Help with table decorations

[saturn]

With only 5 weeks to go, I''m feeling pretty good about things.... except for the reception decor.

Since I''m planning long distance, I had to book the room before I ever saw it myself. My mom went to see it and said she thought it was fine. Now that I''ve seen it, I''m really afraid that it is going to look ugly. Mom tries to reassure me by pointing out that no one really pays much attention to what the room looks like.

Anyways, the basic room setup will be round tables, with ivory tablecloths and sage green napkins. They will also provide a hurricane glass and candle centerpiece. My sister (a banquet server) is concerned that without anything else to dress the tables up, they won''t look "wedding-y" enough. Now, the obvious choice would be rose petals scattered on the tables, but for some reason I just don''t like the look of scattered petals.

Anyone have any ideas for other ways I could spruce up the tables? Our colors are sage green and pink.

 

[KimberlyH]

Saturn,

We are planting 3" pots with small flowers to place at the tables (they are to serve as decorations as they are chalkboard ready and each guest''s name will be written on one as well as our favor), you could plant pink flowers in them to go with your color scheme.

We''re also going to frame pictures of our parents wedding days and place them somewhere in the room to add a personal touch.

Finally we found a small statue of a bride and groom that will end up somewhere in the room, perhaps at our table.

Good luck!

 

[saturn]

Thanks, KimberlyH. C''mon ladies - I know you can help me come up with something...

I am also deliberating over whether to rent chair covers. Anyone have an opinion?

 

[jcrow]

here are two pics i''ve saved. our venue has the standard hurricane glasses as well.

 

[jcrow]

 

[jcrow]

as for the chair covers- what do the chairs look like uncovered?

 

[MelissaSue]

aww.. I wish I hadn''t done this.. but i told the people at our reception to throw out all our table wreaths.. I totally would have given them to you.. You could have used them with the hurricanes/candles the place provided.

They still have them for sale at Lillianvernon.com though.. I think they were something like $13 each including the candle... or less than that without the candle..

As for chair covers.. just say NO.. They are AT LEAST $5 a cover.. I was DEAD SET on them for a while.. but the only places I could find that were under $3 were the online places.. and then we probably would have had to pay extra set up fee for our location as well..(the local companies include set up but are VERY expensive) and then you have to send them back yourself! I didnt'' want to be doing THAT the day after my wedding..

 

[MelissaSue]

http://www.lillianvernon.com/catalog/product_display.jsp?pdId=7127&name=Pink+Rose+%26+Candle+Set&parentCatId=7&catId=867

$12.98 with the candle
$9.98 without..

 

[jorman]

What time of the day is your reception at?

What about:
-Filling pink rose petals around the candle inside the hurricane and tying a quality pink or green ribbon around the top of the neck of the hurricane?

-Placing ivory tulle with a string of battery operated mini lights beneath the tulle and around the hurricane?

-tacking a single strip of pink or green satin to the backs of chairs with the names of the appropriate guest attached. It would look like this (you would of course cut the ribbon nicely at the bottom either at a slant or like a snake tongue):

 

[saturn]

Thanks everyone for the suggestions.

jcrow - Those are gorgeous! I think we''re going to try to avoid using too many flowers, to keep the costs down.
Here is a (kinda small) picture of the chairs. They aren''t particularly pretty, but they''re not especially ugly, either.
At this point, after discussing it with FI and my FSIL (who is an interior designer), I''m 95% sure we''re going to skip the chair covers. It would be like $500 extra, and they don''t even have my preferred colors in stock. We are going to pay a tiny bit extra to have sage green napkins, so hopefully that will add a bit of color.

MelissaSue - Those table wreaths are so pretty! I''ll definitely look into them. Plus, I had forgotten about using a colored candle instead of plain white - duh. Thanks for the suggestion. And as for the chair covers, I was really kind of against them from the beginning, since I think they make the chairs harder to sit on (or maybe that''s just me), but since I am so worried about the ballroom being ugly, I started to reconsider. But I know the unnecessary expense would probably make me feel guilty, so it''s probably better to skip them.

Jorman - Those are really good ideas. I hadn''t thought about putting the petals IN the hurricane. That just might work...
I like the idea of the ribbon placecards on the chairs, but I don''t know if they would look good with the chairs pictured above. At this point, I''m just hoping the chairs will kind of fade into the background and not draw much attention.

The best idea that I came up with was to put some sort of ivy ring around the hurricane. My mom has been looking into it, and I think she found some quality silk ivy yesterday.

 

[Gypsy]

I''d take the 500 bucks and put it toward flowers for the tables. You can also sometimes rent nice sillk table arrangements through party companies, reception halls, or florists. While I totally understand wanting to keep costs down, the truth of the matter is that nothing says wedding the way flowers do in terms of table decorations.