Wedding DIY: Centerpieces

My centerpieces were something I concoted with my mother. Both of us have worked in florists before and know the tremendous cost of floral arrangements for weddings. What we wanted would easily have cost us $80 a piece, but we pooled our resources and made it happen. 

By the way, when I say "resources" I mean my cousin with her Grandma's floral license. Screw ingenuity, we needed a way into the floral market first! Lucky for me that among my other astounding qualities, I come equipped with a bloom-connected cousin. Sweet. 

These babies were an absolute steal at one of my favorite home decor outlets, Big Lots. These came in sets of two, so for $7.50 a vase I matched what I would have paid at Michaels, Big Lots, or Hobby Lobby with half off coupons. So why did I choose these when I could have easily bought plain vases on one of my daily trips to the above stores? These come with a black metal piece that turns them into functional candle holders later. 

I plan to put a few in our nonfunctional fireplace because the flames stay contained. When you have a cat for more than oh, five minutes, you learn things like: cats + fire= bad. Captain Fuzzybottom just looks ridiculous with singed whiskers, this I can assure you. He was positively humiliated. 

Hide your candles, people. 

Anyway...

This horrible picture is to show you the cracked ice vase filler that we added in the vases. My parents mixed this up in an ice chest with food color dyed water to make it teal. They figured out that was the easiest way to do it, rather than having to do it in the vases then push the lights down inside, etc. They were able to mix it up a couple of days in advance. We did a test vase and it lasted for two weeks before we emptied it, so you can mix it up far in advance. Trust me when I say advance = good! 

We got the cracked ice one bag at a time (5 bags needed for our 15 vases) at Michael's using 50% off coupons, just whenever we were over there through the months. You can also buy it in bulk online in various places. 

The curly willow you can purchase online, through floral supply companies, or at Hobby Lobby. We waited until they went on sale and loaded up. I used one bundle per vase and we trimmed them to the height I liked. Overall the centerpieces were four and a half feet tall. 

Hanging from the branches were crystal droplets and strands, five to seven strands on each. These were only .99 cents a piece at Target in the Christmas ornament section. We wiped them out at two locations three times and I'm sure somewhere some poor person in our city was weeping because their tree wasn't sparkly enough. Sorry, bro! 

We added two submersible LED lights (cheapest in packs of 12 at Joann's using 40% off one item coupon, or wait until they're on sale and use 20% off sale item coupon. Bring friends and multiple coupons!) in white, one at the bottom pointing up, and one clipped to the top pointing downward. 

Also in the above photo you see vases of roses. We thought the willow centerpiece looked like we were trying to cut costs on its own because it was lacking flowers. Not that we care about judgey floral folk who turn their noses up to non-floral centerpieces, but I love me some flowers, okay? 

Note: the colors are very blue in this photo but in actuality were teal and true pink (not salmon)

So we did two different pink roses in sterling plated mint julep cups (from Save on Crafts' website) as opposed to the plastic ones, and I'm glad we went with the real ones. We sat one on either side of the centerpiece, and on the other sides placed two different candle holders, one with crystal beads exactly like the ones hanging from the willow, and one mercury glass antiqued votive. 

We needed to "anchor" the centerpiece and give it a visual base because there were so many components between the willow branch piece, the two candle holders, two mint julep cups, and a candy dish I'll tell you about later. 

I talked to my mother in law about it and we came up with doing squares of the same brocade fabric I covered my invitations with. She scalloped the edges on her embroidery machine and she and my granny-in-law diligently cut them out, ironed them, and put them on hangers in a matter of days. They were a perfect and inexpensive custom linen option. 

Click here for a full size shot. 

I'm sad that the glow of the room wasn't caught well in the photographs. The lighted centerpieces weren't quite so much blobs of light like they look in the photos, but instead were a soft teal glow. I was so happy with the sparkle, and I got lots of compliments that it didn't seem like a day all about me, but of KC and I as a couple.