Wedding decorations;
as varied as the people that choose them!

Wedding decorations appropriate for a wedding are as varied as are the people choosing them.

Here, I'm going to give you some guidelines for choosing wedding decorations for your wedding ceremony and wedding reception venues that can make your whole wedding experience a little easier.

Decorations are available at bridal, craft, fabric, home decor and other stores but don't stop looking there!

Try garden centres, grocery stores (decorate with fresh fruit!), dollar stores, liquidation centres, grandma's attic, Uncle Ross's farm, craft sales and your own backyard have wonderful items that can make beautiful wedding decorations.

Come up with things that are special to the wedding couple and think up creative ways of displaying them.

For example, one groom is an avid duck hunter and his bride is a sports fanatic and all their guests know this. For centerpieces, they fill huge clear wine glasses with colourful, miniature plastic soccer balls, baseballs, basketballs and some miniature plastic duck figures, all found at a dollar store. On the stem of the wine glass, two gold-colored wedding bands were tied with curling ribbon in the bridal party colours and there were tea lights in small holders around the wine glass. It works so well and it means something to the couple.

Here are nine tips to remember when planning what you will use for wedding decorations:


1) Be consistent.

Weddings have colour schemes and those colours, or complimentary ones, should be used everywhere, from invitations to bridesmaids' dresses to flowers at the church to centrepieces to the packages for the wedding favors.

2) Have a theme.

Have a theme running through the wedding (for example, a beach theme, a black and white theme, a winter theme, a Canada Day theme...) and choose decorations which reflect those themes. This will tie the whole wedding together and show your guests that a lot of thought went into the wedding preparations. For example, if your wedding has a tree theme, the invitations may be decorated with an embossed picture of a tree with the couple's initials carved into the trunk. You can then use variations of this same theme to decorate the reception venue, the cake, the centerpieces, the place cards, the thank you cards...

3) Keep to your budget.

Wedding decorations need not be expensive if you are creative, shop around and remember to...

4) Keep it simple.

Remember that your ceremony and reception venues may already be lovely rooms that don't need too much dressing up once tables, the wedding cake, the beautifully dressed wedding party and their flowers enter the scene. Too many decorations can just get in the way or in the view of serving staff, dancers and guests who are trying to maneuver around the site or see who it is that is giving a speech. One decoration can have multiple uses. For example, the pew "bows" - which were actually wreaths - at my daughter's wedding were taken from the pews after the ceremony and served as the base for a candle grouping on the guests' tables at the reception. The pew wreaths were part of the centrepieces.

5) Someone has to transport the decorations...

Someone has been delegted to take the decorations to the venues and set them up (you may want to have a tool kit available for this part just in case you need tools, tape, string, tacks, etc. to affix things), then someone will have to take them down and transport them away from the site once the day is over.

To this job, appoint someone you trust to do this effectively.

You can kill two birds with one stone when the wedding is winding down by sending centrepieces, flower arrangements and other decorations home with guests to keep as mementoes.







Figure out before the reception who is taking what home. Aunt Lara might have hurt feelings if all her sisters get a centerpiece to take home, but she gets forgotten in the excitement of the day and doesn't get one.

6) Have Plan B.

Some extra decorations are in order - ready in case of breakage while transporting or setting up.

7) What do you need?

If you will need tables, stands, vases or other items available for displaying your decorations, check with the powers-that-be at your wedding ceremony and reception venues. If they have the things that you need available, there may be an extra charge to use them. If they don't have any available, you'll need to get some from somewhere else.

8) What's available already?

The venues where you hold your ceremony and reception may already have decorations available for your use - their standard decorations, or decorations that other people have used and have left behind. Take a look; you may like something. Some reception venues have in-house decorators from whom you can rent decorations. For a fee, these people will set up the decorations for you as well. Churches often book multiple weddings on any given day. You may be able to coordinate most of your church decorations with the other couples who are getting married that day so you can all use the same flowers/decorations and split the cost.

9) Be creative.

It's the "different" decorations that help to make a wedding special. For example, anybody can have the standard wishing well on the gift table where guests can deposit their cards and monetary gifts to the bride and groom, but using a photo cube with pictures of the bride and groom on it, or finding an elegant stained glass box, or something that suits your theme, will make it different, memorable, unique.

Here is a list of places where one typically puts wedding decorations, but to put your own stamp on the wedding, remember that anything is fair game:

At the church

At the reception

Yet to come on this page: specific examples of decorations for your wedding.







Wedding decorations back to home page.



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