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!

Look what iiiiiiiiiiiiii got!

I'll give you a hint.



Oh, am I too obvious?

Yup, you guessed it - I FINALLY found damask for my table runners! Whoohoooooooo!

Here it is laid out on the edge of my bed. What a great pattern, right? And though you can't tell, the black part is flocked (ie velvety), giving it a wonderful luxurious texture. Mmmm.

So on Sunday when we had our great invitation assembly line (more on that story later) at Mom and Dad Ruby Slippers' house, I laid it out on their dining room table and cut it into strips, using only the pattern and my own wits to guide me...

Sister Ruby Slippers, Best Friend Slippers and Mom Slippers look on in horror and amazement as uncoordinated little me slices into yummy damask goodness...


"This isn't so hard!" (Best Friend RS and Mom RS seem to be enjoying it, anyway!)

Turns out my arms aren't as long as an eight-seater dining room table...Sister RS is deep in thought trying to solve this puzzle...

Ah, what the heck, I'll just jump on the table and do it that way! Check out my Dad in the background taking pictures of me with my butt in the air!

Deep concentration is so attractive. :-) And my highlights totally need redoing!

So there you have it. I've left them there with lovely Mom Slippers and her slightly iffy sewing machine, to be transformed into the yummy wedding goodness that you saw in the first two pictures. And there's even enough left for the cake table, if I can find out how big that is!

Do you think I'm asking too much in hoping that they won't be too damaged after the wedding so that I can sew them together and make curtains for our new house? Because talk about reuseable practicality!

Man, I love damask.

Old Damask, New Damask

Recently I had the unfortunate revelation that the damask pattern I was going to use for all my wedding stationery wasn't good enough quality to print. :-( I don't know why I didn't think to check this before! I'll put it down to wedding excitement and over-enthusiasm, rather than sheer carelessness...

Unfortunately, after hunting high and low, day and night, on all sorts of websites, even ones where I'd have to pay through my nose for a picture, I didn't find anything I liked. This pattern is just too perfect!



However, I eventually got lucky on Project Wedding. I really enjoy this site; it's got forums, photos, vendor look-ups, planning bios, the works. Someone had sent out a plea for damask templates, in which I immediately joined (there was quite a wailing chorus of us in the end! Damask madness is taking over the world!) and this girl very kindly emailed me three massive files of damask patterns and tags. So now THIS is my new template:



I was going to use it as is, and put a white block in the middle of it for my text, thus creating a border, but I decided it looked too "leafy" and that it covered up too much of the pattern. So I decided to shrink the square teeny tiny, and use a row of them as a border instead. I also decided to stop using MS Word, which is the work of the devil, and take a leaf out of the book of Mrs Daffodil on Weddingbee, and use MS Powerpoint instead. I have to say it was a LOT easier! Here is a screenshot of my menu mock-up (ignore the silly food; I just needed something there to measure out the space):



Looks good, no? I'm quite excited, because if I put one of these at every place setting (instead of four per table as was my original plan) it will intensify the damask theme, and I might not need to tear my hair out anymore over the fact that I CANNOT find damask fabric for table runners - and the further possibility that if I did, it might not be budget-friendly anyway.

I'm also using this for the placecards, which will be attached to the favours (more on THAT story later; I'd rather wait until I'm in the process of making them, so that I can share photos), but on the placecards the damask stripes will be horizontal along the top and bottom. Let no one say I don't believe that variety is the spice of life!

Bring on the black, red and white!

Originally my wedding colours were going to be crimson and white. Simple, right? I'd be in white with dark red flowers, and my girls would be in dark red with white flowers. The end. Why would I need something else? Then I got worried. Was it too blah? Did I need an accent colour? OMG, did I need TWO accent colours??

After a brief dalliance with purple, I decided that to bring in the Hollywood glamour feel I would need to add a bit of black. The flowers will still be crimson/dark red/burgundy/claret whatever you want to call it, but the black is going to come through in ribbons (bouquets, programs, etc) and borders on the place cards, menus, and other stationery.I've made an inspiration board for this colour scheme! All inspired by thetop left-hand picture of the red tulips on the monochrome damask cloth.


I am toying with the idea of getting black or black & white damask table runners (the tablecloths are white in our venue), but to be honest, it just feels like yet another expense that hardly anyone will notice anyway. I have to know when to stop! Little things add up in a horribly frightening way. Anyway, I'm using this pattern as the border to my placecards and menu:






And I'm using this look for my programs. I love the idea of it so much morethan a normal book-shaped program.



I'm also going to have the confetti cones, proably half in crimson and half in black. More paper to buy, oh dear....