Projects for a Very Special Wedding

My husband's nephew, Justin announced his engagement last year. I offered my services to make anything related to woodworking to his beautiful bride-to-be, Rebecca.

After considering things and doing some searches online, Rebecca decided she wanted some signs as well as cake stands and flower stands.

Rebecca wanted three signs, which I made from pine. She was going for a country look and "crackled" paint. I glued three or four boards edge to edge to make each sign. I stained the boards with my rusty water (steel wool and vinegar) technique so that the white paint would have something a bit darker to show through the cracks than the light coloured pine would.

I put quite a thick layer of crackle medium all over the signs and then I painted with white outdoor house paint over that and crossed my fingers that the crackles would look nice. You really can't redo it, and the paint must go on in one coat without going back over it.

One sign was to have their names and wedding date, the second was a copy of something she found online saying "Happily Ever After Starts Here," and the third was for a seating plan. The first two signs were 20" high x 32" long and the third was 22" high x 32" long.

I planned and printed out the lettering on my computer to the correct size and then using carbon paper, traced the letters and corner swirls onto the boards. I hand painted everything with black craft paint.

Here is a close up of the Justin & Rebecca sign:

and a close up of the Happily Ever After...

Here are the finished signs at my home a few weeks before the wedding:

Rebecca wanted a Seating Plan sign with the same font and corner decorations and a space for her to attach lists of each table with the names of who would be seated there:

As for the other decor, Rebecca decided on log slices that would sit in the middle of each table with a mason jar full of flowers on it. My husband, Eric's, chain saw died so we ended up buying a new chain saw and Eric cut about 25 slices off a large log we got with our winter firewood order.

Here are some of them stacked in my workshop:

One last thing she wanted was two cake stands made out of logs, which I don't have a photo of before the wedding, but will show those with the wedding photos. They are log slices glued to a length of log for the base.

Last Saturday Justin and Rebecca were married in a beautiful ceremony and I was so proud to see my signs as part of the decor. The bride thanked me in her speech and I was so touched I got teary eyed!

The sign with the couples names was at the reception in the foyer:

The Happily Ever After sign was in the church entranceway and also at the reception afterwards.
Unfortunately I didn't get a close up of the Seating Plan, which you can see here on the right. Rebecca did a great job with the way she attached the names to the board, so pretty with different black edged papers.