My Aviation Themed Wedding

I got Married this past week and it was fantastic!  My bride agreed to an aviation themed, so I ran with it as far as I could take it. We started with our save the dates, I am lucky and our friend that is a graphic designer helped us design a logo, save the dates, and our invitations. We used some balsa gliders and had our logo and date stamped on the wing and tail.  The save the dates were mailed out like this...

and end up looking like this...

We then followed up with our invitation we went for a boarding pass style invitation.  

Now, time to get ready for the reception.  To continue with the theme, my bride and I decided to place an airplane at each table.  She also wanted flowers.  So what ended up happening is that I have a vase with flowers and a pole sticking out of the vase to put an airplane on.  I have been to several weddings and had problems with talking to people across from me due to the centerpiece, so I decided to place the airplanes on a 3 ft (1 m) dowel rod so they would be up high and out of the way of conversations.  

Here is a picture of the vase itself, it has a 1/2" (12mm) PVC pipe to hold the dowel rod in place.  I used 5 minute epoxy, then dipped the end of the pvc pipe in the epoxy then taped the top of it to secure it while it dried. I then added about 3 cups(750 mL) of play sand to act as ballast in the vase to keep the plane up.  

Now for the planes themselves, I used some flitetest planes, and alot of the SEMFF (South East Michigan Fun Flyers) KF airfoil warbirds.  Here is all of the planes piled together before paint.

Here is a link to where I got the plans for most of the warbirds

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1012551

And here is a link to most of the FT Planes:

Free Flite Test Build Plans (scroll down to the link) 

I made 30 planes over all and it took about 8 months to build them all between Flite Fest, making other planes and other wedding activities.  Once they were all done I used standard epoxy house paint since spray paint would have taken forever, and it eats at the foam and/or paper. Here I am painting.  

And here are some of them drying... It took 5 quarts (5L) to paint 30 planes.

Here is one the planes that I got setup before the wedding.  I used a 2" piece of PVC pipe on each plane that was placed at the Center of Gravity.  By the way, it is a hoot to find the CoG on 30 planes in a row, it took me 30 minutes to install all fo the plane PVC pieces. The number on the plane is also the table number.  And there is a small LED light I bought at the local craft store on each tail so you can still see the number when the lights are dimmed for the wedding.  

 As stated earlier, I made 30 planes, I ended up spending around $200 on 90 ft of hot glue, 480 sf of fan fold foam, 30 dowel rods, 30 LED lights, 30 vases, and 30 charger plats for a base.  We also bought $200 of flowers to put in the bases.  For those of you wanting to run this idea by your wife, $200 for 30 centerpeices isn't too bad, and I'm sure your bride would love your help in decorating.  I know mine did.

Now for the wedding itself.  The groom and groomsmen wore handmade silk ribbon and metal boutounniers.  But in addition to that we also wore a set of wings.  I got some old Eastern Airline wings of ebay for a very reasonable price (150 for $35), and I spray painted those to match our wedding colors.  Here is my set of wings, along with my bride.

So now to the reception.  When guests arrive, I made an excel sheet with the guests names and their table number in the format of an airport departure board.  They also recieved a paper airplane place holder with their name on it, as well as a pair of wings that I mentioned earlier.  Also, when we (the wedding party) arrived, our ushers brought us out with ground controller lights.  We also had a Mariachi band which was fun, but that is not airplane related.

Here is the arrival list.

And here is the Maid of Honor with the Best man being arriving at their "gate".  Along with "The Three Amigos" Mariachi Band.

Now here are some pictures from the reception.  Here is a Corsair that I built using plans from a member on the forum.  Also in the picture are my Groomsmen, I actually ended up bying them Hobbyzone Duets, or Estes Proto Xs for their Groomsman presents.  

Here is another on of the head table area with spare "Save the Date" planes hung up as well as the Groomsmen table F-14 and the Bridesmaid's Concorde.  Here you can see the layout again of charger plate, vase, flowers, dowel rod, then plane.

I made a Lockheed Constellation for my Grandfather he took it home with him.  You can see the PVC bottom pipe piece that I used to place the plane on the dowel rod.

And here is a young plane admirer enjoying my IL-2 Sturkmininov.  I made that plane using 3 view drawing and just cutting out some foam using the same methods as the SEMFF fighters.

Here are my some people from my St Louis family taking home a Grumman Goose and an F-15, I made them the F-15 becaue the real ones were built in St Louis.

 Here are some more planes, a FT Duster, a Ford Trimotor, and a Mig-21 on the right, that was an extra that I made for a friend who requested it.

The groom's cake was a crashed plane motif.  I had originally made a plane to use for it.  But lost that plane so I had to quickly take a plane from my flying stock to give to the cake decorator.  Luckily no one choked on servo wires that were still in the fuselage.

A Good time was had by all.  This is a friend wearing something from the aviation themed photobooth.

The guests, including myslef (groom) enjoyed the using the batons for leading various dances.

I used the batons to direct traffic during "The Cupid Shuffle".

So I hope you enjoy my photos and articles, and if you are getting married soon and want to include flight in your theme there are several ways to do it, and you don't have to spend a lot of money to do it.

Thanks for reading my article!