Visit with Chris James, who is interpreting the 'seating chart'
Bec and I met with Chris. After touring around his chalky waxy surf and map-littered studio, we sat drinking pink lemonade. Our conversation took place around his work and while not speaking about it directly, it left many impressions. Strewn and stacked, the remodeled surfboards, sanded and monumental, had a casual quality, a confidence that said it was art without trying to say it was art. Passionate for hiking, painting, surfing, climbing, mapping, sculpting, writing and charting, he fearlessly combines all of these elements into his work. Chris is captivatingly intelligent without pretense, as he has a way of welcoming you into his complexities with such friendliness. It was all a solid armature for the conversation we had about the wedding's seating chart while overlooking the garden.
Chris wondered how important it would be for Bec and Ruben to have control over seating arrangements. The conversation evolved from no, its not important, to well, it is somewhat important. That is, for the family to be able to witness the ceremony together - to share those moments that will surely outlast the day. He's got the backbone of a plan in place for the way the charts fit together, not unlike a puzzle, will be the way to discover where a guest would sit.
Bec came up with a brilliant solution preserving the strength of Chris' idea while the family could witness the core ceremony together. There will be two seatings. The ceremony seating will have the family's spots demarcated, while the dinner seating will be completely in Chris' care mixing the friends and families together.
www.themodelingagency.net
on the day
When guests were ushered back inside from the car decoration ice-cream fest, the room chirped with a heightened energy as people were told to look at their puzzle piece and compare and fit them together with other guests to find their seat. It was a bit ambitious to rally all those people into doing this with their ice-cream buzz on, so Chris got up and further explained how it all worked. Once a group had completed a whole puzzle, they made up that dinner table. As there were varying egrees of patience in the crowd and an escalated sense of urgency about eating, many people didn’t complete the puzzle and sat where they liked. The whole event got people talking to each other and it cross-pollinated the crowd in an exciting way, so I considered it a great success. Plus, the image was truly special since it was a drawing Chris’s daughter had made. The puzzle itself was die-cut by the city-loved (certainly Hubby-loved) family run business, Aardvark letterpress.