Time to lay the Table

I thought I would share my choices and experience of the table settings.  As Kindelis was such a beautifully rustic venue, it made sense for the tables to compliment rather than fight the surroundings.  I love flowers and try to always have some in my house but we had decided that we did not want large floral centerpieces in Greece rather simpler potted herbs and terracotta tea light holders.  The advantage of having potted plants also meant that the plants would not wilt under the heat of the day.

Images by Cristina Olive, Marthasterwart.com & Pixi

 We met three florists in Chania, one point blank refused to put ‘earth’ on a table (a little strange) and to be honest he was rather insulting to both Sara and Me.  It takes a lot to annoy Sara and she was fuming by the time we left, so he was canned. The second was great.  Not only did she know her stuff and have a very open mind about what I wanted, she also kept a constant supply of Greek coffee coming my way.  The problem, as is everywhere in the world was her prices as soon as wedding was mentioned.  She even tried to charge me E1000 just for earth, I think not.  Then we found the amazing Birgitte.  She was wonderful and actually more than fair.  She not only potted up the herbs in really cute terracotta pots but also sourced the terracotta tea lights, which I adored.

The table numbers were put onto the wine bottles to help save space on the tables as I had got a little over excited with the amount of food we were going to have.  I noticed after the wedding that the caterers had put table numbers on the table with their logo on them, which did not amuse me.

The escort cards had been made by my wonderful printer and kept the vintage travel theme going.  These were tied around the napkins with raffia, whilst the seating plan was brown labels tied onto a fishing net, which we draped over an up-lit bush in the courtyard.  It looked beautiful when all lit up at night.

Images from Annie Angelopoulou & Cristina Oliver

On the morning of the wedding it became apparent that the tables for 10 were actually tables for 8. Disaster!  I had to rearrange all the table plans at 4 pm with my hair in rollers on the back terrace.  A headache I could have done without.  It got done and there were a few cock-ups but what could be done.

All in all thought it looked good and it made me laugh that by the time we had all the plants and tea lights on the table there was not much room for the empty food plates…. They ended up in piles on top of the wine coolers and on the floor.  I wanted rustic and I certainly got it!

NY