Hoping the title caught your eye Wendy... :) You'll see why below.
By now you all know I'm planning a tent wedding. I hadn't mentioned this before (I don't think), but I've been planning all along to do my own lighting (mainly because places charge mucho dinero to do lighting for you). As in, bought a gajillion christmas lights at the after Christmas sales (the cute circular ones - "cafe lights" if you will), and have been acquiring the materials needed for LED throwies that will be put inside of Chinese lanterns to hang in the tent as well. This is a project that's been going around bridal blogs for a while now. It's super cheap, actually REALLY EASY to do, and they last for days, needing no plug-in electricity, which is awesome (see below for info).
Screeeeeech! That's the sound of my ideas coming to a screeching halt about a week ago when talking to my cheap tent dude and he said that basically there's nowhere to hang things from inside the tent. Whaaaaat? But. But. But I want to hang things inside the tent! Namely, lights and chinese lanterns! He was just like um, well, uh, I'm sorry but there's only three poles inside the tent and they go straight up to like 18 feet. The only other place to hang things from is on the outside of the tent, where they usually put perimeter lighting. (Don't get me wrong, he was nice about it, I was just in disbelief that my vision wasn't going to work.) So I'm a little stubborn and refuse to believe that I have to give this project up. I've been thinking about how I could make it work. The original thought was to cris-cross fishing wire all over the place and hang them from that, but, obviously, that was assuming it would be between short sections of poles throughout the tent. I think it's going to look something like this:
(note the three poles in the center)
Soooo I had a thought the other night, and I had to make a drawing because trying to explain it would just be useless (trust me). Don't judge me on my lack of drawing ability. (Please??) I was thinking if we tied one end of a string/rope of lanterns, and tied the other end to an outside pole, it should work.
My problem issss - if the strands of lights are tied to the poles, how do we keep them from sliding down the poles? Do you get what I mean? I need some sort of something stopping it from coming down. Oh Uncle Randy, king of all that is handy, Mr. fix-it of everything, do you have any ideas for me?? I'm not asking you to make something, just to brain storm a little bit since I'm at a loss.
Ideas are welcome from others as well!!
For anyone who wants to know how to make the LED throwies, here's the link. I'm probably getting my Chinese lanterns here: http://www.paperlanternstore.com/, purchased my LED bulbs from ebay for about 16 cents each (I got 200), and got the batteries from ebay as well for about 6 cents each for 200. I've tested out the tutorial and they are super easy to make. I kind of want to light everything with LED throwies now.
-C
xxx
What about sliding a rubber band up the tent pole before it is put up? Or cutting a rubber band and tying it the pole if you put it there after?
ReplyDeleteI just saw a wedding on TV the other day in a tent exactly like that and over the dance floor they had big lanterns exactly like those in your picture. There is definitely a way to do it! This website has a bunch of pictures (I'm sure you've already seen it) but it looks like they hung clear cables or fishing wire like you suggested. http://www.weddingbee.com/2008/03/13/paper-lantern-inspiration/
ReplyDeleteKind of like what Cassie is saying...Would cable ties work? Those little plastic ties with notches that you can pull to tighten and they kind of latch in place so you can't pull them back out again?
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_tie
Not sure if they would actually stay in place and not slide down the pole, but those suckers work for other things, so, maybe worth a try. And you can always cover them up with ribbon or something so they don't look so ugly.