Lantern Centerpieces

Now that our major vendors are taken care of it's time for us to focus on the smaller details of the wedding, like centerpieces and other decorations. Rather than having one centerpiece repeated on each of the tables, Zac and I really want to have a few different centerpieces to keep the decor more interesting and less predictable. We have a few ideas in mind including vases (like the wine carafes I got from work) filled with flowers, bowls of lemons, and tons of votive candles.

One centerpiece idea that I'm very excited about is having an assortment of lanterns on a few of the tables. I loved the way it looked in these pictures I found on theknot.com:

I think with some candles and flowers the lanterns will look fantastic as centerpieces at our reception.

Looking around online for lanterns that would go with our color scheme, Zac and I found these galvanized lanterns on the Ikea website. At 11" tall these lanterns would be big enough to hold a good size candle but they wouldn't be too tall that our guests would be blocked from seeing the people sitting across from them. Since we don't have an Ikea close to us we thought that we would wait until this fall and take a day trip to the Ikea store.

Yesterday, we headed into Lowe's to get supplies to finish up Zac's newest project. During our shopping trip we found...silver lanterns! Though not identical, they were pretty similar to the lanterns we found on the Ikea website.

Not only would we be saving on shipping by not ordering online from the website (or gas money if we decided to take a trip out to the nearest Ikea to check them out in person) but we found that we would be saving a bunch of money buying the lanterns from Lowe's because they were on clearance. The original price of $7.99 had been reduced to $4.50.

Zac and I were sold! We picked up 10 of the silver lanterns. We aren't sure exactly how the table arrangements will be just yet but we figure 10 will do for now. If we perhaps decide to use the lanterns to line the aisle or decorate other areas of the venue we'll have to head back to Lowe's soon before the clearance sale is over or the store runs out of the lanterns.

To go along with the lantern centerpieces, I picked up six small yellow wire lanterns from Joann's Fabrics back in April. The $12 lanterns were on sale for 75% off. Thanks to a coupon for 10% my total purchase (if you haven't signed up to get coupons from Joann's I highly recommend that you do!) the lanterns turned out to be a great buy. The yellow should add a nice pop of color to our reception tables.

Whatcha Gonna Do With All That Glass?!

Check out all of this glassware!

Zac and I have slowly been gathering together glassware of different sizes and shapes for a variety of wedding related projects. So what are we planning to do with all of this glass?

#1. DIY Candy Buffet Table

Rather than making individual favors for all of our guests, we will be creating a candy buffet table so that guests can enjoy some treats throughout the reception and create their own little goodie bags to take home. At the Premier Bridal Showplace Bridal Show, we found a few companies that would create a candy buffet table and provide set up and clean up services for large events like a wedding. After looking at a few of the companies' price listings, Zac and I decided that we could reduce our cost by creating the table ourselves.

Something like this is what we had in mind:

We have a few glasses that should make for a really interesting candy buffet table. Like this martini style glass....

...and this giant brandy style glass.

#2 Centerpieces

Going over our guest list, Zac and I have determined that we'll probably have around 15 tables to plan for at our reception. To keep thinks interesting, we are hoping to create up to 5 different centerpieces so that things don't look so predictable.

We have a few ideas already of what we would like to do, including using lanterns, candles, and vases with lemons. Recently at work we discontinued our half bottle carafes of wine. This meant that we no longer had use for the glass carafes. I asked if I could have some of the carafes to use as vases at the wedding and my work was kind enough to give me 10 to keep.

The carafes are a nice size to use as small vases for floral centerpieces. Though these carafes won't be centerpieces on their own, the flowers they will hold will definitely add some nice pops of color to the tables.

In addition to getting rid of the half bottle carafes of wine, the restaurant also discontinued half glass carafe options as well. Guess who got a whole case (6 dozen) of these cute, petite carafes? Thanks to a very generous manager who knew that Zac and I were trying to do as many diy projects for the wedding as possible, I was able to take home a bunch of these adorable little glass carafes. We're thinking that they will look cute on the tables with small bunches of yellow billy ball flowers.

#3. DIY Dessert Buffet Table

As I mentioned in a previous post, when it comes to dessert, Zac and I really wanted to offer our guests some variety in flavors. We thought that providing our guests with assortments of cupcakes, brownies, cheesecake, and other desserts would be more fun than just a traditional wedding cake. Earlier in the summer I found a bakery that specialized in dessert tables. After checking out their website we were able to see some of the beautiful tables they have created, as well as all of the delicious flavors they offer. After contacting the owner and discussing package options we realized that the cost for a package with minimal variety would be about $5 per guest. Expecting at least 130 guests, this dessert table could get kind of pricey. In addition we would still need to get a small two tier cake. It was clear to us that hiring this company was out of the question, but we know that we can still create a nice dessert table at a smaller cost.

To help us put together a cute (and organized) dessert table we have picked up 4 of these cupcake holders: 

As well as a few of these three tiered glass cake stands:

We're not done collecting all the glassware we will need to create both of these tables for our guests, as well as the centerpieces for the reception tables, but we definitely have a great start. We're very grateful that we have family and friends who are willing to help us set up our creations. Thanks to their help we will be able to have these creative elements at our wedding at a fraction of the cost to hire companies to do it for us!