evolving: part 3!

So... there are ups and downs to having a fiance who by trade is a designer. It's awesome because there are SO many crazy benefits (have i ever mentioned that Mr. Ramen works for Xyron???) From cool materials, to a personal design-slave who can carry out my every wish in illustrator and other design programs, to access to sweet tools like a laser cutter (which may be put into action).... etc.

One of the downsides is that the man seriously has an opinion on evvvverything. This can be good, but sometimes he really gets stuck on one thing that he likes, and I just can't fight him. Well, I usually end up caving in to him. But he has a good eye and he's a good sounding board for my crazy ideas. So this works perfectly.

Anyways, from the beginning, I knew that I wanted some variance in centerpieces. When you have ~35 tables to decorate, you get to expand your creativity. Back when we were thinking of working with a florist, we decided that our 18 "low" centerpieces would be simple.

Enter, the floating bowl. Filled with water, rocks, and some pretty blossoms and a few floating candles. Cute, simple, chic, elegant.... a touch of vintage, but still modern. Notice one minor detail: CANDLES!!!! Darn it, flammable artwork! Anyways. We nixed this idea when florists began quoting me $30/table for this little sucker. And the fact that I couldn't even have some candles kind of killed the love affair. (but can someone else PLEAAAAAAAAAAAASE do this and then email me the pictures? thanks)

When we were contemplating the whole "branch with lanterns" thing, we thought about incorporating table number lanterns into the low centerpieces as well (you know, to have a cohesive look). Something in the order of this:

Problems: It was a little TOO organic, we can't have potted plant type things (so no wheatgrass), and the bottles were a little too vintage/kitschy/cool for us. And it didn't really flow with the whole manzanita look.

So.... I decided to reconsider submerged orchids. This is a look that has been really popular in weddings for quite some time. And for good reasons - it's pretty, it's cheap, and... uh, yeah, it's cheap. And it was precisely the look that my designer fiance agreed would work into our modern-sexy-vintage-romance look...... and the manzies.

And once I stumbled upon this baby.... it was all over. I knew this was EXACTLY what I wanted. Our little spin on this trio is our platform is black and slightly bigger; the mid-sized vase is actually going to be frosted and filled with battery-operated tealights (sighhhhh, oh the sacrifices!), and the smaller vase will contain one large cymbidium orchid (i think... unless I change my mind and go with all dendrobiums... which is possible). Oh - and the orchids will be white dendrobiums w a slight blush pink center. And again, no open flames. Sigh.

Oh yeahhhhh, can you feel the sexiness? I'm terribly excited, and will post our mock-ups of our centerpieces for you once we get all the materials together. So there you have it - our completely evolved centerpiece species.Don't worry - you can look forward to learning about how we decorate the manzies and did all of this ourselves. with a lot of help and love from some cousins.

Are you doing more than one type of centerpieces? Anyone else frustrated with the look of those battery-operated tealights?