Barn Wedding

Ideas for creating a fun and magical DIY Barn Wedding including easy to make decor and lots of other ideas for an evening not to forget.

I have always thought it would be fun to host a wedding party in a barn. In fact, I have told my husband I would love to own a party barn!  Not sure that will ever happen but a girl can dream. Our son was married in Utah the first part of March and you can check out the Family Dinner we hosted the night before the wedding here.

Barn Wedding Reception

We wanted to host a party here in Portland for all of our friends too so it was the perfect opportunity to have that barn wedding reception!

Fortunately for me, there is a 100 year old barn just down the road from where we live that is part of the Cornelius Pass Roadhouse McMenamins.  It was perfect! It is a beautiful venue and provided lots of lovely backdrops for photos of the bride and groom. All the photography is by the amazing MeganElle Photography.

It poured rain most of the day and up until an hour before the party started.  Fortunately the heavens cleared and the sun came out!  The puddles of rain provided for some fun photos though!

Because the barn is part of a restaurant the catering was taken care of which was so nice.  I loved not having to worry about the food and I could just concentrate on the decorating.  The food was delicious and all I did was add a floral centerpiece to the table!

Cheesecake Bar

I was able to bring in dessert.  One of Logan’s favorite desserts is cheesecake so I decided a cheesecake bar would be fun.  I have been wanting a vintage buffet so I got on Craig’s List and found one that I painted with chalkpaint.  It was the perfect spot for the cheesecake bar. The LOVE helium balloons were a fun backdrop.

We had six different flavors of cheesecake and they were all delicious.  No surprise but the Double Lemon was my favorite.  I purchased the cheesecake from the local Portland Style Cheesecake & Dessert Company.

Barn Wedding Decor Ideas

For the decorating I knew I wanted lots of candles and beautiful flowers.  I am a firm believer that you can turn any space into a magical fairyland if you have enough candles and flowers.  I spent months prior to the party visiting Goodwill to collect clear, glass cylinders to hold the candles. I purchased all the candles at IKEA.

I lined the outside steps with the candles and the inside walls.

They looked especially magical outside once the sun went down.

I also used the gold votives from our Family Wedding Dinner on the tables.  I think we counted over 200 candles throughout the barn.

The flowers were spectacular!  I told the florist I wanted mostly white with a touch of pink.

Along with the candles, I used framed photos from the wedding in Utah along the walls.  The golden love sign from the family wedding dinner made by Lolly Letters made another appearance at this party.

Besides candles and pretty flowers, I knew I wanted lots of white lights!  The barn was pretty dark because of all the dark wood so I wanted to fill the room with pretty lights.

We strung lights across the dance floor area and around the poles.  We weren’t allowed to put any nails or hooks into the wood so we had to use existing nails that might have been there.  We also learned that zipties are the perfect solution when you can’t use nails!  We got pretty creative!

I have a very talented friend that help me create the hand lettered signs we hung around the barn.  I found a bunch of different love themed quotes and used the font Amberlight.

Barn Wedding Signs

The signs were a great backdrop for the bride and groom and  we also hung them around the outside walls of the barn. We added a magnolia garland across the top of the backdrop for the bride and groom and added in lots of little fairy lights and  some eucalyptus branches. We spray painted the back of the magnolia leaves gold.

We used some of the signs as a backdrop to the buffet table too as well as the sign in table.

I used the same Date Jar idea for this party as I did for the Family Wedding Dinner.

There was a gift table just inside the door too.

I repurposed our LOVE marquee letters from the Wedding Carnival by spray painting them gold and they were the perfect way to cover up the bar we weren’t using.

We had a DJ at the party and all the lights provided the perfect canopy for the dance floor.

I used my Cricut machine to cut the vinyl for the sandwich board we had at the entrance to the barn.

It was a pretty magical night and it was so fun to share it with all our friends and family.