Weddingbee Blog

Since before I had a sparkly ring on my left hand I wanted our tables to be designated by places we’ve traveled to together. Seeing that we met abroad and did the long distance thing I could just gather a bunch of photos and call it a day. We are going to have 8 feasting tables, each comprised of two tables put together, so we needed eight places. Easy peasy—we can have one half of the table called “London” and the other half called “England,” so that people would know which end of the long table they should sit down at. Mrs Elephant had the same idea for her wedding and they turned out awesome.

Photo courtesy of Mrs Elephant

Then we started thinking about how our wedding is faux-destination for most of the guests, so it would be fun to do tables named after the various neighborhoods in Chicago.

We’d have Lakeview, the Loop, Pilsen, Chinatown and all of the other neighborhoods that make this city so unique. Each table could have the table name in a coordinating font and a blurb about what the neighborhood is known for—famous people, favorite restaurants, etc. We would name the tables based on their placement in the room and we could use my favorite poster of Chicago as a guide for guests to find their table.

Image via The Average Chicagoan / Poster Design by Ork Posters

What a great excuse to finally by this poster, get it framed, and eventually hang it in our apartment?! Sheer brilliance! But wait, what about designating which end of the table each person should plop down at? 18 people milling around a long, long table seems like a disaster.

What if we married the two ideas? Places We’ve Been + Chicago = Places We’ve Been in Chicago!

We are going to name the tables after intersections in Chicago that are important to us. So, we are going to assign guests to a particular street like Addison Street. They’ll walk over to the side of the table named Addison and take a seat. The other side of the table will be named Clark Street, and be inhabited by guests assigned to Clark. Together, the table is Clark and Addison, the corner that Wrigley Field is on!

Image via Marketplace

Each table will also have information cards telling guests why that intersection is important to us, and they’ll learn a bit about Chicago, too! Other intersections will be our first apartment together, our offices (boring, I know), my favorite area to shop, and our cats. Um, our cats? As it happens, our cats are named Lincoln and Sawyer, which are both real streets in Chicago that actually do intersect! So our head table will be named after them.

Next up is figuring out how to get our guests to those tables. Are your tables going to be named or numbered?