Choosing your tablecentres

Welcome to our very brief rundown of current tablecentre styles and choices

 How you dress your tablecentres at your wedding / event tends to set the tone for the overall style and look that you are hoping to achieve.  From structural contemporary styling to soft,  overflowing urns and vases through to wild and loose floral “trees”.  The choice can perhaps be a little baffling especially when wedding magazines tend to focus on the style that is in favour at that particular time of year.  Today I thought I'd mention a few things to take into consideration.

Your choice of tablecentre, as everything else involved in your special day, should be as a result of your own personal style and preferences rather than dictated to by current trends.  However it is worth thinking about some practical considerations.  For example, do you have a low ceiling in your venue that might be “swamped” by tall arrangements or conversely will you be dressing a room with a very tall ceiling that will make lower and smaller arrangements look a little “lost”.  The main consideration for me is that guests can see each other and see you at the top table, hence providing arrangements that sit at the guests’ eyeline should be avoided wherever possible.  

For taller arrangements, we ensure guests' comfort by providing tall narrow vases or candelabra that guests can see through with the flowers above or below them.  We often add flowers in the stem of the vase to add a little interest for guests other than the stem of the vase.  Or you can go the whole hog and have flowers at both the top and the bottom to ensure there is always something for guests to look at.  

Even where lower arrangements, such as jugs are chosen, we can add height  by using willow or branches or placing vases at different heights on woodblocks for example.   Placing them off-centre means we won't impede views.

The shape of your table has to be taken into account as well.  Trestle or rectangular tables don't have as much room in the middle as large circular tables, so spreading the flowers out along the tables to give equal interest and not impeding guests' comfort has to be considered.

Oftentimes these days we advise on a mix of higher and lower arrangements.  Perhaps taller arrangements are best used in the corners to frame the room with the lower ones in the middle to allow a full view through to the top table.  This tends to give some texture and interest to the room and allows a less uniform  / formal look.

Your overall style will be the key concern, but your choice of venue may also have a bearing on your choice of tablecentre, e.g a rustic barn wedding may look better with softer styles, wooden blocks, jugs and tall floral "trees" whereas an historic castle might be better suited to elegant candelabras.  There are no hard and fast rules though.

  The use of containers is a key concern in getting the look right…tall elegant candelabras will give a completely different look than a tall rustic “tree” even when using all the same flowers.  Similarly when designing lower tablecentres, choosing interesting vases, bottle, urns etc gives another dimension to the table and something extra for your guests to talk about.

Whatever you choose remember that your guests will spend the larger part of the day looking at your chosen flowers and they do tend to get mentioned more than any other aspect of your venue décor.  Enjoy designing them, use your florist's advice and above all, choose something you will love yourself.  

Abbie and Bradley's lovely Frasers Barn wedding

Today I've finally found time to share Abbie and Bradley's fab Frasers Barn wedding...it was a beautiful sunny day, with a bouncy castle, loads of pretty flowers, and macarons....what more can you want!  Abbie and Bradley are a lovely and very relaxed and warm couple who wanted their flowers to be natural, soft and pretty with a rustic edge. The colours were blues, lilacs, ivories, a splash of lemon and a smattering of pink.  Such a lovely mix of daisies, tulips, eryngium, trachellium, gypsophilia, scilla, freesias, greentrick, nigella, chincherinchee and loads more!

Abbie is petite and pretty so the bouquet had to match...!  She wanted it very natural but not too large and to have all the colours included and a lace tie....other than that it was over to us to design, and I loved it!  Luckily so did Abbie!

For the three eldest bridesmaids, we did smaller versions of Abbie's bouquet but with less blooms, and then for the two junior bridesmaids, and two Flower Girls, we focussed on the daisies...how pretty do these look.

Bradley looked extremely handsome on his wedding day, and the very natural textured buttonhole we designed worked perfectly with his slimline suit.  We made his slightly different to the rest of the boys...well he was the most important...and they all looked lovely.  Mums weren't left out either with corsages to match their outfits.

For the outdoor ceremony, we dressed the aisle with small vases hung from the side of the chairs and added a selection of jugs to the celebrant table.

For the reception, Abbie and Bradley wanted the centre of the their tables to be the feature and hence we provided tall cases filled with curly and banded willow along with cow parsley and then added crystal droplets to catch the light along with small heads of flowers suspended from the willow.  We then filled the gaps in between with a varied selection of jars, pots, teacups etc, all filled with flowers to match the overall wedding.  We continued this look onto the sprigs of the table, but kept it lighter there as plates of anti-pasti were being added for starters.

Last but by no means least was the cake table all made, decorated and displayed by Abbie's sister.  The naked cake smelt yummy and it was hard work keeping our paws off the macarons...we restrained ourselves and just added a teacup of flowers to the top layer.

It was a beautiful day for a lovely couple and we loved being a part of it.  Abbie emailed shortly afterwards which made our day.  Here's what she had to say.

Hi Amanda,

Just a quick one to say the biggest thankyou for our truly amazing flowers!!! They were absolutely perfect!!! You got inside our heads and delivered what we'd dreamed of! My bouquet was simply beautiful, the colours, size and shape was spot on! I honestly can't thankyou enough! I'm so sorry I didn't see you to say it in person but I just wanted to let you know it completed the overall look for us!

Many thanks

Abbie x