At a recent Toronto wedding, between green-silk placemats, flowers and vintage cutlery, sat a novel wedding guest, an open book with faded edges and delicate paper, and the words, “A Love Story,” popping up from its centre.

Veronica Spencer has used books that were once gathering dust at a bookstore, or being sold at a garage sale, to make hundreds of wedding decorations like this one. Her connection with the lines and colours of books inspires her own brand of art, pop-up vintage book decorations that have often been featured in Weddingbells magazine.

She believes her work gives these forgotten books another chance at life.

“If I find a 1930 copy of The Owl and the Tree and use it to make vintage book art it shouldn’t matter,” she says. “The book has lived its life and is not likely to be read again.”

She’s been called a “book murderer,” but her passion for the written word leaves her with little patience for the complaints of her critics.

“They fail to see that these old hardcover books reveal something new, something that can be loved and enjoyed,” she explains. With a background in architecture and interior design, she can’t imagine doing anything else. “I am paid to provide something beautiful.”

Spencer removes very little paper while making the pieces available on her online boutique, Love and Found, and cutting up a book that may have the slightest possibility of being read goes against her moral code.

For Spencer, there is nostalgia in using literature to decorate significant events. Books trigger memories for her, of childhood stories and rainy evenings spent reading, and she thinks these homey feelings are re-created when books are placed at the heart of weddings.

For her, these decorations are mementos that can be enjoyed and shared for years as celebrations of the beauty in old stories and in the seams of new ones.

Photo credit: Sweet Monday Photography