How I Incorporated Toy Cars Into My Wedding Without It Being Cheesy

On Tuesday, when I told you about how I turned a rough-lookin high-mileage Jeep Wrangler YJ into the perfect wedding “getaway car,” I promised more wedding-related stories. So right now I’d like to tell you how I added a bit of automotive flair to my now-wife’s big day without it being too cheesy.

Truth is, I don’t really care about things being cheesy, but Elise (Not Her Real Name) did almost all the planning for our modestly-sized wedding, so I didn’t want to throw off the whole vibe that she’d carefully created. But I knew I wanted there to be some automotive element involved, because — we can all agree — my wedding without some kind of car theme would be blasphemous. The last thing I need is to be stuck by a bolt of lightning from the car-gods on my wedding day.

Obviously, having my Jeep as a getaway car was something, but I wanted a little more of me in my wedding. E(NHRN), which is apparently the acronym commenters are starting to use (I’m a fan), added some great cat-themed elements to the wedding to get a bit of her in the overall theme, but I wasn’t quite sure how to get cars involved.

I sorta gave up on the concept until an unexpected opportunity arose. “So, David, I’m trying to figure out how we’re going to do a table seating chart.” E(NHRN) then showed me a whole bunch of ideas — tall boards with names on them, little signs, little figurines — let me just tell you: The amount of stuff one can buy for a wedding is shocking. What are people going to put their wedding cards into? Well, you can buy a brass/glass box for that. What about signage? Do you have little table signs? What about wedding favors? What about custom menus for the reception? And what about classy name-cards at each seat that also indicate to waiting staff what meal each person chose? What about a snazzy guest book?

The list goes on and on; the wedding industry is absolutely insane.

But it can also be fun. E(NHRN) was trying to find a way to tell 70-some people where to sit, and she proposed something called “escort cards,” which I thought were those risqe pamphlets you get handed con the Las Vegas Strip, but in reality are “small cards that indicate a guest’s table assignment at an event,” per Google.

I had just attended an event with Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe, and I noticed that at the company’s Venice, CA facility they had a few toys from Jason’s friend Vlad’s company, Candylab Toys (I even snapped the picture above to show E(NHRN)). The toys were a bit worn, but I thought they looked fantastic, which is probably why Rivian used them as decoration at their fancy facility. This ignighted a lightbulb in my head.

I asked Jason about these toys, since I remember that he helped design one, and he put me in touch with Vlad. Vlad is the nicest guy ever, and when he heard I was planning to buy 70-some toys for my wedding, told me he’d give me the cars for free. He’s a huge car-nut, and has been reading Jason and my work for years; he told me he was happy to help. All I had to do was choose the cars. So I picked various quantities of these:

In short order, the painted wood cars were at my doorstep, and E(NHRN) was in agreement with me — these looked fantastic!

How exactly were we going to incorporate these into the wedding, though?

Well, E(NHRL) had talked to me about “escort cards,” so I asked her if she could design one that looked like a parking spot, and she delivered:

I felt there was still something missing.

We needed a parking curb; luckily I found a guy on Etsy who 3-D prints all sorts of miniature things like mini tool chests, mini two-post lifts, mini Jersey Barriers, mini lathes, mini trash cans, and so much more. I’m not entirely sure what it’s all for — maybe they’re just toys, or maybe they’re for miniature worlds for folks who like to film RC cars to look like they’re life-size. In any case, the seller’s 3-D printed and painted parking curbs came in clutch.

Gluing them all (via contact cement) onto the escort card took a while, as I had to be careful they were all perpendicular to the parking spots. Here you can see that job in action (forgive the white lines on each card; I want to obscure the names for privacy reasons):

The next step was attaching the cars to the parking spots. E(NHRN) and I thought about glue and tape, but gluing tiny tires to paper didn’t seem that robust, and it’d make for paper stuck to wheels when people detached the car from the parking spot. A loop of tape could have worked, but that’d have been a bit inelegant, plus the car would have been able to move a lot.

So we decided to attach a neodymium magnet to the screw on the underside of each car. Then we placed a washer beneath each parking spot/card, and drove each car into the spot until the magnet and washer pinched the paper below. Here’s the fleet of escort cards as I was attaching the magnets/washers:

I never did get to see what the final product looked like at the wedding reception, but Jason snapped this picture (I love E(NHRN)’s “Please find your car(d) and take a seat” sign. Is that an International Scout on it?):

And our photographers snapped these two:

After our ceremony at the church, guests drove (or Uber’d) to the reception location and, after a short cocktail hour, gazed at the fleet of cars you see above, found their card (which I had chosen for each person based on a variety of factors), and then sat down at their spot, where their snazzy Candylab box was awaiting them.

Anyway, I just thought I’d share that with you all, and I’d like to thank Vlad from Candylab for helping me find a classy way to car-ify my wedding that was 100% approved by my beloved E(NHRN).