My daughter is getting married in October, in New Hampshire. We are hoping for an outdoor ceremony, weather permitting. Any ideas for decorations/centerpieces that could be brought home by the guests and used again, rather than thrown away?
Potted herbs set inside terracotta pots that are either painted or stamped with the couple's names and tied with raffia?
Dried herb bouquets in clear vases picked up at thrift stores...small bags of culinary lavender that could be used for fragrance or in cooking...tied in muslin.
How fun!
Perhaps candles of all different colors and/or different sizes - you could get ribbon with the bride and groom's names, wedding date, etc. on it and tie that around the candles perhaps with some colored beads, etc. Then everyone could take home a candle.
Depending on the theme of the wedding, you could do a theme based centerpiece that the guests could take home as souveniers. We had a frog themed wedding (based on our invitation), and the centerpieces were lillypads with squeaky frogs sitting on them - 8 or 10 frogs per table. They were VERY simple - I made the pads out of a material. The frogs came from the nature store. We've visited friends 10 years later that still had the frogs somewhere in their homes (bathroom, mantlepiece, etc) - how great is that?!
Have fun with it and enjoy!
New Hampshire in October- Autumn colors would be beautiful, gourds, mini pumkins, acorns, ivy, with candles in the center. If the colors in the wedding are burgundy, for example, oranges and yellows would be pretty with it.
Garden weddings are lovely with bird nests and bird houses, fowers, fabric butterflies, etc.
We did a really nice topiary type centerpiece for my sister's wedding. It was a pot on the bottom that we spray painted black first, then sponge painted in burgundy (with some black showing through) and then lightly sponge touched gold (with the other colors showing through). We painted a PVC tube gold and stuck it in the middle and set it with a few inches of cement. Then we hot glued a plastic heavy duty plant water dish on top.(painted in the same way as the bottom pot)We filled both the bottom pot and the top dish with green styrofoam, and pinned moss on top to cover it. Then in the bottom we pinned in fake grape bunches (hanging over the lip of the bottom pot) fake apples, ivey, and dried hydrangea flower clusters (with a dusty pink color to them) in the bottom pot. On the top dish, we put in long burgundy stems of eucalyptus, in a big burst, the middle ones standing more upright shifting to the edges projecting more sideways.. We had to make sure that when people are seated at the table they could see each other across, over the bottom pot- and the top dish portion being above the other person's face so they could see everone seated.. Each of these were probably three feet in total hight, and they were VERY impressive and upscale looking. We fished each off with some burgundy wire edged sheer 2: wide ribbon. it was sheer but it had a gold design stamp on it of criss cross diamond shapes. We made a big bow out of it and tucked it/glued it at the top of the gold stick, (just at the base of the dish) then brought down one strand and let it loosly drape and go around the pole, dissappearing into the fruit/grapes at the base. If you are interested send me a personal email to ____@____.com and I can send you a photo.
What about little pots of home grown flowers and/or veggies? Or even grass? Also, etsy had these totally awesome party favors shaped like hearts. They were made of paper and had seeds inside of them. You could plant them to grow flowers! I don't know why I'm so geeked about it, but I am...
We were at a wedding last year where they had a candy bar set up. It was adorable. They had little white paper bags with the bride and grooms name and the date and a little phrase along the lines of . . . Thank you for being a sweet reminder of our special day. (it looked like did it on the computer and were able to run the bags through a printer)
The guests scooped up their choice of candies to put in the bag and sealed it with a sticker.
whe i was married i had small vases with a combination of silk flowers that were in the colors i chose (marked down on sale) and some dried flowers, which you can get large quantities in local dept. stores and florists and divied up between the tables,tie some ribbon around the vase, add some stuffing beads, little hard plastic ones or something similar to weight it down. the tables will look great and you can tell them at the begining of the party to feel free to take the decorations home with them. to not be afraid of wanting to take home a memory with them. other decorations that can be used is small christmas lights in the right areas that can be used later by the couple for, you got it christmas decorations!. i would make everything that you use for decorations something that can be recycled for something else...the table centerpieces like i said vases with artifical/dried flowers or another idea if you have it. make them fun and the guests will also think they are fun and new ideas. an early congrats to you and your family.
One reception I went to had center pieces that I really liked and I even brought one home and used for a long time and with just adding or deleting some seasonal things it looked great for a long time. If you used live roses then the flowers and twigs could be composted and the rest reused for any other craft later down the road.
They took a green floral rectangle that they purchased at Wal-Mart. It was about 8" long and about 3" or 4" wide then about 2" high, just a general guess. They went out in the tree area of someones property and gathered twigs, no less than10" and prob. no longer than 18" long. They poked the twigs into the foam where the ones on top were straight up and the ones towards the sides were angled out more, like a sunburst, they had shorter twigs and longer twigs mixed in to make it less uniform like. They placed artificail white roses in the mix and I think it may have had some very simple filler around the base of the roses but I don't remember any at all, so it must have been very minmal if at all. They may have wrapped the base of the green foam with a coordinating ribbon and glued it at the seam but I think the twigs and roses went all the way down the side. The family had small trays of shaved meats and cheeses on each table along with some sorts of breads for the guests to make their own sandwiches. They also had those camera's that you buy for just a few dollars and take the whole thing to Wal-Mart and give them the camera and they develop the poictures and throw the camera away. Guests were encouraged to take pictures of each other for the bride and groom to have to remember their guests having fun.
When I brought it home I would add a single color flower to the mix just to coordinate with the season, like pink for Valentines Day, or yellow for Easter. It lasted about a year. By then I was tired of it and I dismantled it. It was getting kind of ratty looking because the twigs had started breaking off with the kids messing with it.
I have sent a facebook message to the family and if they post a picture I'll send you a link.
The centerpieces at our wedding were tall skinny vases filled halfway with limes and green apples and had three white calla lillies in each vase. It was super cheap, we bought the vases from Jo-Anns and the rest from the grocery store.
These I thought were cute. Depends on your colors/themes. They're rose buds made out of two hershey kisses. Quite a few links online. Here are the ones I thought were best as far as explanation and/or picture included. You could do any color of cellophane.
http://www.todays-weddings.com/crafts/archives/hershey_ro...
and
http://www.ehow.com/how_###-###-####_roses-out-hershey-ki...
For an outdoor wedding, how about some potted plants (pernenials or ones that can be kept indoors for the winter months).
My girlfriend got married in mid-October a few years ago. She had 2 scarcrows decorated as a bride and groom and lots of mums. It was very cute, and every one in the wedding party took home one of the mums.
For the flower girl she could toss leaves instead of flower petals.
For favors - little jars of maple syrup or apple cider or candied apples / kits.
Decorations - use an outdoor arbor decorated with leaves and lights. The arbor can then be installed in their backyard or yours. For tables, ribbons colors. I would use either a mix of burgandy, orange and purple, or if the area is already very colorful, an off-white cream and gold.
For centerpieces, you could use purple cabbage surrounded by other smaller flowers. For my centerpieces, I used triffle bowls filled with a small raised votive surrounded by popouri. Guests loved it, and the ladies fought over who got to take one home. Its been 10y, and as far as I know, they are all still being used!
If you are doing wedding favors, only prepare them for half of the invited guests. Men usually don't do wedding favors. My cousin had a wedding list of 200+. Everyone got 3 wedding favors - a leaf shaped cookie cutter, fancy candied apple, and something called an ice cream bomb (BIG scoop of ice cream dipped in chocolate). Almost half of them were left sitting on the tables.
Another idea instead of wedding favors - if you are having a bar for drinks, just do the personalized napkins. Have them be used for the drinks/hordourves.
Congrats.
M.
