Wedding saree trays and gift trays

The trays are carried in front of everybody, at the slowest walking pace of the whole day, and then they are photographed for the rest of your life. That is a lot of attention for an object most people buy in a hurry at the end of the list. A bought tray is plywood with a printed sticker on it, and it looks like plywood with a printed sticker on it in every photograph taken that morning.

We cut them in solid teak and rosewood and engrave them - the names and the date cut into the wood, not printed onto it, filled where the design wants filling and left pale where the grain is worth seeing. The trays for the saree and the gifts, the ring tray, the groom's tray and hanger, the cake board, the guest book: made together, from one drawing, so the whole set matches instead of nearly matching.

How they are finished is yours to choose. A cane-panelled base, a brass medallion let in flush with cast brass feet under the corners, a live edge left on the slab, a scrollwork border, a monogram. Every one of those is on this page because we have made it. Afterwards the trays and boards do not go in a cupboard - they end up in the kitchen and stay there for thirty years, which is the argument for buying them in timber in the first place.