<p>Our wedding reception was under a tent at my parents’ house, and the wedding itself was next door at an old, classic white clapboard New England chapel. We didn’t have a photographer, so all of our photos are candids. We rented the tent, chairs, tables, tablecoths (we used our own white linen napkins), silver, glasses, china (we could have used our own, but if you rent you don’t have to wash dishes), and a dance floor, and hired a band. We had the bouquets and boutonnieres made by a florist, but for the tables we bought large quantities of loose flowers and my sister and I arranged them in baskets. We had a total of about 50 guests. I cooked all of the food, except the cake, with some help from my sister. It was served buffet style. Since I was working at the time, and actually on a week-long business trip the week before, I came home and made and froze hors d’oeuvres several weekends in advance. If memory serves, I made wild mushroom tartlets, curried chicken phyllo triangles, and few other things that could be frozen. I bought a whole St Andre and served that and a chicken liver mousse I made with baguettes and fruit, and I think we also made Martha Stewart’s Roquefort grapes. The entrees (both of which were cooked the day before) were whole filet of beef, marinated and roasted, served sliced at room temperature, with apricot mustard sauce, and Julia Child’s three-layer fish mousse terrine served with sour cream cucumber dill sauce. There was a cold green bean salad, and a pasta salad. I actually wanted to make the cake, but was talked out of it. 
(I’ve since made wedding cakes for several other people.) We hired two college-aged girls to act as waitresses–they were useless, but that was because my mother didn’t supervise them at all and there was a limit to what I could do–and my father was the bartender. It was a great party. </p>
<p>One thing that is very effective with flowers is to use just one kind. My sister has married off three daughters, and the bouquets at two of the weddings were simply sheaves of stock wrapped in ribbons: white for the bride, pastels for the bridesmaids. They were beautiful. I’ve seen people do something similar with tulips or daffodils, which are not expensive.</p>
<p>I don’t see any need to have a bar. I think setting up a table or two with glasses and nice tubs of chilled white wine and soft drinks–and beer, if you have beer drinkers–and bottles of red wine is perfectly nice.</p>
<p>A DIY wedding is not for the bride who wants to be professionally styled and have a lot of formal photos. In my experience, the more you do yourself, the less everyone thinks you need help. When I was getting dressed, people were asking me for extension cords and rugs, and I could not get so much as a bobby pin from my “attendants.” :D</p>