Handmade Wood Wedding Altar

I assigned my fiance and his best man the task of building us a wedding altar made from sticks found in the area. I thought this would make a great alter but mostly I needed the boys out of the house for a weekend so I could do wedding crafts with my girlfriends. I don't know what I expected but I have to say I am really really happy with the way it turned out! Best of all it was free and handmade with love by my husband to be :)

Wedding alter made of fallen logs and branches from the Virginia woods!

The guys headed out for a hike in the morning equip with empty hiking backpacks, saws and a hatchet. They went to Pandapas pond, a popular hiking, biking and picnicking place near Blacksburg, Virginia. They came back a few hours later with a subaru station wagon of fallen logs and branches.

Sides of altar: They laid down four large logs and sawed off the ends so that they would stand flat and were all about the same length. Then taking two and placing them about a foot away from each other they nailed diagonally some smaller branches into the logs to hold them in place. Then tied string around each log end to give the illusion that this was all just tied together. (But these boy are engineers and couldn't have something that structurally unsound!)

Top of Altar: Three smaller logs with crossing branches nailed in, similar too the sides of altar.
Note: These three sides are all separate from each other to make transporting them to the wedding site easy. Once at the wedding site we will tie the top to the sides.

Getting the altar to stand up straight: Once the top is tied on the whole thing it is actually pretty sturdy, but just to ensure that not even a strong breeze or a tripping bride could knock it over they drilled holes in the bottom of each log and stuck a 1/2 inch piece of rebar in the bottom. Half of the rebar is stuck up in the wood and half sticks out the bottom to stick into the ground. This thing won't blow over that is for sure. (sorry no photo of rebar and drilled hole)

Now I just need to decorate it with some wild flowers and maybe some pretty fabric and we have a terrific altar to get married in front of!