When we were planning our wedding, we set out to add as many personal touches to the day as possible which, in the era of Pinterest and Instagram, wasn’t quite as easy as I thought it would be! There were millions of ideas at our fingertips but not all of them a) seemed very ‘us’ or b) were all that original.

Backtrack to November 2019; Andy and I flew to NSW for my friend Claire’s wedding to her fiance Chris. I knew the bride and her maid of honour, Andy didn’t know anyone! We had such an awesome night meeting new people and chatting away. One thing that really helped was that when we got to our table, sitting on all of our plates was a photo. A polaroid-sized snapshot of a memory with the bride or groom (or both!) or a photo swiped from a social media account. It was more than a place card, it was an instant ice-breaker and a talking point with the people around us as we all compared photos and explained when they were taken. It was genius.

So we stole the idea.

We gathered photos of all our guests from our cameras, phones, laptops, social media and then ordered polaroid sized prints from Poster Candy. I take so many photos all the time that I only had to source a few from Facebook- finally my excessive snapping pays off!

It was so much fun finding the photos and deciding if I should pick the nice vacation snap or the photo from a white trash costume party (the costume party always won).

I wish I could have been there to see everyone’s reactions to the photos we selected, thankfully our wonderful photographer captured some of these sweet moments:

So many people mentioned that they loved the idea. Andy’s aunt said to me “it showed that you had taken a moment to think of each one of us and how to make us feel special”. I love that, it’s very true.

You could use photo place cards at any event, not just a wedding. Maybe I’ll do them again for an over-the-top dinner party once social distancing is a thing of the past.

We had a seating chart but it was totally redundant as people seemed to prefer wandering around looking at the photos. A huge thank you to the team of family and friends that set this up on the day.

More wedding DIYs to come! All photos by Kyra Boyer Photography.