Our Wedding: Centerpieces

I played around with several ideas for our centerpieces at the reception.  The first idea ended up being nearly impossible, the second idea would've just been way to expensive in the end, and then one night, it came to me in a dream.  No, really.  It did.  And when I told Mom the next day, she had been thinking of the same thing, too! So, it was just meant to be and that's what we went with.

I really didn't want many flowers, for several reasons. 

1) The cost of flowers adds up QUICKLY.  The only flowers we had inside at the reception were an arrangement on the buffet table, and the bridesmaids bouquets in vases on our head table.  Other than that, no other flowers, and I don't even think they were missed!

2) I've never been a huge flower person. That being said, I didn't want to "waste" money on something that I wouldn't enjoy, and only get it because it was expected.  I know, weird.

Anyway, back to our centerpieces.  There were going to be three vases on each table, and they were three different heights.  After many online searches for wholesale vases, we ended up stalking Walmart and Michael's to get one size from each, and got the final size from Dollar Tree.  {Yeah, how awesome would it have been to get them ALL from Dollar Tree?!  But, you know Mom and me, we most definitely bought each individual vase from Michael's using a coupon, haha.}

Then, we had to gather the rest of the materials, which consisted of tons and tons of ribbon....three different colors....three different widths.  Unless you have pretty basic colors, or you aren't as picky as I am, I don't recommend this. haha.  The particular brand of ribbon we used ended up being hard to find, and the Ben Franklin {now A. C. Moore} stopped carrying it! Luckily, Jo-Ann Fabrics also sold that ribbon, but didn't have all the colors, and Wal-Mart carried a different brand, but I'd swear to you it's the exact same.  The color was spot on!

To start putting together the vases, the ribbon first needed to be cut.  So Mom and I measured out what we needed and cut SO. MUCH. RIBBON. Then, I had to dip them in some glue stuff to make the ends not fray. {Yeah, you love my technical terms for products I don't remember the name of! haha} These next two pictures show this step...all the ribbons laid out on place mats in the bonus room drying!

Then, I had to glue all of the ribbons on {using another product that I can't remember the name of}.  I honestly thought this step was going to take FOREVER, but I think I knocked them all out in just 2 nights. Yes, 75+ vases finished in 2 nights!  Once I got started, I just got into a pattern of eye-balling the measurements and was able to get through them so quickly.  It also helped making them consistent, for the most part.  Knowing me, I would've gotten so frustrated trying to explain the "oh, about this much" distance to put between the ribbons, and if someone else did it differently, I probably would've secretly redone them all......just saying.  But, since it didn't even taken long at all, it worked well anyway!

 

Okay, this next description might start getting a bit confusing, so just bear with me!  All of our tables for the reception, with the exception of the head table, ended up being grouped as "pink tables, "green tables," or "orange tables."  This meant that everything on that table would correspond and flow together. Trust me, I had every last detail pinned down.  

So, for this example, let's just say we're talking about a pink table.  The tablecloth was white {this was the same for all tables}, all of the guests at this table would have a pink napkin folded at their place setting, and there would be one pink napkin laid out in the center of the table.  Then, three vases would be set out in the center of that napkin: one tall, one medium-height, and one short.  The ribbon on each of these vases would match, meaning, the color order and sizes of the ribbon.  For all of the "pink tables," the bottom & thickest ribbon on the vase would be pink.  This was how we distinguished which vases went on the pink tables.  {Same for the green and orange tables......the vases on the green tables, the bottom & thickest ribbon was green, etc.}  Then, randomly chosen, the middle, medium-width ribbon was orange, and the top, skinniest ribbon was green.  Lost yet? I don't blame you.  For all of the visual people reading, don't worry, there are DEFINITELY pictures to better explain this, ha.

Now, I know I took more pictures of the vases at home, but for the life of me, I cannot find them anywhere! So, these few will have to do!

Yes, we did take the stickers off the bottoms of the vases, haha.
 
We also did one set with the vases only having a single color of ribbon on it, and while it looked nice, it just didn't stand out as much to me and didn't look as good as the vision we were going for.

As you probably already noticed, the final product was after water had been added and a floating candle was placed inside each vase!

I only came across one picture from the reception that really showed the centerpieces well enough for this post. Take a look at this picture of Matt's cousin, Christopher and his wife, Lindsay! If you look at the napkins, you can see they were sitting at a pink table.  Then, you see the corresponding vases! 

And, if you look closely, you can see a place card laying on the table, which is piece of folded pink cardstock to the right of the vases.  Yep, all of the place cards were color coordinated, as well!

Come back tomorrow to find out even more about the centerpieces! And, as a heads up, tomorrow's post will be LONG! haha.