery and rolled wire spools we had acquired as tables.

My sister really wanted to create sone signs to signify specific areas for the wedding. We had the wedding set up outside in the forest on our property right outside Bryce Canyon National Park.  It was a gorgeous setting.  Since she has plenty of space to work with, we set up the ceremony site in an open area where we could hang our drop cloth backdrop and lay out our salvaged beam/stump benches.  You can see the entire wedding here.

Since there was a separate ceremony spot, a dining area, dancing area, lounging spot, and play area for kids, we decided to create some easy wedding signs on wood.  

For these wedding signs, we actually went out and looked in our junk pile for old pieces of wood.  We came across 1/2 inch pieces of plywood that had been out weathering in the sun for quite a while.  They needed a little love, but really not that much.  

Here is what you will need to make your own wedding signs on wood:

• Thin pieces of wood, salvaged or purchased.  Preferably 1/4 inch -1/2 inch plywood or other wood planks cut to the size you want.
• 2 by 4 wood for the posts
• paint or vinyl letter for the sign(you can use the Cricut Maker to make your own!)

Since I did not take pictures of the process I will give you a step by step.

First:

We cut down our pieces of wood on the table saw.  They were smaller pieces to start so they didn’t need much. Some actually didn’t get cut at all.

Once they were cut to size, I sanded them down to get rid of any splinters or rough edges.  Since these were made from old plywood, this was a real problem.  But hey, it was free so theres that!

Second: This is the fun part.  This is where you get to be creative.  My sister and I drew out the words we wanted to have on the pieces of wood with a pencil first.  We then hand painted them with some white paint.  We love to do hand lettering and hand painting, so it wasn’t a problem for us. 

If however, you are not comfortable with this, you can use many other options.  You could hire someone to paint them for you, hire someone to cut out some vinyl on a vinyl cutter and use that, you can cut them out yourself on a vinyl machine like the Cricut Maker, or you can use a stencil. 

You could easily use the vinyl application which gives you the ability to design it however you want and you don’t have to worry about it messing up.

Third:

Once they were prepped, we cut down some pieces of  2 by 4 lumber to the length we wanted .  These became the stand that the sign would be attached to and pounded into the ground.  We cut them at about 4 ft long so that they were high enough to be seen.

We took the piece of wood and screwed the 2 by 4 to the back attaching it to the sign.

At this point the signs were ready to go!

A few things to consider:

We pounded these into the ground at our wedding location, but you may not be able to do this where you are at.  You can easily add a base to the signs with extra 2 by 4s.  You can also simply lean these up or secure the actual sign to something without having the post.

The final thing we had to do was to enjoy these adorable signs at the wedding.

I added some greenery, in the shape of Manzanita I had cut down on our property to give them a bit more elegance.  We also added jars of babies breath to some of the spots to spruce it up even more.

Now, you may have thought that old nasty wood could never be used in an elegant wedding, but I think we proved that you can.

Not one person commented on the old wood, and in fact, there were more comments about how cool the wood was.  People loved the signs!  They made it easy for people to know exactly where everything was set up.  

These DIY wedding signs on wood were the perfect accent for a gorgeous outdoor woodland wedding.  

 

They best part about them was that they were easy to make and they were FREE!  You cannot argue with that!

I felt really lucky to be able to take part in planning and executing my sisters outdoor wedding.  It turned out better than we could have imagined and people had the best time!  With the outdoor setting being perfect, it didn’t take much to really transform the area in to a woodland wedding location.

Are you ready for more great wedding DIYs?  Check out my friends projects below!

DIY Succulent Wedding Favors | Happy Happy Nester

 

DIY Wedding Ideas | My 100 Year Old Home

 

Picnic Basket Wedding Gift Ideas | Tatertots and Jello

 

DIY Unique Wedding Display Ideas | Lolly Jane

 

Looking for more fun?

DIY Wedding Backdrop with Dropcloths for Budget Friendly Style

10 Things to Know About the Cricut Maker Machine Before You Use It

The Best and Easiest DIY Faux Wood Beams to Make Yourself

Complete List of Materials You Can Use with the Cricut Maker

DIY Butcher Block Countertop from Old Trashed Lumber!