Table Numbers and Centerpieces

Remember when I had too many ideas for what to do for our centerpieces?  I so badly wanted to do the doily lanterns, I thought they were so romantic and would give such a nice glow.  I also really loved the freshness of the lemon centerpieces (but remember how the inside of a lemon gave Darryl the creeps...like the inner part of a sunflower?).  Well after days of him seeing me struggle to make the doilies work, he put his lemon-phobia aside and agreed to do something with them.  Thank you!  In the end I ended up combining a couple of the ideas.

Last summer we came across a garage sale that had this fabulous box of old mason jars...all for $2!)  Some of these jars were from the 1930s, total score!

 

With 11 tables and a couple jars left over, that's less than 18 cents per table!

 

At another garage sale later on in the summer I came across a box full of (12!) older hardcovered books labelled "free - take one!"

 

I hated the thought of insulting them, especially since there really wasn't anything else there that I wanted to buy (but having hosted a garage sale, I also knew that if they were like me, any left overs would just be driven to the nearest donation center...maybe I could save them the trip!)  So I shyly asked if they would mind if I took the whole box, explaining that they would be the perfect addition to my wedding centerpieces and they gladly welcomed me to them. 

 

Here are the flowers we decided on...

 

 

I loved how full and fluffy they were.  They're a type of chrysanthemum.

 

I decided to also use the mini mason jars from the brooch shower my mum and sister threw me to put some tealight candles in.  Worried that the lemons would kill the flowers, I did many, many trials throughout the summer, here's one...

 

Luckily the lemons seemed to have zero effect on the flowers' well-being (at least with these particular flowers...if you're considering a similar centerpiece, definitely do a trial run or two to be sure).  It was after this that I decided to give the lemon-filled mason jar a little bit of height by stacking it on a book.  I think two or three stacked books would have looked nice, but I just went with what I had.

I tied some twine around the neck of the jar and a grey tag with our table numbers on them (this was the only photo that semi-showed the table numbers, sadly)

 

 

We ended up deciding to put random dates, years and numbers that were meaningful to us and our relationship as our table numbers (ie: the year we started dating, our anniversary date, the year we went to Africa together, our ages when we met...) and then as a way for the guests to get us to kiss, instead of clinking their glasses, someone from each table would guess the significance of their table number (the DJ's alternative was for table to sing a love song which was also fun).

 

It turns out that the flowers that were delivered for the day-of were much much smaller than the ones I had been practicing with all summer (look how sparse they look compared to the trial ones I had done!).  They were very unattractive, in my opinion, but in the end I really couldn't have cared less because when all was said and done, I just wanted to marry Darryl and celebrate with those closest to us, I barely even noticed the centerpieces and decor all night.  Don't lose sight of the real reason you're putting all of these ideas and decorations together in the first place!

 

I think this was the last wedding related thing I had to catch up on, other than pictures of the day...coming next week!