It's inevitable. Right after being asked about your dress, your colors, and how many bridesmaids you're having, one of your artsy-fartsy friends will ask, "what are your centerpieces going to be?" Wow. You hadn't started thinking about that yet....
While planning, I spent hours thinking about all the weddings I had attended and their centerpieces, looking through magazines, and analyzing my venue and the theme/feel I wanted it to have. I wanted to improve upon centerpieces I had seen at weddings before because some were just way too large and gawdy – those ended up just being visually overwhelming and frankly, got in the way of conversing with the person across the table from you. Some were underwhelming (a few tealights strewn with glitter on a table, which seemed disproportionate). And some were just yawners – another round bowl vase with floating rose petals? Sigh.
When planning your centerpieces, ask yourself these questions: (1) How many will you need? Do you need them for just guest tables, or do you want extras for the guest book table, entry way, cake table? (2) What is your budget? (3) What feeling do you want to come across?
If you're on a budget, look around your house at what you already have, or what your friends have already used and have in storage. Chances are one of you has a box of unique candle holders, vases, or something else. I happened to have a couple of cake stands.
As I looked through magazines and collected ideas, I loved how elegant cake stands looked in various settings. And since my husband is a musician and we both love a variety of music genres, we combined those things. I gathered old vinyl records from our collection, Goodwill, and eBay. They all had fun love/wedding themed titles to them. We also gathered mismatched crystal cake stands and plates (for these, I used Super Glue for glass and put an upside down crystal candle holder on the bottom for the stand part), then placed the records on top. I found some great long-burning tealights at IKEA in clear cups (these are larger than normal tealights and burn longer and brighter). Fortunately, they had red ones on the clearance rack so I cleared out their stock! Once the ballroom was converted for the reception, the cake stands were placed on top of colored napkins, topped with the tealights, and sprinkled with red and white crystal stones from Michael's (this took several visits, one package & 50% off coupon at a time...). Very unique, retro, personal and cheap. For our table, we did a double-decker stand with two vinyl records...one was from my husband's former band and the other was Elvis.
Here are a couple of close up shots to give you a better look.
I've also seen some simply beautiful centerpieces made out of unique natural materials, such as curly willow spray painted white for a winter wedding, moss-covered bird nests with eggs for outdoor weddings, floating corks at a vineyard wedding, and simple large glass vases filled with bright colored fruit such as lemons, limes or pears. All beautiful, and most of all, simple. The pictures below are from my friends Scott & Julie's wedding at a lovely winery here in Oregon.
In short, do what you want! Do what you can afford. And do something no one will forget.
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