The Ribbon Wall

I was never the girl who dreamed about her wedding, I didn’t dress up as a bride and I didn’t think about one day working in the wedding industry but I now get it and I understand that planning a wedding is stressful, it’s crazy and it’s all consuming because you’re spending a ton of money, time and effort to put on an amazing day for you and your spouse to be. That’s what this series is about, it’s about creating the best day possible, making it beautiful, while keeping it reasonable and starting your marriage on the best of terms. One that is rooted in love, compromise and laughter through drama.

The Wedding Adventure Series

Part 1: Keeping Our Wedding Budget in Check
Part 2: The Ribbon Wall

We had the venue down, an old furniture store turned dance hall turned wedding venue. It looked just like something out of Pride and Prejudice, and I described it to everyone as “an old Irish dance hall” because it just fit. I could only see us getting married at the end of the hall in a vertical fashion so I knew that we needed a statement to work as our canopy. From the moment we decided on the Baker Building, I dreamt about this ribbon wall, strung from rail to rail in beautiful colors, serving not only as a canopy but as a wall to block the offices of the woman who owns the building (I think like a photographer, what can I say?)

Our colors were shades of gold, copper, corals, pinks and yellows so it would be easy to find the colors of the ribbons but I knew that we would have to buy in bulk because of the dimensions of the wall, thankfully I was referred to a bulk ribbon site that easily covered that for us and I was able to order over 100 yards of the ribbon for right around $100. I already had some para-cord which was the rope we used but even if I had to buy it, it cost $3 for the 20ft length I needed.

We could have made it beforehand but I wanted to be sure of the amounts I needed and that it would go from the top railing all the way to the floor, so I refrained from crafting it early (it was truthfully a hard task) and on the night of our rehearsal, my party and I set out to cut all of the ribbons to the right length. I am so grateful that they were there to help because it ended up taking much longer than we thought it would because of the fact that we had to cut 18ft of ribbon and make it 20ft wide, that is a TON of ribbon!

After about 10 minutes, the guys figured out an ingenious way to cut it efficiently and nicely, they simply stood facing each other at the proper distance (18ft) and had others RUN the ribbon back and forth around their hands, thus creating the right strip length and then they cut them when they had about 10 strips ready (5 rounds of running back and forth) and with this plan, we quickly had everything cut. I wish I had taken pictures of them trying to cut the strips, watching them from the balcony is one of my most vivid memories from that weekend (perhaps because the guys were yelling obscenities at me from below because I had “cursed” them with this chore.) But once the guys were done, we started to tie the knots on to the rope and I am so grateful to our photographer, who went above and beyond her job when she let us go down to start the rehearsal and took over tying the strips to the rope. Seriously, she was a lifesaver! (Side note: Jennefer and Michael had a ribbon wall at their wedding, something I didn’t know when I was planning my wall as well and she was the one who directed me to the ribbon site, and also she appreciated the effort of the wall so I’m even more grateful for her because she did TWO of these suckers in six months, her and Michael’s ribbon wall is actually in my promo film!)

As soon as we finished the rehearsal, we ran back upstairs and helped her finish the knots and then we were able to hang the wall. It looked AMAZING! And was everything that I had hoped it would be for the day, I still have it but I need to work on untangling it because it ended up getting massively tangled after the wedding. If/When I get it fixed, I’m going to re-tie it to a long pole so that I can easily hang it in our house but for now it’s protected in a closet, it was definitely my favorite item from the wedding day itself that we made and everyone loved it! I truly believe that it completed our decor and was the centerpiece of our projects!