Whether you’re planning a lavish wedding, a low-key affair on a shoe-string budget, or something decidedly midway, you can make your special day extraordinarily memorable for the two of you and everyone on your guest list. Decorations can play a huge role in not only the look but the feel of your event.
1. Design Your Own Archway
An archway is always an attention grabber, providing the perfect focal point for the wedding ceremony. Archways can be constructed out of metal, wood posts, or even loosely twisted vines and decorated to fit whatever theme you have in mind. Traditionally they are adorned with flowers, soft fabrics or faerie-lights, but why stick to tradition when you can use your imagination and go hog wild in a different direction? I’ve been to a wedding where haphazardly stacked library books were fused together in a sturdy arch to celebrate the union of two avid readers. Have fun coming up with your own outlandish design!
2. Make a Statement With Lanterns
Lanterns are the perfect decoration for both indoor or outdoor weddings. Light up the night by using them as luminaria to line a walkway. Hang them from shepherd hook posts to draw people into your backyard affair. Vintage distressed metal lanterns, chic black styles, and rustic wood alike can be accented with flowers, candles, festive ribbons, and faerie lights to add a soft glow to an evening affair. Place one in the center of each table or experiment with three or four smaller lanterns in varying heights.
3. Have a Field Day
While Covid-19 continues to intrude on joyful occasions, the trend has turned to holding smaller weddings in outdoor settings like farmers’ fields. Such necessity creates a unique opportunity to play up the rural aspect of the setting with rustic picnic tables covered in blue or red-checked cloths, mason jar centerpieces filled with field flowers and greens, and other simple touches. Fill a small wheelbarrow with packets of sunflower seeds and construct a homemade wooden sign encouraging guests to take a packet and “watch love grow.” Plant a few pitchforks and shovels in the ground and decorate them with garlands of wildflowers.
4. Personalized Party Favors
There are plenty of ways to personalize your party favors without having to resort to customized matchbooks. As the happy couple, what music is on your playlist? How about splicing together a CD with your wedding favorites, your engagement picture and wedding date as the cover art? Have the two of you bonded over a particular hobby or activity? Tiny bottles of honey or maple syrup make adorable favors while simultaneously celebrating your love of bee-keeping or sugaring. Has skydiving become your new shared passion? Small framed photographs of your big jump together while holding hands at each place setting will celebrate your sense of adventure like no other.
5. Warming Stations
Covid-19 has made such an impact on weddings, it bears giving the situation more than a single mention. Not only has the virus pushed weddings outside, it also has necessarily forced an extension of the outdoor wedding season. Cool and even cold outdoor fall weddings can get a boost with warming stations serving hot chocolate, coffee and tea, and even some heated alcoholic beverages. Draw guests in with fiery red and gold chrysanthemums that will warm their hearts. Then offer colorful throws and blankets in similar warm colors they can borrow to ward off the chill.
6. Custom Rocking Chairs
Every newly-married couple dreams of growing old together with their one true love. What better way to celebrate that dream than to purchase a pair of old-fashioned rocking chairs. Make them a centerpiece at the reception. Lay out a few colored magic markers and invite your guests to cover the chairs with loving messages of their own. It will be a fun activity and a wonderful way to celebrate your romance well into your golden years.
