Amy’s wedding colors were bright blue and emerald green, and she was concerned that the two colors had not been tied together in enough of her decorations.  I thought buying flat glass stones, like the kind used in floral arrangements, in both colors and mixing them together would be one way of accomplishing that.  We found 1-pound bags of these exact colors at the dollar store, so for $20 we came home with, well, 20 pounds of stones.  Originally, I had wanted to spread out the stones in breakfast-style trays, but the trays we found were about $15 a piece and looked as if they would only hold about 20 or so escort cards.  Then, I spotted an aisle of full-length mirrors at Wal-Mart, and for $5 we found the perfect “tray” — a mirror laying on its side.  The bonus of having the mirror on the bottom was that the light bounced off the stones even more, which made the whole tray seem to shimmer.

We also bought coordinating Sharpies in the same colors and purchased printable escort cards, which were on sale for $4 for a package of 48.  Using the template provided by the manufacturer, we used an inkjet printer to print the name of each table on the escort cards, then wrote each couple’s name on the cards by hand.  We positioned the display next to the front door so that as guests arrived at the reception and claimed their cards, a few more of the stones were revealed.  I also had plenty of leftover stones to scatter on each table and around the wedding cake, so that the colors were echoed throughout the room.