Our whole wedding was onsite at the Island House, so we needed a sign to let guests know where the ceremony, cocktail hour and reception were — Plus it was another opportunity to bring some of our wedding colors in.  This Wedding Wednesday, I’ll explain how you can make your own directional arrow sign for less than $15.

DIY Wedding Directional Sign

What you’ll need:

• Wooden arrows
• Blue & white acrylic paint
• Paint brush
• Planter pot
• Foam cube
• Rocks
• 1″ Dowel
• Wood stain
• Scrap fabric
• 1 1/2″ wood screws
• Drill
• Piece of burlap

I found some plain, wooden signs at Hobby Lobby for a few dollars and painted them various shades of blue with acrylic paint I had on hand.  I wanted more of an ombre effect, so I started with the darkest blue, and then mixed a little white in to create a lighter blue for the 2nd arrow, and even more white for the third and lightest blue arrow.

When the blue paint was dry, I sketched out the words ‘ceremony,’ ‘cocktail hour,’ and ‘reception’ on them in pencil, then painted over it in white paint.  I tried to do it in the same font as the save the dates & napkins too — gotta stay consistent!

Now I had to figure out the post part.  I had a silver pot that I had planted basil in the year before, so I cleaned that out and decided to use it as the base, with some sort of wooden post in it.  I headed to Michael’s and got a foam cube, and wooden dowel to put inside.

The dowel was still raw wood, so I stained it using the pecan wood stain that we had in the garage with two coats.  Once that was dry, I brought it inside and started to assemble.  I put the foam cube in the planter pot, added some rocks & shells around the foam cube to add some weight to the bottom and prevent it from falling over, then pushed the dowel into the foam to create the hole that the dowel will sit in.

After realizing that a hammer and nails was not the most efficient way to get the arrows attached, I switched up my gameplan and pulled out my drill.  I screwed the 3 arrow signs to the dowel using 1 1/2″ screws that were long enough to go through the wood, but short enough that they didn’t go through the other side of the dowel.  Also make sure the signs are in the order you want, and spaced evenly.

Finally, put the dowel back into the hole you created in the foam, and cover that up with some burlap. You now have a directional sign!

We put this on the property by the walkway so guests knew where they were going as they arrived.  The funny thing was we ended up not even needing the bottom — the ground was soft enough to just push the dowel straight into the ground.  At least we had a backup plan though!

You could customize this for just about any party, or do different cities with arrows pointing to where they are.  The options are endless!