Weddingbee Blog

One of the main things I want our wedding to be is interactive. I really like the look of weddings that give guests something to do or something to talk about.

This is why when searching through Pinterest for ideas on what to do for a seating plan, I was uninspired by things like this:

Image via Style Me Pretty / Photograph by Christine Farah

Image via My Many Passions

I’d seen them all before! They were cute but standard, and I really wanted something that would make people talk and laugh and interact.

Finding something cute, different, and something to talk about would probably take a lot of time. And it did. I like adapting other people’s ideas (I’m so not great at coming up with them myself), so not finding anything was really starting to bother me. Fortunately, when I logged on to Pinterest one day I saw this. Cue the excited face.

Image via Wedding Chicks / Photography by Green Photographic

YES! Yes, yes, yes, and more yesses all around. Oh my stupid head, why didn’t I think of something like this?! Thank you, Pinterest, from the bottom of my heart.

Once the dancing had stopped, I actually had to think about how practical this would be. And then I realised I didn’t care how I’d get photographs of all of our guests because this would be awesome and I had to do it.

My mum really liked the idea, but said that if I did this I would have to do it as discreetly as possible. If I wanted it to be a talking point for our guests then these pictures would have to be a surprise! Both of us got our thinking caps on and tried to work out who we’d already have photos of and who we’d have to go in search of.

Our family was easy because there are hardly any of them. Jack’s family should be fairly easy because, although there are a lot of them, they are all very close and so should have photos in an album somewhere.

The tough ones were going to be our friends and their partners, but with the advances of modern technology and social media, there would be a way.

Just after Christmas I thought I’d get started on these. We hadn’t sent out our invitations, but we’d had some responses from friends after sending our save the dates and we knew which ones would definitely be coming. With that, I started sending messages to friends’ family members.

Some of them I knew, others I didn’t. For some friends, I had to find who their family was listed as on their Facebook page and message them out of the blue! But the response I had was fantastic—everyone loved the idea and was willing to dig out old photographs to send to me.

Here are three I have received so far from those family members. (All photos are personal.)

How cute are they?! I Instagrammed them to give them a more vintage look, but I think they are PERFECT! I cannot wait until I get more—they make me laugh so much. Even thinking about their reactions makes me smile.

Only another hundred to go…