stinkerpants design

When I first started planning this wedding, I knew one thing for sure about our tables–they would have names, not numbers. Originally, I really loved the idea of having each table named after a neighborhood in San Francisco. Then I realized (after being on the knot for like, 3 seconds) that this idea isn’t exactly original. I also really liked the idea of having photos of our pets, or postcards from places we’d visited. When I came up with the idea to do a drawing for each table, I was then forced to figure out how the heck to display them. I went through many different ideas (some of them pictured below), but was really satisfied with myself when I came up with my final idea. That’s how I knew it was the final idea.

When I told my manager at Paper Source what my plans were, she told me I was insane. I guess she thought they’d be a lot of work. I’ll admit, these were one of my more involved projects. But they really weren’t that bad! Probably about 4 or 5 episodes of Law and Order. So without further adieu, here they are (please excuse the laundry basket–I had other things going on, haha):

There’s 15 of those suckers, darlings (two extra, just in case we DO end up with 150 guests–I don’t want to be making more of these two weeks before the wedding). They’re multi-colored sandwich boards made with bookboard, text weight paper and bookcloth (that’s the light blue stuff on the top). The bottom parts are held together with ribbon to keep them from falling flat. They obviously don’t have the drawings on them yet, but I’m going to hold off on those for awhile. I wanted to show you guys what I’d done, because this project will probably look like this for a few months to come. :)

Before I settled on the sandwich board idea, I rejected several FAR easier ideas. They included (but were not limited to):

1) These table tents from Paper Source, which were rejected for not being colorful enough:

2) The drawings, printed on plain cardstock and presented in something like this (I’m a schmuck, I don’t remember where I got this!):

These were rejected because I want the drawings to be big enough to see, and I was afraid they’d fall over if they were any bigger than this little card shown here.

3) These awesome 3-sided lantern things, from knottie abattyref:

These were rejected because I didn’t know what else to put on them! I’m not doing a menu. Also, I was concerned that they would be too bulky on the tables. In reality, I think my sandwich boards will be pretty bulky themselves. Oh well. The flowers will have to move over to make room for them, I guess. ;)

Anybody else got some creative table number ideas?