Wedding Blog

Today our DIY rewind comes from Mrs. Bell Pepper. The Bell Peppers included details from one of their favorite movies, Amelie, into their tablescape. This DIY project was originally posted on May 4, 2007.

~~~

My fiance and I both really liked the movie Amelie, and I wanted to find a way to incorporate a cute idea from this movie. In one of the scenes from the movie, Amelie seizes her father’s gnome and hands it over to her flight attendant friend. Her friend travels around the world with this gnome and takes postcard photos of it posing in Moscow, England, all over the world. I thought the idea was amusing and I wanted to include this gnome in our traveling adventures.

Materials I used include:

Adobe Photoshop software

Inkjet printer along with glossy photo paper

High resolution images from Flickr.com

Small dark cherry wood tabletop easels

The first thing I did was find a high resolution image of a gnome. I found one on flickr.com and with the help of Adobe Photoshop, I was able to extract the gnome from a previous background and add it to my own photos. Here is the first version of our table number cards. I adjusted the hues to match the colors of the movie, saturating the photos with red, yellow and green tones.

*My favorite table card from the above photos is table number two, which was an actual photo I took while were were visiting New Hope, Pennsylvania. I liked how the gnome fit so well onto the train platform!

*Table number four is also interesting, it’s a photo of my fiance taking a photo of NYC and the gnome is placed next to him.

I really liked the first version of my table number cards but after thinking how it could be incorporated in our wedding reception, I realized they wouldn’t go so well with our lavender and green color scheme. I decided to tweak the cards a little, following our color tones and including locations that our guests could relate to more. I added Taiwan for my fiance’s family members, Korea for my family members, Chicago for our classmates, and Philadelphia for our new friends/coworkers in the area. Here’s our second version of the table cards:

(*Can you find the gnome in the New Jersey Battleship photo? He’s quite small but you can find his unique shape in the photo..*)

I think the most difficult part of this project was finding a cute holder for the cards. I wanted to buy these gold table number holders that were featured in one of Martha Stewart’s wedding magazines, but I discovered the price was like $32 a piece!! Wow. I checked out Ikea’s frame holders and they looked kind of gaudy and cheap. Photo frames also didn’t work so well with the table cards because it masked the details and the vivid colors. I discovered these cute tabletop easels from my venue site. They’re subtle and they have a delicate structure that wraps around the card so well. I think the last detail I’ll add to each is a cardstock to give each photo support and a hint of color.