Rehearsal Dinner Centerpieces

Since we're tackling all the wedding day flowers ourselves, I didn't want to have to add the rehearsal dinner centerpieces into the mix; we would be busy enough arranging flowers as it was. So even though I just know David Tutera* will be shaking his head in disappointment at me, I decided to pre-arrange the centerpieces using silk flowers. (*he tends to mock the use of silk flowers in weddings on his show)

I already accounted for the cost of the blue LED lanterns that I bought from Luna Bazaar in my post about decorating our rehearsal dinner location, like this mock up I designed:


But I still had to buy the silk flowers, which I got from Save On Crafts. The quality of the fake gardenias at Michaels just wasn't that great (i.e. they really looked fake), but I was quite happy with these that I ended up getting online. They are actually supposed to be used for unity candles, and are a mix of gardenia, stephanotis and leaves. These were $4.19 each before shipping, and I ordered 12, two for each table (actually, I'm thinking we'll only need 5 tables at the RD, but made an extra, just in case).

Then it was time to construct the centerpieces. As a base, I used the laser cutter to make 9" circles out of cardboard (the LED lanterns are 5" wide at the base, and I needed 2" of overhang around the lanterns for the flowers).


I then cut the silk flower rings in half, using 4 halves (or 2 rings) for each cardboard circle, and hot glued them to the cardboard.


Putting the LED lantern in the middle, between the silk flowers, it looked pretty good, unless you were sitting down, looking at it lower and from the side.....

As you can see in the picture directly above, from the side the cardboard is still visible, because of the way the silk flower stems curve up. Boo! This was definitely not something that I could live with, so I searched through my random craft supplies and came up with a green sharpie marker and old ceramic mosaic tiles in blue and white to save the day. The green sharpie would make the cardboard blend in with the flower stems, and the mini tiles could be used to make a short planter of sorts once they were glued to the side of the cardboard circle, covering the stems and edge of the cardboard!


Good save! These looked much cleaner from the side after the addition of the faux tile planters!


I had just enough tiles on hand to make 3 with alternating blue and white tiles, and 3 with all white tiles. And Hailey, one of my fur babies, helped!


Have you done anything ahead of time using silk flowers? And were you surprised at how well they turned out, or did you have trouble finding good quality silk flowers, like I did at first?

(all pictures in this post by me)