It Started with a Chair

10 points if you can name the movie reference in the title!  One thing that I love about our antebellum-home-turned-restaurant venue is that it has a lot of the original accents.  Paintings that belonged to the original owners line the walls, while first edition novels fill the shelves.  Some rooms even have antique pieces of furniture, though many of them are refinished.  For our outdoor, vintage-garden ceremony, I prefer something a little less polished.  You know...that distressed, old but beautiful look.  What if we set up something like this for our ceremony?

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I love the idea of a statement piece of furniture as ceremony decor.  For example, look how these dressers bring together a tabletop display:

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Though the dresser seemed like a much more functional option, I couldn't justify the cost.  Additionally, transporting a dresser to my venue in my tiny sedan seemed like a disaster waiting to happen.  Thus, the chair was born.

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Wouldn't it just be lovely to have a stack of programs propped up on one of those chairs for guests to grab on their way to their seats?  Yeah, I thought so too.  So, imagine the squealing that ensued when I found this at one of my favorite antique stores for only $35:

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And here it is with a tarnished copper bowl, which will be filled with said programs:

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Are you using distressed furniture in your decor?  What kind of treasures have you found?