How to Personalize Your Wedding Aisle Runner for Under $25

How to Personalize Your Wedding Aisle Runner for Under $25 - #wedding #rusticwedding #budgetwedding #weddingscripture

How to Personalize Your Wedding Aisle Runner for Under $25 - #wedding #rusticwedding #budgetwedding #weddingscripture

How to Personalize Your Wedding Aisle Runner for Under $25 –

This personalized scripture wedding runner is probably my favorite DIY from my teenage daughter’s wedding. Those of you who have been following along know that my oldest daughter was married while still in high school. You can read all about it if you want to know how that transpired, but basically, we had about ten weeks to plan and execute the wedding from start to finish.

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How to Personalize Your Wedding Aisle Runner for Under $25 - #wedding #rusticwedding #budgetwedding #weddingscripture

Don’t worry, although we had only ten weeks from the moment the wedding date was set, we did have some fair warning a wedding would be happening in the near future. If we really want to be transparent, it was probably pretty clear there would be a wedding from nearly the start of the relationship.

My daughter met her now husband exactly three years ago at the Mooreland Free Fair. Unfortunately, I can’t take credit for this brilliant and hilarious Joe Dirt meme. I have no idea who created it, but it was going around Facebook, and my daughter shared it the other day.

Joe Dirt Fair Boyfriend Meme #joedirt #redneck #fair

My son-in-law does not have a Joe Dirt mullet, but he and my son did try to grow their hair out all summer until they gave up because they couldn’t handle long hair bothering them (and by “long hair” they really meant hair that most people would consider short). Too bad neither of them will be able to sport a mullet at the fair this year.

I’m pretty sure Joe Dirt would fit it pretty well with them though. Remember when they stole that couch from the neighbor’s trash pile and bungee corded it to the Gator to create their very own redneck chariot? If you haven’t seen those picture, you can find them here.

A Really Cheesy Pickup Line

Anyway, my daughter and her husband met at the fair through mutual friends. He used this really sneaky pickup line where he handed over his phone with a blank contact form on the screen and asked, “Will you fill out this survey?” She totally fell for it.

Well that, and he was carrying a knife. She chose him because he was carrying a knife, but I’ve already shared the story about the knife in the Bullet Boutonnieres and Bouquets post.

Bullet Boutonnieres & Bouquets - title

After he managed to get her number with that super sly pickup line, he would barely talk to her the next day at the fair which made her EXTREMELY angry because she thought that meant he asked for her number without actually being interested. By the time we made our way to the fair a few nights later to stalk them, he was clearly interested.

They’ve been married almost a year and a half of the three years they’ve known one another. Here they are at the same fair three years later. (See. No mullet!)

Married in High School - Fair 2018 #fair #summertime #marriedinhighschool

But enough about the fair-boyfriend-turned-husband story. You’re really here for the personalized wedding aisle runner!

DIY Personalized Scripture Wedding Aisle Runner

We saw several personalized scripture wedding runners on Pinterest, and my daughter really liked them. You can purchase them from many different places, but the only ones I could find were going for $100 or much more. I already had a wedding aisle runner though. Not that I would have paid $100+ for one anyway.

Remember how I said we had a pretty good clue there was going to be a wedding sooner rather than later for a pretty long time? Well, I had purchased a 100-feet wedding aisle runner the day after the engagement (you can read the proposal story here). It was half-price at Hobby Lobby. I paid $20 for it. Hobby Lobby actually runs 40%-50% sales on their wedding products fairly often. If you have more than 10 weeks to plan your wedding, you should be able to find an aisle runner cheap at Hobby Lobby without any trouble by watching the weekly sales flyers.

I already had the aisle runner, and I was pretty sure we could DIY the scripture part, but it took a bit of experimenting to actually get it right.

There may be a much easier way to do the lettering (like using a projector), but I sometimes like to make things more difficult. I made the lettering for this project by finding a font I liked on Word, then printing the letters as large as possible one per page, and cutting them out to make a stencil.

Once I had all the stencils I needed, I arranged them the way I wanted and transferred them onto posterboard by tracing around my stencils with a Sharpie. I didn’t even buy any new posterboard. I just used the backs of some signs we made for a volleyball team carwash. It looked like this. This was actually the first one.

How to Personalize Your Wedding Aisle Runner for Under $25 - #wedding #rusticwedding #budgetwedding #weddingscripture

I then swept and mopped my kitchen floor, so I could have that space to work without worrying about getting stains on the runner. I put the runner over the posterboard template and traced the letters with a regular black pen.

Then I very carefully painted each letter with some Rustoleum Enamel I had left from another project. The enamel had been sitting in my laundry room for ten years, but it worked fine. I think it runs around $4-$6 for an 8-ounce can if you have to buy it new at Walmart. The color I had was Smoke Gray.

I did all of this in the middle of the night. Duh! Because that’s when I do everything. I left it on the kitchen floor to dry. I had it blocked with the kitchen stools, so no one would try to walk on it.

Leaving it to dry overnight was a big mistake! By morning it was really dry, but it was also stuck to the posterboard. It was so stuck that I couldn’t peel it off the posterboard without tearing the sheer fabric of the runner. Fortunately, I already knew the runner was way longer than we would actually need, so I just cut the messed up part off the roll and started again.

Thank goodness I didn’t throw away my stencils because I had to redo the posterboard too. DO NOT LEAVE YOUR RUNNER ON THE POSTERBOARD TO DRY!

The Second Attempt Was a Success

The next night I completed the entire tracing and painting process again, but this time, I did not leave the project to dry on the floor. I learned my lesson from the first failed attempt. This time, I peeled the runner away from the posterboard as soon as I was finished. I couldn’t just sit it on the bare floor to dry because it would have stained my kitchen floor, and it would have dried to the floor just like it dried to the posterboard.

My middle daughter and I carefully carried the runner into the living room and draped it over the kitchen stools. We clothespinned it to the backs of the stools to hold it fairly tight so that no parts of the lettering were touching anything. This worked extremely well.

I allowed it to dry suspended from the stools overnight. Then once it was dry to the touch, I still left it spread out on the dining room table for another few days because I was afraid it would stick to itself if I tried to roll it back up before it was completely dry.

I did check the runner periodically throughout the next couple of weeks by unrolling that first part just to make sure it would still unroll without issue.

Just remember! DO NOT LET THE PAINT DRY WHILE STUCK TO ANYTHING! The painted section of the aisle runner must be suspended to dry.

I know that sounds fairly complicated, but without the initial drying mistake, it would have been a very simple process. You could also use a projector to avoid the trouble of making your own stencils.

How to Personalize Your Wedding Aisle Runner for Under $25 - #wedding #rusticwedding #budgetwedding #weddingscripture

What quote, verse, or saying would you like to see printed on your wedding aisle runner? Or if already married, what would you/did you have?

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You can find other wedding posts under the Wedding tab, or you may also enjoy:

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By InsomnoMom

Mom of Four. Faith, Family, Frugality, Fun, Freedom, & Food. Follow us @ TheHouseThatNeverSlumbers.com where the fun never rests!

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