Si­mone Sant-Ghu­ran

Flow­ers are beau­ti­ful and im­pact­ful at wed­dings, but they of­ten come with a hefty price tag and tend not to last very long ei­ther.

Those are the very rea­sons that some cou­ples pre­fer to shy away from us­ing them.

Oth­er cou­ples pre­fer to go with­out them sim­ply be­cause they are un­con­ven­tion­al and would like to do some­thing non-tra­di­tion­al.

Here are some ways to have a unique cen­tre­piece with min­i­mal or no flow­ers:

Use com­ment jars

This is an al­ter­na­tive to a tra­di­tion­al guest book and can be done quite in­ex­pen­sive­ly. Sim­ply dec­o­rate a large glass jar or vase with fab­ric rib­bon, wall pa­per, de­coupage, mu­sic sheets, pearls or ad­he­sive jew­els. Then, in­sert a dec­o­ra­tive pen (try adding faux flow­ers, rib­bon, crys­tals or plumes to the pen)!

The last step is to leave pret­ty, blank notes on the ta­ble. The ob­jec­tive is to have your guests write down their mes­sages and well-wish­es for you on­to the pa­per and in­sert in­to the vase.

Cre­ate a pho­to mon­tage

To re­al­ly per­son­alise your wed­ding, you can have a group­ing of dif­fer­ent types of pho­tos in frames. A good idea is to keep it co­he­sive by hav­ing them made of the same ma­te­r­i­al–eg, wood, met­al or porce­lain. This way, each ta­ble can tell a sto­ry about the cou­ple or can cor­re­spond to the ta­ble name (eg, our favourite va­ca­tion spot) or wed­ding theme.

Use ro­man­tic­can­dle­light

Think about plac­ing a few can­dles of dif­fer­ent shapes and widths in the same colour fam­i­ly on­to a mir­ror, and you can have in­stant el­e­gance. Should a clus­ter of can­dles prove too cost­ly, try a sin­gle, stun­ning can­dle hold­er. Be­fore pur­chas­ing them, be sure to check with your re­cep­tion venue to see whether they al­low lit can­dles in the room. Should there be re­stric­tions on hav­ing an open flame, you can opt for re­al­is­tic look­ing, bat­tery-op­er­at­ed can­dles.

Make the­most of wa­ter

Any unique glass con­tain­er can be jazzed up with some drops of food dye put in­to wa­ter. Then you can sim­ply float a can­dle over top and your cen­tre­piece is all done! If you don't want to have coloured wa­ter, you can float or im­merse flow­ers or sliced lemons in­to the con­tain­er, add fish, or even dec­o­rate in­side of it with shells, glass peb­bles, coral or stones.

Get in­ter­ac­tive

You can use fruits and veg­eta­bles as your cen­tre­piece. Once art­ful­ly arranged, a plat­ter of these can look stun­ning. You can al­so choose to have a fruit bou­quet if your wed­ding is more in­for­mal. Opt for hard­er fruits rather than those which go soft quick­ly.

I'd re­al­ly like to hear your com­ments, ques­tions and sug­ges­tions on this top­ic. Send me some feed­back at: si­mone@trinidad­wed­dings.com

Si­mone Sant-Ghu­ran is the man­ag­er/Founder of www.trinidad­wed­dings.com and the Ed­i­tor-in-Chief of the TW Wed-Zine Mag­a­zine (www.face­book.com/wedzine)

She blogs at www.trinidad­wed­dingscom.blogspot.com or you can fol­low her tweets at www.twit­ter.com/Si­mone_TW