Beginning with the unique invitations and ending with creative reception, your wedding guests will savor the salt in the air and the nautical feel of your special event.
Your nautical theme party wedding invitations can be the start of the fun. Images and templates from WeddingClipart.com can be combined with specialty papers and nautical terms to create original nautical wedding decorations, invitations, programs, Thank You notes, stationery, and reception menus. Some nautical terms and phrases are familiar to most of us and include the following.
- Taken Aback
- At Loggerheads
- Fly-By-Night
- Give a Wide Berth
- Touch and Go
- Scuttlebutt
- Footloose
- Press Into Service
- No Room to Swing a Cat
- A Square Meal
- Let the Cat Out of the Bag
- Son of a Gun
- Under the Weather
- By and Large
- The Bitter End
- Toe the Line
- First Rate
- Groggy
- Over the Barrel
- Three Sheets to the Wind
If you live near a marina or the ocean, you may have located the perfect wedding site for your nautical theme party. If not, rest assured that almost any venue could be transformed into a seaport for the occasion using creative nautical wedding decorations.
Certainly if you are having a ceremony filled with religious faith and symbolism, you will not want to take the focus away from it. If this is not a concern and you would like to incorporate items that reflect your nautical theme into your ceremony, have a ship's pedestal and wheel brought in to be used as the pulpit or alter. Brass ship's lanterns encircled with flowers can decorate entry tables and life preservers with floral accents can decorate the ends of church pews. If you are seating your guests in chairs, consider using canvas chair covers embellished with iron-on, clipart inspired detailing and gold braid accents.
A ship's nameplate or figurehead can also be used for an even more dramatic item to be used to decorate for your nautical theme party or your wedding ceremony. Your wedding attire, flowers and color scheme can reflect the gold, yellow, blue, black and red colors, which are used in the international signal code flags used by mariners.
Nautical wedding decorations can include the following items used in addition to traditional balloons, miniature lights, streamers, candles and flowers.
- An old, wooden boat to drape with fisherman's netting in place of a gift table or as a place to offer guest's favors.
- Navigational tide maps on tables or walls.
- Round boat fenders, also known as bumpers, to be tied on to table corners or fence posts.
- Brass candleholders or lanterns.
- Coils of rope.
- Miscellaneous boat parts: propeller, halyards, lines etc...
- Wooden crab pots
- Anchors
- Sails
- A ship's bell
- Seashells
- Carved, wooden seagulls
- Signal flags
- Adirondack chairs
Your nautical theme party reception can be as formal or casual as you like, and the use of nautical items can be subtle or dramatic. Consider your color scheme, tastes, budget and accessibility of the items you would like to use. It may take a great deal of time to accumulate these items, so be sure to start working on this theme well in advance of the actual wedding date.
If you are interested in presenting wedding favors at your nautical theme party, consider the following.
- Nautical wine bottle stoppers.
- Silk bags filled with miscellaneous seashells.
- Miniature frames nautical embellishments.
- Nautical themed trinket boxes filled with chocolate anchors.
- Miniature galvanized pails filled with seashell shaped soaps.
- Sailboat wind chimes.
- Miniature, engraved ship's bells.
Your wedding day will be a grand adventure for both of you. Your nautical theme party and nautical wedding decorations for your ceremony will result in smooth sailing for all who will share your special day and provide a memorable theme that embraces your love of the sea.
Please read Beach Wedding Theme for more ideas.