Table Style: Texture, Colour and Sparkle

Despite this miserable weather making me want rip my own head off and throw it at Mother Nature, I’ve had a fairly productive week.

I am so excited to announce that I have two more suppliers on board Operation Amazing Wedding (OAW), joining the musical delights that are Flood The Floor.  The first is a lovely Blackheath-based stationery designer called KateRuthRomey, who is going to be doing my wedding invites and is already hard at work on my Save The Dates.  The second is, in my opinion, one of the best (and nicest) photographers out there, Dominique Bader, who together with her husband Samuel will be capturing our day.  I am so thrilled and will be sharing more on them next week…

But today I want to talk tables.  I’m not ashamed to say that the design + styling is one of the most important and exciting aspects of the wedding day for me.  I know, I know… it should be all about the love and the vows and our families etc etc… and it is, it really truly is.  But just like I’m happiest when my house is clean and tidy, with fresh flowers and good lighting and eclectic décor, so will I be truly able to relax and revel in the love of our wedding day when I’m firmly ensconced in a cacophony of colour and pretty.

I’m sure there are people out there who will say “get a life, Sama- a table is a table”.  And they would be right.  But when your guests enter the reception space (or ‘eating arena’ as Paul and I like to call it), the tables are going to be the first thing they look at.  And then they will proceed to sit at said tables for a good couple of hours.  Surely we owe it to the tables to make them look ah-may-zing…?

The Great Jar Collection

I love fresh flowers, so I will be having these as centrepieces despite the expense.  And although everyone is doing it now I have started collecting glass jars, in which the floral pretty will be housed.  However, I shall be pimping my jars to make them OAW-worthy, in a range of ways which may or may not include spray paint, ribbon and a whole lot of glitter…

Here are some unique and creative things to do to a humble glass jar from around the wedding world…

DIY Rope vases from Green Wedding Shoes

Katherine Elizabeth Photography via Green Wedding Shoes

I’m not planning on using neon in my colour scheme but I love this fun and original way of pimping a glass jar using coloured string and twine.  Shouldn’t be too difficult either (she says…).

Gold spray-painted jars from Glitter Weddings

Image via Glitter Weddings

They may call them mason jars over in the US, but those creatives from across the pond sure do know how to glam up some glass.  Lovely Little Details shows you how here.

Glittery glass from The Glitter Guide and Hey You

Both images via Hey You

Image via The Glitter Guide

Glitter + glass + tealights = Table Styling Bliss.  I particularly like the gold glitter against the more masculine styling of black and white linen and stumps of wood.  Could be messy to put together though.  Very, very messy…

Speaking of linens, I do love a coloured tablecloth.  White works well when carefully styled but generally it has become the easy, obvious and-forgive me- boring way to cover a nasty banquet table here in the UK.  I don’t know why but the Americans have such a wider choice of chair and table hire and as such they can be so much more creative.  I would love to have a beautiful wooden table with coloured runners like the image below but that option just isn’t open to me.  Well, not without winning the lottery and buying my own tables anyway…

Paco & Betty Photography via Green Wedding Shoes

Now I had cut out a picture from years ago of a barn wedding that had the first coloured table linens that I’d ever seen- a mixture of pink and peach- and it looked stunning.  These bright, warm colours set against a wooden backdrop really inspired me,   but can I find the image to show you here? No, of course not.  But I shall be trying to create this somehow I think.  Or, if the worst comes to the worst I shall have white table cloths with a coloured runner across the middle, á la this beautiful wedding via Project Wedding…

Gideon Photography via Project Wedding

And I still haven’t ruled out sparkle…

Michele M Waite via Green Wedding Shoes

So.  An eclectic mix of textures, an abundance of colour and more glitter than you can shake a stick at… is that enough table styling delights to start the weekend?

I can’t make the sun come out but I can provide a sparkly blog post.

Have a fab weekend, folks.

Sama xxx