Everything I DIYed for Our 5-Day Wedding in Mexico
When we decided to celebrate our marriage in Mexico, we knew we didn’t want a traditional wedding. (We actually got “married” a week prior at Cheesman Park in Denver where we signed our marriage license.) Instead, we invited about 60 of our favorite people to spend five days together in Puerto Vallarta, with themed days, pool parties, a boat day, and lots of swimming.
Which also meant I had five days’ worth of opportunities to make things.
Some projects were planned months in advance. Others were fixes for things I’d bought that weren’t quite right. A few involved enlisting friends, my husband, the Denver Public Library, and some supplies we could find once we were already in Mexico.
Here’s everything I DIYed for our wedding week, a little about how I made each one, and a few ideas worth borrowing for your own wedding, party, or group trip.
Friendship Bracelets for a Pool Scavenger Hunt
One of our themed days was a Love Island-inspired pool party, complete with a “Bombshell Bucket List.” One of the missions was to find your friendship bracelet with your own name on it.
A few friends helped me make the bracelets ahead of the trip using colorful and letter beads. I ended up having to re-up on letters, and got a little creative with the Os, Qs, and 0s. Before the scavenger hunt started, we tossed them into the bottom of the pools, and everyone had to dive in and find their own.
This was one of the simpler DIYs of the week, but also one of my favorites because it became part of the actual experience instead of just another favor. Everyone got a little souvenir, but they had to work for it first. And it’s been really fun to see that friends are still wearing their bracelets weeks after the wedding.
DIY idea: Personalized friendship bracelets could just as easily work as place cards, welcome-party favors, bachelorette trip gifts, or an activity everyone makes together. And if you happen to have a pool available, I highly recommend making people dive for them.
Personalized Seashell Place Cards
For our wedding dinner, we used real seashells as place cards, with each guest’s name written directly on the shell in paint marker.
This was technically a joint DIY: Luis did all the lettering because he has the better handwriting.
I loved that the shells worked with the setting without feeling too overtly beach-themed. They added something special to each place setting, and guests could take theirs home afterward if they wanted.
The trickiest part was probably making sure the names were written in a straight line rather than an angle. We ended up using one of my embroidery water-soluble fabric pencils to make guides.
DIY idea: Place cards don’t have to be paper. A small object tied to the location, season, or people you’re celebrating can do the same job and double as a keepsake.
Hand-Embroidered Welcome Bags
Of all the wedding projects I took on, this was the one I knew I wanted to do almost immediately.
Our friends and family were traveling all the way to Puerto Vallarta to spend five days celebrating with us, and I wanted to use embroidery — the thing I make and love — to create something for them as a thank-you.
I used burlap bags and yarn, which meant a much thicker needle and a bit more elbow grease. I designed five motifs inspired by the setting — a seahorse, starfish, jellyfish, palm tree, and seashell — and switched up the colors so the bags coordinated while each being unique.
Since I knew I really wanted to do these, I got started on them months in advance, which gave myself plenty of time.
Each couple received one, as did guests traveling on their own. We filled them with welcome goodies when everyone arrived, but I specifically chose bags that could double as beach bags throughout the week.
And they did! After spending so much time stitching them, it was really fun to see them turn up by the pool, on the boat, and around the villas.
There are much easier ways to make wedding welcome bags, obviously. But this was one project where efficiency wasn’t really the point. I wanted our guests to have something I’d made specifically for them, both to use during the trip and to take home afterward.
DIY idea: You definitely don’t need to embroider bags for an entire wedding guest list. One for each member of a wedding party, a handful for a bachelorette trip, or even a single oversized motif on your own beach bag would make this a much more manageable project. Working with yarn also lets you create a larger design without requiring hundreds of tiny stitches.
Room Assignment Door Tags
With 60-something people staying together, figuring out where everyone was sleeping was its own logistical exercise — like table seating assignments but much more high stakes. We made personalized tags to hang on each bedroom door, and set them out in the main entrance so our guests could find their rooms while seeing everyone else’s upon arrival.
We designed and printed the paper portions at home, then picked up colorful pom-poms in all different colors after we arrived in Puerto Vallarta to finish them.
It was mostly a practical project, but the tags gave the room assignments something a little special.
DIY idea: If you’re renting a large house for a destination wedding, birthday, or group trip, personalized door tags are a very easy and cute way to handle room assignments.
Embroidered “Just Married” Chair Signs
This one was not supposed to be a DIY.
I had ordered “Just Married” signs for the backs of our chairs, but the vinyl lettering was already peeling off when they arrived. Rather than finding replacements or doing away with them, I decided to embroider the lettering myself.
It took an item that was almost right and turned it into something that felt much more like me — and ended up looking way better anyway.
This became a bit of a theme as I worked on things for the wedding: sometimes DIYing didn’t mean making something entirely from scratch. It just meant taking something that was 90% there and changing the other 10%.
Love Island-Themed Water Bottles
This project combined my love of Love Island with my appreciation for free access to the Cricut at the Denver Public Library.
Inspired by the personalized water bottles that are always floating around the Love Island villa, I customized insulated bottles for my husband and me with our names on them.
I originally wanted to do this for the whole group, but the logistics of transporting 60 water bottles to Mexico proved to be a bit too complicated to be worth it.
They were partially for the bit, but they also ended up being one of the more practical things I made. Puerto Vallarta in August is HOT, and these kept our drinks cold throughout the week.
DIY idea: Before buying a Cricut for a one-off project, check your local library or makerspace. I was able to use one for free at the library, which opens up a lot more possibilities for occasional DIY projects without needing another piece of craft equipment at home. Plus, the staff is SO helpful every time I’ve used it.
Hand-Painted Shell Note Cards
We wanted to write personal notes to our wedding parties, so I made small shell-shaped cards and painted each one by hand with watercolor.
They were intentionally simple and a little imperfect, which was part of what I liked about them. They felt much more personal than buying cards without becoming another huge project right before the wedding.
Several were subsequently lost in the mail, unfortunately. So I still recommend the tiny hand-painted cards; I might just recommend handing them to people yourself.
Giving a Cheap Sequin Purse a Better Handle
I knew I wanted a fun, sequin bag — but I didn’t want to spend a ton of money on something I would probably use quite infrequently afterwards.
I found a blue sequin purse on Amazon for pretty cheap, but the problem was the handle: it was silver, looked inexpensive, and just didn’t really work with the rest of the bag.
I definitely could have left it alone, but I already had all my beads and thread out from other projects so I quickly made a new treatment for the handle. I strung two rows of white seed beads and attached them along extra clips I already had on hand, creating a beaded handle that felt much more like what I wanted.
It was a relatively small change, but it made the whole bag look more intentional.
This is one of my favorite kinds of DIY: finding something that is almost exactly what you want and figuring out how to fix the part that isn’t.
Adding Pearls to a Mexico City Beach Bag
I took a similar approach with a red woven bag I’d bought on a trip to Mexico City. I knew I had to have it when I saw its= woven heart design, and the size made it a great pool or beach bag.
The hardware was the only thing I didn’t love. It felt a little clunky, and I thought adding some pearl details would make the bag feel special for the occasion without turning it into an overtly “bridal” accessory.
I swapped the existing hardware for gold clasps (not pictured because I forgot to take pictures of it!) and replaced the silver buttons on the top with large, flat pearlescent buttons I found on Etsy.
Nothing about the bag fundamentally changed. It just went from something I already liked to something that felt exactly right for the trip — and it’s still a bag I’ll use long after the wedding.
DIY idea: Before buying something new for a specific outfit or event, look at what you already own (or what you can find inexpensively) and consider the details individually. Hardware, buttons, straps, handles, and trim can often be swapped without needing to reconstruct the item itself.
The Case for DIYing Some of Your Wedding
Looking back at all of these together, I think what I loved most wasn’t simply that our wedding had a lot of handmade things in it. It was that the things we made were specific to our week.
Friendship bracelets made sense because we were having a pool party and wanted dive toys. Door tags made sense because 60-something people were staying together. Beach bags were useful because we were constantly going to the pool or ocean. The water bottles were a joke that also solved the very real problem of being extremely hot.
And some things weren’t planned as DIYs at all. They were just objects that were almost right, and a few beads, stitches, buttons, or pieces of hardware made them better.
If you’re planning your own wedding, pick the projects that make the experience more personal, solve an actual problem, or that you’ll genuinely enjoy making. Buy the rest.
For me, making things is already part of how I show people I care. So taking on an ambitious list of wedding DIYs didn’t feel like something I had to do. It felt like a pretty natural extension of the way I wanted our wedding week to feel: personal, colorful, a little playful, and very much ours.
Want to make something of your own?
Needle & Spruce is all about giving you a reason to make something with your own two hands—whether you’re picking up embroidery for the first time or looking for your next project.
SHOP EMBROIDERY KITS + DIY PROJECTS →
Or, if you love the idea of something handmade but would rather have me do the stitching, I take on a limited number of custom embroidery projects, too.
