How To

A Library Wedding, in Detail

Jen Sherman

Staff Writer

Jen is an urban and cultural geographer who did a PhD on public libraries and reading. As a researcher, her interests are focused on libraries, reading, book retailing and the book industry more broadly. As a reader, she reads a lot of crime fiction, non-fiction, and chicklit. And board books. All the board books. You can also find her writing about books for children and babies at babylibrarians.com. Instagram: shittyhousewife / babylibrarians Twitter: @jennnigan

My first post for Book Riot was about getting married in a library, and in honour of National Library Week I wanted to revisit that day and share more details about our bookish wedding. Because you see, it wasn’t just that we got married in a library – the entire wedding was library themed. The book arch was already featured in the original post, but there were a few other details that I didn’t write about in the first post. So if you’re getting married any time soon and are after some bookish ideas for weddings and want to make some of your own wedding bits and bobs, look no further.

  1. Our invitations were handmade and designed to look like library cards.

2. When you arrived, you found your table number by finding your name in the card catalogue. Your entry would tell you where you were sitting. We alphabetised these by guests’ surname.

Card catalogue that held the guests’ table cards.

 

3. The tables were numbered with Dewey Decimal numbers for books that held particular meaning for us. The books themselves were used as markers, and they were all borrowed from the library in which we were married (which made it rather convenient – we just returned the books at the end of the night).

Dewey Decimal table numbers

 

4. The table runners were made from the pages of old Harry Potter books.

Harry Potter table runners

5. As well as a guest book, we had an old dictionary that guests were invited to write in. They were directed to find a word that reminded them of us and write us a message.

Dictionary with messages

6. The boutonnieres and bouquets were made of paper flowers. The two bridesmaids and I each had paper flower bouquets. I made my own, which is why it’s the least pretty (as it turns out, I’m not very good at crafts).

Paper flower boutonniere

 

Paper flower bouquet