Weddingbee Blog

With Mr. Jam away doing his smartie-pants work project, I desperately needed help with our looming centerpiece project. You know, the one we haven’t touched or even thought about, despite the wedding being a few months away? Yeah, that one. My mom must have known this, because she forced me over to her house, bought a ton of unscented votives, and made me sit down and work on it with her and my BFF man of honor.

And so we worked like wedding elves. We brainstormed. Sometimes we silently stared at table decor, and sometimes we gossiped. My 15-year-old brother supplied the song “Stereo Love” on repeat, much to the chagrin of my mom.

In the end? We were happy…sort of. See for yourselves:

Let me take a moment to explain our idea behind this late-night-induced collection centerpiece thought stream… We’re hoping to decorate the entire ceremony and reception using three groups of items: Things we already own; Things we’re borrowing from friends; and Things we will buy for the wedding that we will divy up and reuse as home decor. We’re considering it to be a completely reusable decor-scheme, and one that will spruce up our digs long after the day is done.

The pictures above are a total mock-up and show only the bones of what we hope the centerpieces will become (and we promise we won’t display ornamental grass shoved into Longaberger baskets). However, in its place will be some sort of potted plant thing that we will buy for the wedding, then take home and use around the house. Oh, and that sideways senior portrait of me wearing denim bibs? Stunning, I know, but imagine that’s a table number of some sort.

Our collection centerpieces will indeed be atop a crocheted doily (which we already own and were all made by my too-fantastic-for-words grandma), and that will in turn be atop a vintage, floral tablecloth. (Because if there’s one thing the Jams are obsessed with, it’s hoarding more vintage tablecloths than one household could ever use in a lifetime, just in case we should ever need them. And now, we’re totally thankful we bought enough from garage sales and estate sales over the years to cover every single table at the reception with a pretty print.)

We’ll be dipping into my parents’ basement-stash of mason jars, using big tin cans that once held vegetable juice (which will not end up looking like big tin cans, but more on that later), antique teacups, containers full of colorful knick-knacks, and we’ll fill in the extra spaces with greens and some unique tchotchkes (it’s easier to say “random trinkets,” but saying “tchotchkes” is much more fun) picked up from around our houses and for a few cents each at sales.

You see, there’s a restaurant near our hometowns with glass-topped display tables at each booth, and they’re filled with–you guessed it!–tchotchkes:

Source

It’s a lot going on, and we know it. But it’s interesting. I still remember sitting at these very tables, eating dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets, wordlessly obsessing over the goodies inside. We can only hope our wedding tables will be as interesting to our guests as these were to us as kids…but better, because everything we’re using plays a part in our very own story.

So how it will all turn out? The jury’s still out, and we’re busy scouring estate sales to know for sure. But we’ll keep you posted.

Anybody out there try to make each table an interesting collection? Did you struggle to find enough vessels and stuff for your collection centerpieces? If not, then how are your adventures in centerpiecing going? I’m pretty sure my dear mom is secretly having fits about this not being done yet; can anybody relate?