Susan Snyder: BEACH WEDDING

We used these sailboats as escort cards. You can find them on several wedding/party supply websites. Unfortunately, they only came in navy blue and red, so I set out to give them a new look to go with the colors and style of our wedding. This was a very time consuming process, it took me hours to do 60 of these but they turned out to be pretty neat looking :o) These are the steps I went through to make this rustic look…

1. Lightly sanded the base of the boats. I used a Dremel to make this process go faster, but inadvertently cut some of the riggings and had to re-thread them. (uggghhh)

2. Painted a coat of black acrylic paint. (Tip – I set up a couple clotheslines long enough to fit all 60 boats and clipped them to the line by the mast with small clothespins to let them dry. This worked great and made this tedious process go a lot faster)

3. Painted two coats of white paint

4. Painted the blue stripe along the top of the boat with a small brush

5. Lightly sanded the boats for a weathered effect (exposing the black layer underneath)

6. Wrote the table names on the sides with a fine Sharpee marker. We used types of sea turtles for our table names.

7. Printed all the guests’ names on regular white printer paper and made flags. These were adhered to the masts with double stick tape.

Sailboats on Table with Lighthouse on Island

The escort card table was covered with a teal blue tablecloth to resemble water. A lighthouse stood at one end of the table on an island (cardboard box draped/wrapped with a sandy colored faux suede fabric). The Lighthouse was purchased from Hobby Lobby with just a couple paint color changes I did myself. Note - at one point my husband came up with the idea to float the boats in a punch bowl. This would have been a neat idea - but unfortunately, they do not float (we tried it).

My family was worried (knowing how long I spent on these) that I would freak out at the end of the evening when I would see the boats randomly thrown around and some trampled on the ground. So. . . I mentally prepared myself for the horrible massacre. Needless to say, as we were leaving you couldn't find any boats - everyone took them home :o) Also, every year my husband and I hang one as an ornament on our Christmas tree.

For all of my beach wedding posts see my Beach Wedding page where you will find posts like these: