I still cannot believe that it took me six months to talk about our wedding! I hope that you enjoy these posts about what we did to make our day so special and 100% us. I think that if you asked any of our guests they would say the same and that, to me, was the goal at the end of the day. I didn't want to have a pretty wedding. I wanted a pretty, vintage, homey, sweet wedding that was totally Noah and I.
To accomplish this we had a ton of little details around the day of the wedding but today I am going to talk about our tables! Boring? nope! we didn't want to have just numbers on a table. We thought you could do so much more with it and really bring pieces of your story to the tables. So, that is exactly what we did. We named each table after somewhere that was a significant place in our relationship. That alone may have been missed by guests so we went a step further and wrote out little stories that went with each of these places and why they were special to us. We also included a picture of us at that location (some of them we didn't have pictures for but we have plenty of pictures together so it was fine).
So, as you can see in the picture, we did not have frames or anything for each table...here is what we did and what you will need
- Cardboard
- Raffia (we used green but use any color you want)
- Tea (or coffee) for dying the paper
- Cookie sheets (with an edge)
- Cooling racks
- Heavy books or other heavy flat object
- Typewriter (or you can just use a typewriter font on the computer)
- Adhesive spray (I used Krylon)
- Scissors or box cutter
- Decorative paper or fabric (mine were scraps of sample wall paper I got for free!)
- Hot glue
- Pictures you love!
Start by dying sheets and sheets of paper and letting them dry on baking cooling racks. To dye them use some lipton tea and a baking sheet to lay the paper in. Let them sit in the tea for about a minute or so and then take the sheets out and let them dry. Once you have enough sheets to write out what you want to write, it worked best for printing the stories if I flattened the dyed paper a bit under heavy books (one of the best uses I have found for college text books (; ). Once the paper is flat you can print your stories! here is an example of one of our stories if you need an idea or some inspiration
Memories
A group of people from the school that Noah and Whitney both attended, Azusa Pacific University, goes swing dancing every Monday night at a place called Memories. This is where Noah and Whitney first knowingly met (for more on that go see the Citrus and Alosta table). It was August of 2009 and Whitney had never been swing dancing before, but her roommate, Hilary, had gone so she went with her. It was an absolute blast and through the night Noah and Whitney had crossed paths a bit but there was no instant spark or attraction. The place shuts down around 1 a.m. but being that classes had not started yet, and it was a group of crazy college kids, a large group still went to Denny’s after for some good times and food. Whitney had gotten a ride with Hilary and was just going to go home with her after dancing was over. However, Noah was determined to convince Whitney to stay and go to Denny’s. Hilary went home that night and Whitney went to Denny’s after much resistance. After all the trouble Noah gave her trying to get her to go, he didn’t even sit by her that night at Denny’s.
Although there was no spark initially, Noah and Whitney continued to both go to Memories every Monday and became friends but neither was looking for a relationship at the time. Time changes all things though, and here they are, two years later in love and getting married! Swing dancing is something incredibly special to the two of them and is a fun aspect of their relationship, one that they hope to keep going even after the wedding.
Please feel free to read other pieces of our story. Each table has a different story.
As you can see, each story at the end encouraged people to get up and read the other part of our story. This served two purposes, it allowed people to feel the freedom to get up, mingle with other people, introduce themselves to people they may not know etc. It also allowed people who may not have known all these things about us to learn about how we met and grew together as friends and as a couple.
So, once the stories were all printed out its time to bust out the Krylon and cardboard. I sprayed the back of the paper with Krylon and stuck it to the cardboard. Krylon is great because it doesn't bubble much, you just have to watch for any wrinkles because those can stay and for a perfectionist eye it can be a massive bummer. Then take your box cutter (or scissors) and cut out around your stories carefully. Once they are all cut out you can put your decorative paper on the back of it so you don't have any of the cardboard showing. Like I said above scrapbook paper or fabric works but free samples from wall paper sample books also works wonderfully :)
Once both sides are covered with the stories or pictures and decorative paper time to get the raffia and hot glue out! You are just going to put some hot glue around the edge and stick the raffia on it so that you don't see the middle parts of the cardboard!
Here are a couple more pictures for you that show the stories and pictures finished and a part of our tables
I had toyed around with the idea of putting everything in frames but when it came down to it, finding that many frames that I liked and that would fit the unique sizes of the stories would be tough. I also realized that people would probably be picking the stories and pictures up and that while cardboard may seem cheap....it made the most sense for us and I think that they still turned out looking great and they served their purpose. Of all the things at our wedding this was probably the most liked and commented on.
I hope you like the idea and find ways to make it yours! :)
with love from a girl with a bum foot,
Whitney
P.S. Our wedding venue was Taber Ranch and we cannot say enough absolutely fantastic things about them.
And our photographer who took those lovely photos I just showed you is Brian Ganyo
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