Skip to content
Breeze Fest 2026: How to Create a Vintage-Inspired, DIY and Sustainable Wedding
A beautiful wedding does not have to cost the earth — financially or environmentally
This summer, my daughter and son-in-law got married — but not in the traditional way.
They didn’t want a formal wedding with a conventional reception, a three-course meal, and a rigid timetable. What they wanted was something relaxed, informal, fun, and completely personal.
So, at 12 noon, they had their registry office ceremony — and then the real celebrations began, welcome to BreezeFest ‘26
Their idea was simple: an all-day, sustainable, music-festival-inspired wedding filled with friends, family, music, food, glitter, flowers, vintage finds and plenty of love and family fun.
Here’s what we did — and some of our hints and tips if you’re thinking about creating your own low-cost, low-impact, individual and unique wedding.
Start with how you want the day to feel
Before looking at venues and decorations, decide what sort of day you want. For the bride and groom, it was not about creating a formal “perfect day.” It was about creating a day that felt like them and the result was a wedding that felt more like a festival than a traditional reception.
There were no unnecessary formalities although we did have the official wedding ceremony itself, cake cutting, speeches and first dance. Instead, there was music, dancing, street food, games, glitter, children running around, homemade decorations, home-grown flowers, and lots of spaces where adults and children could have fun.
Having a clear idea of the feel of the wedding also made it much easier to decide to move away from many of the things traditionally associated with a wedding and to decide what to include and spend money on.
Don’t dismiss an unconventional venue
Before
After
Traditional wedding venues can be incredibly expensive — and often come with their own fixed style and decoration packages. It is worth looking beyond venues marketed specifically for weddings. A village hall, function room or community venue may not look very exciting, but it can give you much more freedom to create something personal and unique.
We chose to host the reception in a function room in a local sports complex. It wasn’t a conventional wedding venue. In fact, it was rather dated but it gave us exactly what we wanted: a blank canvas.
Voile panels disguised the dated curtains, fairy lights and candles changed the atmosphere and colourful decorations drew attention away from the bits we weren’t so keen on. When we couldn’t find affordable tablecloths in the size we needed, we made our own from white cotton flat sheets with rainbow coloured crepe paper became table runners.
This is where the fun really starts, choosing decorations! We were looking for colour, texture, sparkle, flowers, vintage finds and things that would make people smile.
Something Old
One of the biggest trends in DIY weddings is also one of the most sustainable and enjoyable, finding and buying preloved decorations and unique vintage pieces.
Charity shops, Facebook Marketplace, local selling groups, auction sites, and online resale platforms are fantastic places to find bundles of wedding decorations and accessories as couples often sell the very things you need after their own wedding. Then, when your wedding is over, you can sell or donate it again.
Our finds included around 75 colourful and metallic bud vases and vintage bottles, disco balls, candlesticks, vintage glass cake stands, greenery, garlands, photo-booth backdrop and props and easels. Nothing matched perfectly, which was exactly what we wanted. Everything together created an eclectic bohemian and relaxed feel.
The brides outfit followed the same principle. We found a beautiful ballerina length wedding dress at a charity bridal shop supporting a local animal charity, along with a vintage 1970s hair piece. My own outfit came from a uk independent business who make to order therefore is zero waste, my accessories were pre loved and jewellery was ‘ borrowed’ from the shop. I won’t be selling it on, however as I just love it and will wear it again and again!
Before buying anything new, it is worth checking wether someone already has something you will need. We also borrowed decorations from other friends that had used them for their own weddings.
And the best bit is that everything you buy can be resold, passed on to someone else who might need it or donated back to charity, keeping items out of landfill and giving them another opportunity to shine.
Make and create things that are worth making
This is where the DIY really came into its own, although it’s not necessary to make everything, we chose instead to concentrate on making things that would have been costly to buy new and made a notable difference to the room.
We created 50 Metres of festival style bunting handmade from around 200 wool tassels and Pom poms using balls of wool in festival colours found in charity shops and on selling sites. This created a significant impact in the room alongside the sunflowers, crocheted by family and friends.
I upcycled a vintage demin jacket for the bride using vintage wedding lace and pearls while an artist friend transformed a large charity shop mirror into the welcome sign.
These handmade elements were some of our favourite parts of the wedding, they were personal, had meaning and unique. There is something very satisfying about looking around a room on the wedding day and thinking ‘we made that’.
Grow some of your flowers
Flowers can be another significant wedding expense, particularly if you have many tables to decorate. A simple solution to this if you have to space is to grow your own. The bride grew most of the flowers we used from seed, marigolds, cosmos, lavatera, cornflower, sweet peas and sunflowers. A family friend arranged them and made the bridal bouquet; we then topped up what had with individual stems from a local florist and greenery from the garden.
We also made our own biodegradable confetti by drying rose petals, ask friends or family to save bouquets of flowers for you. We were lucky enough to have a neighbour with a garden full of roses who was happy for me to pick them just before the petals dropped.
You don’t need to grow every flower yourself, using just greenery from your garden or from hedgerows can be combined supermarket or florist flowers.
And because family and friends had grown the flowers, this brought something rather special to the day.
Borrow talent as well as things
One of the beast resources we had was something that money couldn’t buy : our friends and family. If you have people who want to be involved, think about their skillset, most people will be absolutely delighted to help and contribute in some way.
People played to their strengths and contributed what they were good at. A friend made wooden running order signs, the grooms sister made the wedding cake and his uncle DJ’d the wedding, the groom himself took a turn on the decks, in fact he didn’t want to come off! and the groomsmen organised quizzes, games and bingo.
A team of us decorated the venue on the morning of the wedding, a chaotic and hectic task however we managed to get it done so we could all get to the ceremony on time.
A DIY wedding doesn’t have to mean doing everything yourself, however, concentrate on the services and decorations which are not easily available and outsource what you can. We hired professional photographers; a glitter make up artist for festival bling and a saxophonist for an entertaining set. Those were things that we couldn’t reproduce ourselves and were essential for adding the atmosphere and added to the magic of the day. We also bought some things new including chair covers and sashes, Led candles and fairy lights and glow sticks which we couldn’t find in the quantities we needed.
The aim wasn’t to buy nothing at all, it was to avoid spending money on things that weren’t necessary or just because they had the word ‘wedding’ attached to it,
Remember the children
We created a dedicated kids’ corner using comfy granny square blankets from a local charity fundraiser, toys and games, along with individual activity packs. One of the most popular activities was Decorate-your-own bucket hats, most appropriate for a festival themed wedding!
It doesn’t have to be elaborate, but it gave the children somewhere that felt as though had been created for them rather than expecting them to fit around an adult celebration.
Keep food simple
The festival themed wedding gave us permission to forget about the traditional three-course wedding breakfast.
Guests had Prosecco and homemade cakes after the ceremony while the official photographs were being taken and gave them a chance to mingle and relax into the day. The main food offering was from a vegan Street food van, perfect for the festival vibe and in the evening we ordered several huge pizzas from a local takeaway.
Simple, informal and relaxed and very much in keeping with the atmosphere of the day.
What happens to everything afterwards?
This is the most important part of a sustainable wedding and worth thinking about before you start buying.
Can it be sold on afterwards? Donated? Used at another party? Your wedding doesn’t have to end when the music stops and the honeymoon is over. Your purchases can live on and become part of another couple's big day.
The brides dress and hairpiece will be donated back to the charity shop that it came from, keeping it in circulation and re- benefiting the animal charity. Decorations will be sold or donated, vases reused, fairy lights used at home and others passed on. Thinking about the afterlife of things helped us avoid buying unsustainable disposable wedding paraphernalia in the first place.
Make it yours, your wedding, your rules
The biggest thing we learned from creating Breeze Fest ’26 was that doing things differently did not detract from the atmosphere on the day or make the wedding feel like a cheaper alternative to a conventional wedding.
What may appear, on the surface to be compromises, were in fact things that gave the wedding character and individuality.
A sustainable wedding isn’t about being perfect, it’s about making thoughtful and considered choices where you can:
Buy second-hand.
Borrow.
Hire.
Make.
Grow.
Upcycle.
Reuse.
And when you’re finished, pass it on!
©vintageatthetowersept2026