Let's talk about Centerpieces

Once we had the table cloths, linen napkins, and china figured out, it was time to move onto the centerpieces. As people would be at the tables most of the night (except for dancing!), I knew I would have to make the centerpieces stand out. As my aunt and I had already decided not to bother with flowers for the centerpieces, I came up with plenty of alternatives. Here are some pictures that served as inspirations:

I love the tall vases with water and floating candles.

 Disregard the flowers, but I want to fill the bottoms of the vases with purple stones and set them on square mirrors. I also love the Hershey kisses on the mirrors.

I want to surround the cylindrical vases with votive candles, kind of like the ones above, 

but we'll have to see what we can play with.

Final idea: 8" square mirrors, one cylinder vase with purple stones in bottom, filled with water, and a floating candle on top. Also, four votive candles on each corner of the mirror and perhaps some Hershey kisses, but they may melt with all that flame around them. 

I started shopping around for the vases, candles, and stones. I found the vases at Dollar Tree and purchased eight of them. That's a pretty sweet deal right there. If I had purchased them at Michaels or Hobby Lobby, they would have been $4.00 a piece for sure.

Next, I shopped around for the purple stones. Again I looked at Dollar Tree to save the day, but they only had clear, blue, and green stones. Shoot! I had to go to Michaels to get the purple stones and I found the perfect mixture of purple, lilac, and clear stones in black netted bags for $6.99 a piece. We bough two of those bags to adorn the bottoms of the vases with. 

Disregard the "Purple Grapes!" 

Our purple stones include the above color, plus a nice metallic lilac, and clear.

I knew I didn't want plain round white floating candles to place in the vases, because if I could some purple, by God, I was gonna have it. Hobby Lobby helped me out here with purple rose shaped floating candles. (This also works because my chosen flower for the bouquets was roses!) They came in packs of 6 for $7.99. I signed up online to receive coupons every week from Michaels and Hobby Lobby so I used a 40% coupon when purchasing these. Every little bit helps!

I haven't been able to find the square mirrors yet, but my aunt gave me a great idea. She said to look at Home Depot, Lowes, and Menards to see if they might have them. I looked at JoAnn Fabrics, but they only have the round ones. I am still on the hunt! 

For the votive candles, I found some in packs of 12 for $7.99 each at Michaels. They came in the holder with an ivory candle. The white candles almost appeared pink, so we chose the ivory. Again, use your 40% coupon here to save a couple of bucks! 

At the end of the day, we spent around $50 for centerpieces that could have easily cost $250 if we had used flowers or had them professionally arranged. Gotta pat myself on the back for this one. I hope they look nice. Pictures later.