Sand Ceremony logistics

Ah, Keith's dad made us a GREAT sand ceremony container! He's even got nice feet on it to keep it upright during our wedding. It's heavy, though, so the wire he used to allow us to hang it on the wall is rated at 40 lbs. When I weighed the container, it was nine pounds empty.

Tonight, I ran the numbers. I measured the interior of the container, and I tried to overestimate when I couldn't get exact measurements. Then, I measured the containers of sand, and I underestimated those. I calculated that we'd need a total of 11 cans of sand.

Long ago, Keith and I looked on YouTube for a sand ceremony, and we got some ideas for containers. We thought we could use old wine bottles that we found somewhere to pour the sand. I bought pourers to put in the top a lot like they had in the video.

Several weeks ago, we decided on the dimensions that we'd like for our larger container. Since we're planning to hang it on a wall in our home as a piece of art, we went with 18" by 14".

Earlier this week, I estimated that we'd need at least four wine bottles of sand each. I've been using the bottles to pour sand in the bottom of the flower vases, and they work great. But, then I thought about emptying four of them into the large container, and I realized that it would take forever! Today, my calculations told me that four bottles is about right, and the time we have wouldn't work. I've been thinking for the last two days about other options, and I went to KMart today to look at pouring containers.

Tonight, I've solved the problem and tested the solution. We're going to use one-gallon pitchers. All of the sand for each of us will be one container, so we're not switching glass wine bottles all the time. The pouring takes me about two and a half minutes for an entire gallon of sand (we'll use slightly less each). The gap we have to pour into is narrow, but the lid on the pitcher is just the right size to get nearly all of the sand in there. If we spill a little, it's no big deal. And, one-gallon pitchers are all over town, so we're not having to find eight empty wine bottles!

One more thing: the weight of the container with sand. After I had seven cans of sand in the container, it was more than half full. The new weight was nineteen pounds, so that means seven cans weigh ten pounds. With 12-13 cans of sand in the container in the end (I must have had some estimates that were off earlier), it'll be nine pounds of container and twenty pounds of sand, which is comfortably under our forty pound limit on the hanger. We're still thinking about mounting a shelf on the wall to let it stand up so we don't put the weight on the wire, but we'll decide that later.

Now, I just have to order more sand so we have enough to practice and enough for the wedding. As our explanation about the sand ceremony says in an earlier post, once the sand is joined together, it cannot be separated. At $2 per can, it's worth the money to get a practice run!

If you've gotten this far in this post, then I just want to say that I appreciate you reading along. It is logistics, and I'm pretty good at that. I'm also quite excited to have this one all worked out!