The Oblivious Bride: Decorations & Décor

Comment Written by jenny on August 16, 2010 – 12:00 pm

Wanting our wedding to be more of an experience than simply an event, my fiancé and I agree that the wedding décor can help set the tone.  If you’re aiming for a vintage wedding or a modern wedding, a theme-based wedding or simply a garden party, the decorations and décor are the little details that can get your guests in the right mood.  With our wedding plans slowly taking shape, I thought it’d be a good time to think more specifically about our decorations for both the ceremony and reception.

When we picked our wedding colors, I always imagined lemons being involved somehow.  It was one of the main motivations for picking yellow in the first place.  But I also wanted to tie in our other colors, grey and white.  And, yes, I need to always be mindful of our budget.  With endless possibilities on how to decorate our wedding, I needed to first get organized.

Photo Inspiration Boards

I do not consider myself super creative.  I am, however, a visual thinker and I like to see everything in front of me to help me process a complex task.  So from the beginning, I started clipping and saving any images that I thought were along the right path of what we were trying to accomplish with our wedding.  Laying these photos out on an inspiration board (physical or virtual) helped me organize dozens of ideas.  Besides bridal magazines and websites, I also found inspiration in unlikely places.   For example, a table setting from a Pottery Barn or Crate & Barrel catalog, décor in friends’ homes, and while shopping at Ikea.

In fact, it was while shopping at Ikea that I stumbled on inexpensive galvanized pots that would look great filled with lemons around our venue, tying in our two main colors.

With all my favorite ideas in one place, I could scan across the group and hone in on what our style was.  I’d call it casual-modern.  Now with a style defined, we began to consider the specifics.

Pondering over Pomanders

There are hundreds of beautiful ceremony pictures that feature gorgeous flower pomanders along the aisle chairs.  They frame the aisle and dress up boring chairs and pews and just make the ceremony look elegant.  It’s an idea that I wanted to replicate but not at the cost a florist may charge.

The first idea was to follow the DIY route and make beautiful tissue paper pomanders like these.  However, after considering that we will have about 13 rows of seats, we’d need either 14 pomanders (for every other row) or 26 pomanders (for every row)!  That’s a ton of tissue paper and a ton of work.  I could get my bridesmaids over and spend hours making these, but I kept my eyes open for alternative options.  Thankfully, I found inspiration from another couple!

From The Knot, Quyen and Derrick used paper lanterns tied with ribbons to replace flower pomanders along their aisle.  At less than $5 each, paper lanterns come in a variety of colors to match most wedding themes.  Using yellow lanterns paired with slate grey ribbon, hanging on white chairs, this casual/modern piece will be perfect for our ceremony.

The other decoration ideas?  You’ll just have to wait and see!

Next Week: Invitations & Save-the-Dates