Where are you sitting?–Part 2

In conjunction with our personalized menus I wanted to create a seating chart to let our guests know which table they would be sitting at.

You may remember that we decided to letter our tables instead of numbering them and we spelled out “Me & You.”  We had a friend take pictures of us holding the letters that would be a part of the table centerpieces.I also had a frame that I had purchased from Pottery Barn years ago.  I had originally wanted to peel the labels off of wine bottles and put them in a frame.  When I found the peeling of labels trickier than expected the frame sat sad and unfinished for five years.Finally I had a new purpose for it!

I trimmed the photos and glued them on the same purple cardstock I used for our menus.  Time to check for layout and placement!I glued them on to a new piece of thick cardstock backing.  I then handwrote everyone’s names under the lettered table that they would be sitting at.

Here is the seating chart on display at our wedding:

Photo by the amazingly talented Sakura Photography

It was another really simple project, but it really tied all of the elements of our tables together.  From our milk glass, our centerpiece photos…

Photo by Sakura Photography

our letters…

Photo by Sakura Photography

and our personalized menus.

Photo by Sakura Photography

What are you doing for your seating chart?

Where are you sitting?

Mr. Gazelle and I talked about all kinds of seating options for the wedding.  We contemplated designating tables for our parents but then leaving the seating for everyone else open.  I  then had visions of friends or family not being able to sit together if they weren’t on the ball about picking seats.  I figured they wouldn’t be too happy about that.  Coming up with a seating plan is one of the trickiest things in the end stages of wedding planning.  I quickly realized that while we maybe couldn’t make everyone happy it would be better in the long run to let everyone know where they were sitting.

So…what would be the best way to tell everyone?  I wasn’t feeling creative on designing escort cards.  Instead I decided personalized menus would be the way to go!  This way our guests would know what yumminess was waiting for them at the buffet and it would also let our gluten free guests know that we had special meals for them.

I picked up a few more sheets of the same gorgeous sparkly white paper that we used for our invitations from Paper Circle and some purple cardstock from Michaels.  I printed the menus off on our laser jet printer at home and assembled them one weekend with the help of my girlfriends.I used Travelling Typewriter and Pea Charmaine for the fonts.  Our coordinator then folded the napkins to be like little pockets for our menus.All together!It was a really simple project but I loved how it looked.

How did you decide to let your guests know where they were sitting, or did you decide to go with open seating?

*All photos courtesy of the supremely amazing Sakura Photography*

Favourites for our favours

Mr. Gazelle and I wanted to give something that really signified us for our wedding favours.  The decision was really easy – tea and cookies!  We both love Earl Grey tea, specifically Russian Earl Grey tea with lemongrass and orange.  I ordered 1 kg of loose tea online and we packaged them up in adorable tins from etsy seller InTheClear.We then prettied them up with some leftover purple Baker’s twine from our invitations.Since some folks prefer to make their tea with bags we’ll be including some tea filters in the favour bag.  So our guests know how to make the perfect cup I had some business cards printed up with instructions at Vistaprint.As for cookies, we both love a good, traditional Scottish shortbread.  Normally I’m more than happy to buy Walker’s shortbread, but I thought it would be nice to gift homemade cookies for this occasion.  I found a recipe with ratios of butter, flour and sugar very similar to what Walker’s is believed to use (1 part sugar to 2 parts butter to 3 parts flour).

Mr. Gazelle got to work creaming the butter with the sugar.The puppy dogs were pretty keen to hang around the kitchen while this all was going on.  I sifted the flour.Once that was all done there wasn’t much more for me to do while Mr. Gazelle incorporated the flour into the butter so I just hung out in my cute apron and enjoyed a glass of wine.We deviated from the recipe slightly by chilling the dough in the fridge for about half an hour, then we rolled it out into jelly roll pans.  We scored fingers into the dough using a pizza cutter (cutting about halfway through the thickness of the dough), then I used a fork to prick holes into the surface.Bake at 350F for 10 minutes, then reduce the heat to 300F.  Bake for another 35 minutes or so, but be sure to watch and make sure your edges aren’t about to burn.  We dusted the surface with berry sugar (just because my mom had some, but regular granulated sugar would work just fine).  We’ll package the cookies in glassine bags to gift our guests along with the tea.The cookies are the perfect texture.  Yay for success!

Did you decide to gift something homemade for wedding favours?

Wedding or Big Booze Up?

On Friday night I was watching Four Weddings Biggest Wedding Blunders.  Now, I admit that I don’t care for the competition aspect of the show or how catty the brides get, but it is interesting to see what works well or what can go wrong at weddings.  With that in mind I was curious to see what the big blunders would be.

One thing that really struck me was when the question of alcohol was brought up.  The competing brides complained if:

• Alcohol wasn’t being served at all.
• If you had to pay for your alcohol.
• If you had to pay for soft drinks.
• If it was open bar but only wine and beer was being offered.

You name it, if there was a complaint to be made about the alcohol situation it was made.  Apparently the alcohol debate really stirs up some heated feelings.  One thing that has always bothered me about weddings is the odd person expecting to get drunk on your dime.  Weddings are expensive affairs and alcohol is a pretty huge contributor to that cost.  We can’t necessarily afford for our wedding to be your great big booze up especially since our venue doesn’t allow us to bring in our own alcohol.

Our venue offers a reception package that includes:

• One hour of open bar: offered before dinner; unlimited regular hi-balls, domestic beer and house wine
• Non-alcoholic fruit punch, iced tea or lemonade: choice of one, available all night
• Wine with dinner: ½ bottle of house private label Peller Estates Chardonnay or Merlot, per person with dinner – served by wait staff
• Sparkling wine toast: one flute per person

After dinner we then have the option of hosting the bar or going to a cash bar and I’m fairly certain we’ll go the cash bar route.  If anyone wants any pop, beer or hard alcohol during dinner then they will have to pay for it.  I think the drink package is pretty generous but I imagine there still might be the odd gripe since we won’t be covering everything.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not a teetotaller.  I enjoy a good glass of wine or a beer.  This is pretty well an economic decision for us, but I’m still worried that despite what we are offering people may not be happy.  And do we give people a heads up that we’ll be having a cash bar later in the evening?

What are your thoughts about booze at weddings?