Going Against the Grain: DIY Table Names

As a bride on a budget, many elements of my wedding included DIY projects, and my table numbers were no exception.  I initially considered purchasing table numbers because I did not want to create too much work for myself and my groom the week of the wedding, but after scouring Etsy and finding some decent deals, I decided to create them myself.

One reason was that even though there were some reasonable prices from Etsy vendors, after calculating the cost of making them myself, I just couldn't justify spending the extra amount of cash to have them pre-made.

Another reason was that I did not want simple signs with a number on them.  Since were were having a Christmas wedding, and my family and I have always adored Christmas movies, I decided that I wanted each table to bear the name of a Christmas film.  Thus, I knew if I wanted custom table numbers, it would make much more sense to just do them myself.

My groom and I thus went to Paper Source to purchase the supplies for our project, and fortunately had help from a very experienced saleswoman, who helped us find exactly what we needed. We decided to make our table numbers double sided, so we purchased table tents, navy paper, and silver shimmer paper (see below).

My groom and I chose the movies and created a custom monogram for the top of the table names in Microsoft Word.  As you have to use a high quality printer that will not smudge, we went to my father's office and printed the table numbers in navy ink on the silver shimmer paper.  

The hardest part was cutting the navy and silver paper to fit the table tents, which were smaller than the standard 8.5" x 11" paper. Thankfully, my groom used his mad paper cutter skills (I highly recommend using a paper cutter and not scissors!) and made everything fit perfectly. 

Overall, making the table numbers was more tedious and time consuming than my groom and I had anticipated, but we were really excited with our creation.  Here are some images of the final products (you're also getting a sneak peak of my DIY centerpieces, which I will soon detail in another post):

This was where we sat the groom's family, since this is their favorite Christmas movie:

 My family was sat here, since this is my mother's favorite Christmas movie:

I couldn't resist throwing some humor into our table names!

 And last but not least, my personal favorite, the Bad Santa table:

Overall, our table names were a huge hit with our guests (fortunately our guests all had a sense of humor).  Our friends at the Bad Santa table jokingly asked what they did to deserve that label, and all of our other guests were jealous that we did not deem them worthy of sitting at the Bad Santa table!

In the end, I'm so glad we decided to go against tradition and created table names that reflected our personalities and interests.  I highly recommend doing the same for your wedding, as it is not only a great conversation starter for guests, but also makes your wedding more unique and personal, while saving money!