Designing your Wedding Centerpieces
Wedding centerpieces are decorative elements that grace the tables of your reception venue. Traditionally they are floral arrangements but these days creative brides are putting together centerpieces from all manner of objects. Centrepieces are integral to the whole look you are trying to achieve for your wedding so you need to give them careful thought when thinking about their design.
Your first consideration will be how they will look in terms of your wedding style, theme and colours. You may want to go for full on floral arrangements for a traditional and romantic feel or choose something more simple, modern and minimal such as a single tall calla lily in a glass vase.
Your budget will also be important as it will ultimately dictate the scale and design of your centerpieces and how elaborate you can make them. Consider that you could have upwards of 10 tables for which you will need to create centerpieces for and the more elaborate your design is the more it will cost.
The height of your centrepieces is also an important consideration. Small centrepieces can facilitate conservation between guests on opposite sides of the table, which is ultimately what you want achieve. A room full of guests who only whisper to the person next to them doesn’t really make for a happy atmosphere! Tall centrepieces have the wow factor but they can restrict the amount of interaction that goes on across the table as guests will have to crane themselves around the centrepieces to see what is going on!
There is a wide range of decorative objects that can be used for wedding centrepieces, including:
 Candles – including votives, floating, tea lights, pillar candles, candelabras
 Flowers – fresh, silk or dried, traditional arrangements, designer or modern arrangements. Ask your florist about creating them for you
 Plants – bamboo and twisted willow are popular choices and taller arrangements involving tree branches with flowers on top
 Pebbles – generally used as an accent to other elements such as candles or flowers
 Glass vases – with a wide range of shapes and sizes they make for stylish centrepieces
 Decorative containers – these could be themed, novelty objects such as ceramic Wellington's or pitchers
 Balloons – an inexpensive alternative to flowers
If your budget is really tight then consider doubling up your centrepieces with another element of your day such as using your wedding favors, which could be piled up in the centre of your tables so your guests can help themselves. Or you could use your bridesmaids bouquets as table centres. If you don’t have enough bridesmaids to use one bouquet per table, then make up contrasting centrepieces to go on the other tables and alternate them around the room.
Finally, you should also give some consideration to what you will do with all your centrepieces after the wedding. You could give them away as gifts to people who have helped you with the wedding planning. You may want to take them home and take them apart to use the components separately for instance, an arrangement of candles could find good use at home or you could have them sent to a local hospital or care home where they can bring good cheer to patients and families alike.
