Candle Bling!

When I bought the crystal beads for my hanging table cards, I had to buy more than I needed, due to sneaky packaging. I felt like Steve Martin in Father of the Bride, ripping open the twelve-packs of hotdog buns so that he only had eight to go with his eight weiners. Ok, actually Didn't care at all, since I was just thrilled to find the perfect crystal, but if I had cared, it might have turned out badly :-)


The shop where I bought them sold them in packs of eight, and I needed nine, so I was left with seven extra beads, too pretty to waste! So I decided to use them elsewhere in the wedding. But where? There weren't enough to attach to the chairs along the aisle, and they were a bit too big and unshapely to put on the bouquets. And then it hit me: Candle Jewellery!


A friend at work gave me a ton of candles, which are sitting attempting not to gather dust even as I type, so I already had them to work with. I had already decided not to do flowers on the head table, because that would end up blocking us from view, and of course it's all about us! So my idea was something like this:

Except in our case the row of candles will be on the outside edge of the table, not down the centre. And they're bigger, and not glass votives. But you get the gist.

So then I figured, since the candles will be at the end of the table, why not give them little crystal "necklaces" to hang down off the edge, and prettify the table a bit? So this is what I came up with:

Excuse the edge of the bed. I don't own a table. Pathetic, right? (well, I do own a table, but the computer and a million things are on it.) Anyway, I think these will add some lovely sparkliness to the table, and match the placecards! So yay!

Table Cards...Place Cards...Escort Cards...

When I first started to think about how I would display the table-listings at my reception, I knew I wanted to do something pretty and a bit special. I've been to so many weddings where the names are just printed out on a white A4 piece of paper and pinned up to a board...*YAWN*. How tedious. After all, this is where brides can really get creative with the DIY - and do! They can really tie into your theme too. Look at these great ideas:

For a casual, outdoors wedding:

For a beach wedding:

Or Weddingbee's Mrs Spider's fruity cuteness:

An elegant, "green" wedding:

Or just plain elegant:

This last idea really caught my eye. I loved the idea of the little cards hanging with sparkly crystals catching the light. Queen Bee on Bridesbuzzing did something similar.

So I narrowed down my search a bit more and found these:

Whoa. I just fell in love with that last one all over again. I knew I waaaanted it. In the words of Wayne Campbell: "It will be mine. Oh yes, it will be mine."

But there was a problem. I didn't want to have one table card for every person. Too much work, too much standing around while people try to find their card. Also I would definitely need something to hang seventy-plus cards onto, and our budget wasn't about to withstand a fake tree. Nor was my craftiness, which can only go so far. So I knew I had to have the hanging part, the crystals part, but not the individual names part. The answer? To have one hanging card per table, thereby bringing the total down to nine cards. I was still trying to figure out the best and most attractive way to do this, when THIS turned up on the blog of one of my favourite photographers, Andrea Carlyle. I've gushed about her before.

It was like it was meant for me. The big crystal at the bottom is almost identical to the ones I'd been eyeing at Flowerspot in Woodmead. So without further ado, I present to you my DIY table listings!

I bought white A4 card, and cut it in half. Then I cut a loooong piece of fishgut and hung the biggest crystal (I bought three sizes) on the end. The cat is optional, but cute. :-)

I didn't like the way the width of the hole in the crystal was causing the doubled-up fishgut to separate like that, so I reworked my plans and put a small bead above it to hold it together. I then had to hold it down with a crimp.

I'm afraid I didn't take pictures of a lot of the rest of the stages. Basically I took the two pieces of fishgut, held them together and then crimped another crimp 10cm up. I placed some more beads on top of that, and then pierced holes through the top and bottom of the card, and threaded the fishgut through. At the top I crimped again, placed another bead to hide it, and voila!

And that's as far as I can get for now, because the table seating lists can only be put together once I get all my RSVPs and once I decide who sits where. What we are doing, though, is having the list one one side, with a damask border (of course), and the picture of the classic actor or actress whose table it is, on the other side. Hopefully these will twist and turn a bit as they hang there (we're hanging them from beams just outside the reception hall) so people will see both sides!