My Non-Floral Centerpieces

When we first started planning the wedding and were looking at our budget and how much everything we wanted to include would cost, we decided we had to prioritize.  We looked at all of our "wants" and made a list of our top 3 priorities.  This came with the disclaimer that anything not on this top 3 list we would be willing to compromise on.  As you can imagine, this wasn't an easy task.  But we did it.

One of the things that didn't make the cut for us was flowers.  Although I do love flowers, there were other things we wanted to put our money towards that meant our flower budget would be low.  So this means no large arrangements around the room and no floral centerpieces. 

The good thing about our venue is that they have large arrangements already in place on the buffet tables and along the walls in the reception space.  They're silk, but they're free so I can't complain.  But the centerpieces are a different story.  After doing a lot of searching I came up with a few ideas. 

I knew that I wanted something that wasn't too large or bulky.  We've all been to those weddings where you have to do jedi moves in your seat to see around the centerpiece to talk to the person across the table from you.  Not fun. 

Even though I know that with my family, this might be a bad choice, I wanted to incorporate candles in the centerpieces.  At my cousin's wedding, the family members at my table (who will remain nameless... ahem... you know who you are) managed to set fire to the table number that was gracing the table.  With a tealight.  We were able to quickly put it out before the bride and groom realized there was a small fire at the corner table.  So, with this history, you can imagine my apprehension.  And yet, we push on.

The first idea I had was floating candles.  Something like this:

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Another centerpiece I liked was the submerged flowers with candles.  Kind of like this:

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But once a theme emerged for our wedding, these didn't seem to fit anymore.  I still love them and think they are gorgeous, but we had to rethink our plans.  Since our venue has gorgeous trees, we've been going with a tree theme.  So it made sense to include this theme in our centerpieces in some way.  This is where I fell in love with manzanita branches.  For those of you who don't obsessively read wedding magazines, message boards, and blogs, here's some imagery.

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I love, love, love these centerpieces!!  They're so pretty and they go so well with our theme.  But, (of course, there's a but, right?) the branches are pretty pricey.  To do all of our centerpieces the branches would be a couple hundred dollars.  Most of what you're paying for is shipping because these grow only in California and have to be shipped so they don't break on their way to Georgia. 

So I've decided to use these kind of as a template, but to collect branches on my own.  It's actually not as easy as it sounds because the branches have to look a certain way to work for the centerpieces.  But I do have a first round centerpiece to show you guys.  I think it turned out pretty good and am excited to make the rest of them. 





I'm thinking I might do two branches per centerpiece because it looks a little sparse.  But overall I think it turned out pretty well for the first one!  What do you think?