Wedding

In 2014 my now wife and I married. We decided that we wanted to have a wedding that reflects our own tastes, and not rely on a hotel to provide decor. We instead set up our reception in a marquee, and decorated the venue ourselves.

The letters were first drawn out in CAD and then printed out at full size, 1 metre high. These were then stuck onto offcuts of 6mm thick ply salvaged from some pantomime set. A hinged leg was created and added to the back to enable the letters to be stood upright. The thickness was increased by bonding 50mm thick polystyrene foam using waterbased contact adhesive. Foam edges were smoothed over by using a mixture of powdered filler, PVA and water to create a hard coat. After sanding the whole letters were painted cream.

The seating plan started life as a large hardwood picture frame found at the recycling centre. The frame firstly needed a bit of repair, gluing up a couple of split areas. A piece of 6mm ply, again from the panto set was fixed in and the whole thing painted up in a lavender colour. The R&M at the top were cut out MDF using a scroll saw, painted and screwed on.

The Finger Post

We made a sign post to point out where everything was. The post was a 4"x4" post, salvaged from an old bed. Corners were cut off on the table saw to make it octaganol, and a standard finial added. A socket for it to sit into was made and concreted into the bottom of a 60 litre plastic barrel. The barrel was covered externally with hessian, and internally topped up with bark chippings.

The fingers were based on a wood type finger I have, whch a print from was scanned and blown up to make a master. A number of fingers were then made, again from 6mm ply, cut using a combination of bandsaw and scroll saw. All fingers were painted white, and then a friend kindly painted on the names for us.

The tables were named after caves that my wife and I have visited. The name was on a double sided card, largely using photos I had taken. This card was mounted on top of a piece of dowel, mounted onto a 'rock'.

The rocks were made from polystyrene foam, bonded to a 6mm ply base- more of the panto set. The shape was roughed out using the bandsaw, smoothed with very course sandpaper and covered with two coats of a mixture of powdered filler, water and PVA. Painting consisted of a base coat of grey acrylic, followed by a drybrushing black acrylic and highlighted with browns and yellows.

We believe our name tag idea to be unique. I tend to stencil my name on my tools and equipment in the workshop, and so decided what better than everyone having there own stencil.

I found a Marsh 1" stencil machine on ebay, for a relatively reasonable price, which after a clean worked perfectly. We cut 180 over a series of evenings from stencil card, and tied a short length of paracord through each to hang it by.

The handbell we used to announce dinner was found in a very bad state at a boot fair, where I paid £1 for it. It was covered in muck and fixed to a stub of metal strip- I believeit was a doorbell at one point in its life. I cleaned it up, painted it and made a new handle from Oak.

For favours we made Elderberry wine, Sloe Gin and Rhubarb Gin (recipe), and had bottles of sweets for the kids. Tags were printed on my Adana HS2 letterpress with either 'Eat Me' or 'Drink Me' and on the revrese side a label added with the contents.

The favours went down very succesfully, expecially the rhubarb gin, which even the hidden spares we had got drunk.

We borrowed a large amount of bunting from a couple of friends who had made it for their respective weddings- something like 200m of it.Most of it went up outsdie the marquee along with 50m of festoon, to give ourselves a lit area after dark. The festoon came from Lights4fun , we were very pleased with these and have used them quite a lot since.

Thanks a lot to all our friends for the support and particularly help with painting and setting up.

Our reception venue was away down a farm track, so we needed a couple of signs to point the way. I had found a couple of sign frames in the scrapyard a while before and refurbished them witha clean up and coat of paint. The sign was made onto a piece of foam sign board, I'd aquired some time before. The letters were cut from self adhesive vinyl to patterns produced on the computer. The arrow was based on an image from on old station way out sign.

A number of friends and relations have also recently married, and I have therefore helped in making things for them too, including a photo booth, an easel and table plan frame, as well as another large letter.