When planning a wedding with a barn theme, a lot of your budget can easily be spent on the venue itself, so it only leaves a little left for floral arrangements, centerpieces, dinner service, and entertainment, amongst many other things.
While this can be stressful and overwhelming, you can cut the cost by doing some of your preparations, having a go at some of these DIY styles, or finding cheaper sellers.
For some ideas on inclusions to your venue and accessories to tie it all together, find inspiration below to see what is possible for your special day, and who knows, you may find something you’ll fall in love with.
Venue Ideas
1. Creek Ranch Walkway
While you may have a venue picked out, you may want to have more rustic features for your ceremony, and this is where simplicity can be a great thing.
While you may not be able to afford ranch walkway installations, there’s nothing wrong with you looking to outsource some of your own wood and see if you can install something similar temporarily.
If this isn’t possible, you could work with what you have, so if your venue has a type of walkway, you can find lights and hanging vines that can give the structures a more weathered and distressed look.
2. DIY Fairylights
Whether indoor or outdoor, it’s surprising how effective a few lines of light can be. If your venue is in a barn-style building, you want something to highlight the airy and darker areas, which will illuminate as the day goes on.
You can easily find different patterns and bright lights at any homeware store. Try out a few designs to see which ones work best in your venue, and the real value of a DIY wedding is the amount you can do without having to be fixed to a setlist.
You can combine this with some banners to give you a rustic potluck that looks both homely and comfortable, and these you can mix and match to find styles that suit you.
3. Handcrafted Haybale Seating
This low-seating form goes beyond traditional seating, giving a natural outdoor feeling. Even though this may not be possible in your venue, there may be a wholesaler who can provide you with a competitive rate per bale.
If you can keep your costs low, you can accommodate the amount you need per person, and here is where you can get creative with placement and decoration, as you can coordinate these with your centerpieces and tablecloth designs.
If this seating arrangement isn’t possible for your budget, you can get away with rustic wooden chairs that will fit the aesthetic just as well, as you could use whole or folding chairs that are just the right shade of light and look weathered enough to be effective.
4. Ceremony Curtains
While these may not be the highlight of your procession, they can be an excellent addition as they can add a lot of space and air to the venue space, which works even better if your wedding is taking place in the spring or summer, where you want everything to feel open.
You can find throws or light curtains and fashion them for this purpose, and the handmade look can add to the natural quality of the space where everything feels authentic.
You can dress them up with the colors of your bouquets and other decorative flowing vines.
5. Paper Luminaria Bags
These can be a simple and beautiful addition to any space as they can act as signposts for those who wander from the venue and add intimacy and exclusivity to your wedding.
You can make these look how you want and scatter them to your requirements.
At the same time, you don’t necessarily have to use candles and could try mini LEDs if you’re worried about the weather getting particularly unforgiving.
If you get them to order, you want to get some worth out of these as, in some cases, they may only be single-use.
For example, you could cut out patterns and even letters to indicate the happy couple and look very romantic when lit by a glaring light, which will do a lot for the atmosphere, even though they can take some time to set up and keep in shape.
Ideas For Accessories
6. Outdoor Barn-Themed Invitations
With an idea of how you want your venue to look, you can make it even more unique by setting up some of the specifics, and one of these is by making some nature-inspired invitations, which can be made to look however you like.
Find a particular design to be more costly than you’d like. You can make your own, and here you only need an allotted amount of cards and watercolors to create scenes of nature that will look stunning compared to the calligraphy on the cards.
If you could be more artistic, don’t worry, as you might have someone in your family who is artistically inclined, and if so, this could be their wedding present. If you handmake each one, your guests will appreciate the uniqueness of each with different patterns on them.
7. Rustic Wedding Favors
The central theme of these items is that many of these can be handmade, and these favors are just as nature-inspired as all they use is a small candle. That is encased in a piece of wood cutting, with plants, real or not.
You can label each one and get creative here as you can use different patterns and flowers to indicate that you’ve thought over each one separately, which the recipients will appreciate and the effort you’ve put into them.
Of course, these might not be to your taste, and there isn’t an optimal way to create favors, but you can use the importance and theme of your wedding to help shape ideas of what you think your guests will appreciate, and this is regardless of the size and cost of making each one.
8. Woodland Centerpieces
For the reception, a lot of time goes into creating centerpieces that capture the mood or theme of the wedding in a single item, and for a barn-styled wedding, this can be easy to make. You can use a bulk of wood slices and decorate them as you like.
You can use inspiration from the area around the venue for inspiration, or you can use some presets that will fit nicely into your centerpiece as long as they don’t look too overcrowded or messy as you don’t have to go overboard.
9. Burlap Lace Wall Organizers
If you’re struggling to find flower arrangements for the walls and empty spaces that don’t quite match your ambitions or budget, you can make your own, and these can be made out of a range of materials like burlap lace, hemp, or even card inserts.
You’ll find with these, you can tie them anywhere in your venue, and you can place any flowers to coordinate with the rest of the room, so you could use flowers that are in season for the time around your wedding, for example.
If you’re planning to use these outside, check how weather-resistant they are, as you may want to savor them after your wedding, and having them ruined isn’t ideal. You also want to check the size in proportion to the space they take up so they’re spaced correctly.
10. Alternative Wooden Wedding Guest Book
If you find that wedding guest books are a little pricey, you can simplify things by using a heart-shaped piece where people sign their names on small pieces and slot them inside, so you have a lovely part of decor with a lot of sentimental value.
You could make this yourself, and while the heart shape might be a little difficult to replicate, there’s no denying that when finished with the form, you can make it yours with some unique decorative pieces.
This also helps when looking at the space allocation, as this doesn’t have to be hidden away for it to fit into your decor, and it will look brilliant just as people enter the main dining hall, as it will certainly catch their attention.
The Bottom Line
As you can see, some of these go from slightly tricky to source to simple crafts you can make at home, so if you’re willing to try out some of these ideas from scratch, you can have fun with them and not feel stressed out if something doesn’t look quite what you are looking for.
While it can be stressful to find and make some of these yourself, there are ways where you can get family and friends involved who can combine their skills and expertise to make them more involved in the process, which can be a very rewarding experience.
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