Wedding Retrospective: pew markers

If you look directly behind my head in this picture, you can see one of our pew markers.  They were very simple to make; the hard part was deciding on a final idea for them.  We wanted something simple and elegant - no lace, no bows.

We (and by "we" I mean Mom and I) wanted ten markers.  So, we couldn't spend a fortune on each piece.  We needed something that we could find in bulk for a good price.

In keeping with the theme of the favors (to be seen in a future post), we decided to go with Mason jars as the base of the marker.  We easily found ten around the house.  The best part of using Mason jars is that they're totally reusable.

We then proceeded to wrack our brains about what would go in the jars.  Fresh flowers from the florist were a little too pricey for us - we preferred to spend our floral budget on the girls' bouquets (my amazing aunt crafted all the boys' boutonnieres for us!).  We next priced faux flowers at Michaels, which were shockingly expensive.  But, as luck would have it, on the way out the door, we spotted some pre-made 'bouquets' of hydrangeas on sale for about 70% off.  What was more fortunate was the colour - brown!

We were then off to find the finishing touch - two inch pink ribbon.  This we found at our florist who sold it by the metre.

We decided we'd hang the jars from the pews with some 'rustic' twine.  Hint:  go to the dollar store for twine - we tried agricultural supply places first and apparently most twine is blue these days!  Not the rustic look we were going for!

Here you can see the finished products (minus the twine for hanging).  Ribbon was wrapped two or three times to deepen the colour (the best colour we could find was a sheer pink) and secured with double sided tape.

The hydrangeas were trimmed using wire cutters so that they would sit snugly in the mouth of the jars.  This project definitely worked well with the fullness of the hydrangea - a single bloom per jar was sufficient.

Post a comment if you have any questions!  For more of my wedding posts, look here.