Wedding DIY: Ceremony Accordion Wheels

In keeping with my August theme of wedding DIY projects, today I am sharing some of our ceremony decorations.

We got married outside and had plain white chairs. To make an impact I wanted to put these pinwheel/accordion wheels on the backs of the chairs in the back row.

I went to Michael’s and bought a pre-packaged assortment of cardstock (that just happened to be in my general color scheme) for $8. (This is definitely the most cost effective way. I believe it was 50 sheets of cardstock.)

While I did not take any in-process photos (as I did this project over a year ago – sorry!) I found a great tutorial here at: I [totally] Heart Blog

For each wheel:

1. Take 4 sheets of the same color paper and cut down to an 8×8 square (You can make these at any size. This is just what I did.)

2. Fold the square in an accordion style – about 1 inch folds. I used a metal straight edge to fold.

3. Use a hot glue gun to glue them together into one long accordion.

4. When dry, lie flat on the ground and fold around into a wheel. Glue the seam and inject the middle of the wheel with hot glue as well. You will want to hold this for a good minute to let the wheel dry.

5. I sliced a small hole in the top and looped ribbon through it to tie around the chairs.

It was a great success and made a big impact! For $15 including glue and ribbon.

The only other ceremony decor we had was some aisle runner flowers. I got the shepherd’s hooks on clearance at Joann’s and our florist did the rest!

After the wedding these were hanging in our guest room. I couldn’t part with them, so they are waiting to be hung somewhere in our new house as well!

I feel like I should be humming “Here Comes the Bride” right now… but really I walked down the aisle to “Here Comes the Sun” by the Beatles. And I didn’t realize until this moment that they both start with “Here Comes The”.

Funny how that works!