Chair sash or chair cover: what to buy for an Algerian bride's seat

Two articles, two suppliers, two prices, and names close enough that people order the wrong one. A cover is the stretch sleeve that slides over the chair back and hides it. A sash is the satin band tied over the top, and the sash is what carries the evening's colour. This page says which of the two we sell, what to settle with the hall first, and how the rest of the qa3da — the bride's seat, the backdrop and the light — gets rigged the day before.

Settle the covers with the hall first

Two questions, and they go to the venue rather than to a seller: are chair covers included in the hire, and in what colour? If the covers come white with the room, you have one decision left — the colour of the sash — and it is the decision that shows in every photograph. If the venue supplies nothing, you have two purchases to make, and the second one is not this.

While you have them on the phone: how many chairs to a table, and how many tables are booked. That is the arithmetic at the foot of this page, and it is not something to do from memory on the day.

The sash, not the cover

Worth saying plainly, since our own address carries the word housse: what we sell here are sashes. Ten satin sashes to a pack, in a single colour, 15 to 20 cm wide by 270 to 300 cm long — the trade's own cut, 8" × 108". Overlocked on all four sides, glossy face, matt back. The stretch cover is not in the pack, and we do not sell it separately.

We keep the address because it is the word people type for both articles. We will not let it promise a cover that is not in the parcel.

It is also the half worth buying. A white cover is interchangeable and comes with the room. The sash is the one piece of fabric in the evening whose tone you choose: it is retied between outfit changes, it washes, and it comes back for the next wedding.

The qa3da: the seat and the backdrop

The qa3da is the whole set: the bride's seat, the backdrop behind it, the light laid over both, and the top table beside them. It is what the camera frames for half the night, and it goes up the day before rather than on the evening itself.

That seat is not a piece of furniture like any other. In Algeria's national bank of intangible cultural heritage — the inventory kept by the CNRPAH — the record on the art of the blouza in the Grand-Ouest (Oran, Mostaganem, Tlemcen, Mascara and a dozen wilayas) sorts the blouza by occasion, and one of them is called blouza el-korssi, the blouza of the chair: the bride's own, the most heavily worked, set apart from the blouza el-qima worn on visits and other occasions. A dress named after the seat. That is the measure of what the seat is expected to hold.

What it means on the day: the sash on the bride's chair is the one retied between outfit changes; the two mothers' chairs take her colour; the backdrop takes the light.

The light goes up the night before

The string in the catalogue is 10 m and carries 100 LEDs, one roughly every 10 cm, on sheathed copper wire about 4 mm across that holds whatever shape you bend into it. That is what separates it from an ordinary garland: you mould it around a mirror frame or along the arch of the backdrop instead of draping it across. The machta puts it up the night before, on the backdrop and around the mirror.

Two details decide the rig, and both are settled the night before.

• The USB lead is 20 to 30 cm from plug to first LED. So the power bank or charger sits where the string starts, behind the decor, and not across the room. Plan the run outward from the socket, never the other way.
• There is no battery box. USB power, 5 V, off a phone charger or a power bank. That is exactly what it is bought for: nothing to reopen, nothing to swap mid-tasdira, nobody crouched behind the backdrop while the bride is changing.

Light colour is a choice, not a detail: warm white for an ivory-and-gold evening, multicolour for a henna-night set. Those are the two the product page gives; daylight white and blue exist as well, and are worth looking at on the page before you settle it.

The room's tone is the jewellery's tone

The satin of the sash, the temperature of the light, the velvet of the boxes on the top table and the metal the bride is wearing are seen together, in one photograph, a metre apart. That is why the catalogue browses by accord: choose the tone once and follow it end to end — burgundy, ivory, midnight blue, powder pink, champagne gold. Which accord goes with which outfit, the FAQ answers in full. This page adds only that it is decided before the first pack is ordered.

How many sashes

Do not count the chairs in the room. Count the chairs that will be in a photograph.

1. The bride's seat, and the groom's if he is beside her.
2. The two mothers' chairs.
3. The top table, chair by chair.
4. The front row facing the qa3da — the one that lands in frame behind the guests coming up to greet her.

Add them up, then round up to the next multiple of ten: the pack is ten sashes in a single colour. The product page gives the benchmark — a pack of ten covers the throne, the two mothers' chairs and the front row; a top table adds to that count. Beyond that you are dressing a whole room, and a whole room is ordered in multiples of ten.

Do it in one order. The price tier is counted on the product rather than on the colour — three packs reach it even in three different colours, then six; the price is on the product page. And delivery is counted per order: the cart shows what is missing for it to be free, and two separate orders means that calculation twice. For weight: 480 g a pack, about 48 g a sash, so three packs stay under a kilo and a half.

And leave the covers to the hall. They are the one thing in the evening you can make somebody else responsible for.