Working On Wedding Preparations

Our hot weather returned yesterday with temperatures in the high 70's - a perfect day. Paulette left about 8:30am to go into town to her hairdresser's for a haircut. As soon as she returned, about an hour later, I was off to Costco to pick up my new glasses. I was already used to progressive lenses so my eyes adjusted to the new glasses by the time I left the store.

While I was gone, Paulette was busy sewing tablecloths to cover the dinner tables at Erin and Rhett's wedding reception on July 25th. Altogether, there are 14 tablecloths and from what I can gather they all require some special type of stitching. Paulette doesn't seem too worried though and says she will get them all done before we leave next Thursday.

The blue tablecloth material piled up ready for cutting and sewing


There was a wedding job for me to do as well. Remember those paper mache covered balloons I wrote about in my blog about a week or so ago? Well, Paulette's brother called us last night to say he had finished making the shepherd hooks that the paper mache units will hang from.

The paper mache will be covererd with silk, flowers and hang on the Shepherd Hooks


Paul's a welder by trade and he did a great job with the hooks. He even welded a handy "step", a foot from the bottom, to allow us to easily step on the bar to insert it into the ground. Paul started with long lengths of straight iron bars. He cut them to 4' lengths, somehow shaped them into Shepherd Hooks and then welded the two-pronged step on the bottom foot - they are exactly what Erin and Paulette had hoped for.

The Shepherd Hooks before painting


My job, the easy part, was to lightly sand the iron hooks and paint them black. I started with a can of black spray paint but quickly switched to regular paint and a small brush. With the spray, most of the paint was going everywhere except on the shepherd hooks. In total, there are 14 of the hooks, so now all I have to do is wrap them up and find a place in the back of my truck to store them for the trip to Blairmore next week.

Unpainted hook on left - painted on right
Paper mache balloons will hang from the hooks


Not only do we have tablecloths, shepherd hooks, baking and I'm sure some things I don't yet know about, we are taking a bunch of silk flowers too. After covering the paper mache balloons, Paulette is going to attach silk flowers to each one and then they will hang on the Shepherd Hooks - just like hanging baskets. They will be used to decorate Erin and Rhett's back yard as that is where the wedding ceremony is taking place.

These are some of the silk flowers that will cover the paper mache


So much for the idea that having the wedding in Blairmore would mean that we probably wouldn't have much to do. It's all been fun though and it will be nice to see the results at the wedding in a few weeks. Today, it's going to be more of the same although I will be working a bit on the 5th wheel getting it in shape and ready to roll.