Wedding Decorations - Make Your Own

Most wedding reception venues are beautifully decorated, but after a while wedding decorations can all begin to look quite similar. If you want something truly unique that reflects your own personal style, you might want to consider making your own wedding decorations. This may also save you some money, depending on the materials you use, but bear in mind it can be very time consuming.

Here are some tips on making your own wedding decorations:

• Decide on a motif such as a particular flower, or a material such as glass beads or coloured velvet, and use it to unify your wedding decorations.

• If you are making your own wedding stationery, make sure you order enough card and decorations to do all your invitations, place names, and thank you cards, otherwise you may find it has been discontinued as the wedding approaches.

• Start making your decorations several months before the wedding so you have time to order replacements if it should all go horribly wrong. Plan at least twice as much time as you think you will need as making decorations can be more time consuming than you imagine.

• If you are making table decorations such as centrepieces, place cards, napkin rings and table runners, make enough for a single table so you can set that up and make sure everything works together before you make the rest.

Using fabric in your wedding decorations

Some brides get inspiration for their entire wedding theme from a particular fabric design. Whether the fabric you fall in love with is a sumptuous gold taffeta or a pink polka dot linen, it can be used for wedding decorations in a number of ways. You could use your chosen fabric to make table runners or chair sashes, to form bows around your vases or centrepieces, or to decorate your place names, bombonieres and napkin rings.

For more adventurous wedding decorations, use your fabric to fashion lanterns to hang from the ceiling, or scatter cushions and bean bags to form a casual seating area.

Make your own table centrepieces

There are many ways to create unique, personalized centrepieces for your reception, without paying for expensive floral arrangements, and candles are a very popular way to do this. You could either arrange floating candles in an attractive glass bowl of water, perhaps with co-ordinating rose petals strewn around, or opt for larger church style candles placed in hurricane lamps, perhaps filled with coloured sand or glass beads.

A wedding tree could be a more unusual centrepiece for your tables. To make this, simply arrange some small branches in a vase or other container. You could spray paint the branches in silver or gold to complement your colour scheme. Decorate the tree with ornaments, jewels, or flowers that suit the style or theme of your wedding. Try to make your trees tall enough that your guests can still see each other underneath them.

This kind of centrepiece can be particularly effective for a winter wonderland wedding, where sparkling white branches can be hung with silver and blue decorations. I have also seen this used recently at a spring wedding, where the branched were sprayed black, and adorned with brightly coloured butterflies and blossoms.