Making Our Grape Vine Wedding Arch

Today we spent the entire day preparing our wedding arch.  We have had many people ask us, "Why start so early?""You have a whole year?" . Well when you are doing as many DIY projects as we are, something as time consuming as this needs to be started early. Also grape vines need time to dry before they get that nice deep brown look. Yes, some of them are brown already when they are harvested, but many of the ones I picked are still green, so they will need time to dry. I will list step by step how we are making this arch.


We got our inspiration for our arch on Confetti Daydreams. The grape vine garland arch is beautiful but we wanted to create something more sturdy to call our own and keep for years to come.


We decided to make the arch out of natural grape vines and  make the structure from scratch out of steel rods. We chose natural grape vines to save money and to make it out of steel rods instead of buying one because most wedding arches are made out of tubing which is not very sturdy. Plus we can make it our own and say, "Yes, we made that!".

Step One: Find Vines

First we had to find grape vines, which we did not have to go very far to find since Justin's grandmother's land has a lot of them. Ask family members or friends if they have any growing on their property. Here in Pennsylvania, there are lots of grape vines in our woods. Chances are, your friends or family may be happy to have you remove the vines from their property.  I also am glad that I decided to do this, because the vines were starting to kill many of the trees that they were wrapped around on Justin's grandmother's property.






 Step Two: Harvest the Vines

Tools you will need:

• Gardening or Work Gloves with Rubber Palms
• Shrub Pruner with Long handles
• Bug Spray
• Safety Glasses
• Long Sleeves if Possible (To protect your arms from rashes)

I recommend doing this with at least two people. The vines at Justin's grandmother's were wrapped in the canopies of young trees, and on branches of older trees. To get them out of the larger, older trees, we just found the base of the plant, and cut the vine as close to the ground as possible so they are as long as possible and we just pulled. Yes, it took effort but those were the easiest vines to get. The ones that were wrapped in the canopies of the young trees were harder, because when we pulled, the tops of the trees came with. That is where the second person would come in handy. My friend and maid of honor helped me harvest the vines today. One of us would pull on the vine while the other detangled the vines from the tree branches. Some of the branches did need to be cut, but for the most part we could carefully pull or unwrap the vines. Making sure to keep as many of the curly cues in tact as possible. They will ad a whimsical look to the arch.

The vines need to be kept as long as possible for the wrapping process. So keep this in mind while pulling on the vines. At times it felt like we were playing tug of war with the trees!

Bug spray came in handy because it was as if all the gnats in the world lived in those vines. They were everywhere!  The safety glasses were thought of only after I got a big chunk of grape vine bark in my contact. It was not a pleasant experience that should have been avoided. I do recommend wearing long sleeves because both times I have pulled vines so far, I ended up with an itchy rash that lasts a few hours. I imagine long sleeves will prevent some of this.

When in the woods, please use common sense. There are wild animals, bugs, and other dangers. We made sure to check for poison ivy, snakes, bee nests, and any other danger that could have been lurking in the vines. If you see anything like that, it's obviously best to find a different spot.

Step Three: Take the vines back to a location to have the vines dry for a few days.

• Small Hand Pruners (Not sure on proper name on that one)
• Safety Glasses
• Gloves

At this point the leaves were all dried out. I ran my hands down each vine and the leaves crumbled into pieces.



I then used the pruners to cut off the stems from the leaves and cut the vines into long stems. I separated them into four piles which I will have to post pictures of tomorrow. One for very long thick vines, one for longer regular thickness of vines, one for medium vines, and one for very small twig vines. I then tried to twist or braid the stems so that it will be like rope when I go to wrap the arch.


Again try to keep the curly cues they are part of the look of the vines you want to keep! I also tried very hard to keep as much length as possible in the vines.


I will post more pictures and the continuation tomorrow. Thanks for reading!