Weddings
Ladies, my apologies- I wrote this post and set it to publish at 6 a.m. this morning, but I did not come back to check to see that it published until just now- and I couldn't find it. I felt sick because I stayed up fairly late working on it and looking for some extra links, and because I did promise Kim I'd post on Fridays. I closed my eyes, said a quick prayer, and then looked in a different section of the blog - Kim, sorry, but I published this as a separate page. I'm not even sure how that works. Here it is where it belongs:
I don't know if what we're doing will be helpful to anybody else, but we rather have wedding-brain these days, what with our second oldest daughter getting married in just three weeks or so. Some of these are ideas we've discarded, just because they didn't work for us, but they still might work for somebody else:
Tablecloths- Walmart's dollar a yard fabric, acres of it. I personally do not feel that it needs hemming, but if you do you can:
Iron a fold along the edges- it only has to stay in for an afternoon
Hem it
use masking tape or iron-on tape
sew a pretty border fabric along the edges (increasing costs, but still cheaper than tablecloths)
sew or iron on binding tape
Afterwards, wash well and add to your sewing stash- quilts, ornaments, cloth napkins, bonafide tablecloths (though it is rather thin fabric)- or to somebody else's.
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At home, btw, I use sheets or thinner bedspreads for tablecloths when I want a particular color or theme for the season.
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Flowers:
I think I've touched on this before. Some possibilities:
Grown your own
Buy them online
Do without
Grow shallow containers of wheatgrass for centerpieces on the tables
buy carnations, which are much cheaper than roses, and pull the petals out and scatter them over the tables.
Use houseplants and vines (sweet potato vines are gorgeous)
Weeds. Her colors are dark purple and green, and I picked up half a dozen deep purple pots for .50 at an end of season sale, and filled them up with some deep green vines of gill-over-the-ground that I dug up from our woods. It would be nice if they bloomed in time for the wedding, but they will still be pretty if they don't.
Fabric flowers using scraps, bits of old clothing that you are broken-hearted to see go.
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At home, I have used wildflowers, weeds, pressed flowers, and, in a pinch, tissue paper flowers made of toilet paper squares and lightly colored on the borders with a felt pen when we had a birthday party in a hotel. To do this take six squares of double-ply toilet paper. STack them neatly on top of each other. Carefully fan-fold/accordion them (the fan-fold, of course, is the alternating fold you would use to make a paper fan).
Now you should have a long strip of toilet paper. Fold this in half, lengthwise. Now twist the bottom fold and tie it. Alternatively, just leave the long strip long, and tie it tightly in the middle- twist ties from trash bags work well.
Then carefully open up the folds, and if you can separate the two-ply, you'll have a more 'ruffly' rose. Other directions with pictures here and here. The second is a bit more complicated, but looks more like a rose; the first looks more like a carnation.
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Other decorations:
calligraphy (or printed in a pretty font) quotes on love and marriage scattered over the tables
Cover large buckets (five gallon buckets are free from bakeries) with wrapping paper that fits your theme, fabric sacks tied on with ribbon, or paint them. Fill with sand, put shepherd's crooks for hanging plants in them and hang plants from them.
A friend of ours made hurricane lamps like these for the tables, and then gave them away as favors.
Paint small frames from the thrift shop, and then use them as place-cards (you could make the place-cards small dry-erase boards), or use the to hold quotes or cute pictures of the wedding couple as children (or their engagement pictures if they're being fuddy duds about the cute baby pics).
Strands of lights are very popular, of course. We picked up ours from the thrift shop (tried them out first to be sure they worked, and then some of them can be given to the couple to start their own Christmas decorating. Wrap them in Tulle, use wreath hangers to hang them over the backs of chairs.
We did think it would be fun to have small bowls of goldfish on the tables, but the logistics seemed daunting, and then I thought we'd almost certainly lose one, a dead fish isn't a great wedding centerpiece. Unless you're eating it.
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- Spring Planting All kinds of planting going on around here. A couple...
- Plant stand, foot stool, small child’s stool, end table, wedding decoration…. The place we're having the wedding (TOMORROW!!!!!!) doesn't have pews....
4 Responses to “Weddings”
October 17th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
We used cheap fabric in the right colours for our wedding table clothes, and they happen to be the perfect size for the table we inherited from my husband’s grandmother. I am still using them daily 7 years later. Some of them are not in great shape anymore, but for our everyday table clothes, to protect our special table from daily use by small children, they are great! And they make me smile and think of my wedding vows when I see them!
October 19th, 2008 at 6:59 am
An interesting centerpiece idea that my MIL used at our rehearsal dinner was to set teacups in the center of the table with…something in them. I can’t quite remember what, because that whole day was a blur. But it was very pretty and she gave us the teacups after it was over!
October 19th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
At my wedding we grew herbs in pots for a few months in advance, put them in thrift-store baskets spray-painted white (with cute tags, I think), and gave them away as thank-yous to those who had helped.
This idea, like everything else romantic, lovely, and otherwise nice about my wedding, was courtesy my sister.
October 20th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
Now everyone is talking about the American economy and eclections, nice to read something different. Eugene
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