the centerpiece

Once Robert and I decided on a bird theme for our wedding we somehow landed on the idea of having birdcages for our centerpieces. How fitting and unique would that be?? So I Googled ‘birdcage centerpiece’ to get some ideas and there were already some great pieces that have been used at weddings before. Since it seemed possible we now excitedly searched for the perfect birdcage to match our theme along with the florist who could work with such a unique idea to make a piece fitting for our wedding.

Save on Crafts has a ton of different birdcages but we thought this brass one would go perfectly with our outdoor venue. It’s sold as a pair in the 13″ and 19″ sizes; even more fitting since we want our centerpieces to alternate in size anyway.

Now that we’ve found the perfect birdcage, the search was on for the florist who could transform this plain brass birdcage into something that matched our theme colors and into something we will LOVE.

Florist #1 created the piece pictured below. It has manzanita branches coming out from it with ‘summery’ colored flowers. We weren’t in love with the colors since we wanted fall colored flowers eventhough our wedding was during the summer and the branches made it almost impossible for our guests to transport home. It just looked a bit too wild for our theme.

KC Florals Designs created the beautiful piece below. I can remember back to that day in late November last year when we stepped into her shop and NEVER in our wildest dreams could we ever imagine anything like this!! It was jaw dropping amazing. We were so blown away by her creativity with the berries, varied colors and flowers, the use of curly willow to keep the birdcage top opened, how she stuck with our theme colors plus made it completely portable. It was much more than we ever wanted.

Check out all the detailed photos to follow.

So over the next week I had this beautiful birdcage centerpiece mostly hidden in my closet b/c I had so many guests over. It was just so gorgeous that we decided to keep it as one of our surprise elements and didn’t even reveal it to our wedding party! Slowly and sadly though I watched the flowers wilt and die and was completely devastated of the thought of our guests tossing the entire birdcage aside when all the flowers had wilted.

The awful, wedding faux pas idea crept into my head: “what if we used silk (fake) flowers instead so that our guests keep the birdcage centerpieces forever?” It was so hard to say out loud b/c I’d cringe just thinking it. I mean could I really go against the social norm and really use silk flowers at my wedding!?!? I mean isn’t that one of the tackiest things to do at a wedding?

Well, I proceeded to have this conversation with my dear mother. She is a HUGE fan of silk flowers; its a jungle galore at her house of silk flowers, believe me! She’s always eyeing them at Michaels. Even as big a fan as she is, she was also doubting its acceptance at weddings. She DOES attend a dozen or more weddings a year so she MUST know what’s best (other than the fact that she’s mom and mom’s always know best).

We decided to give it a shot anyway. We had KC Floral Designs create one using  silk flowers and it didn’t turn out that bad at all! Didn’t even look fake. Bad news was she was going to charge us more b/c silk flowers are much more expensive than fresh (real) flowers. Good news was she changed her mind on the pricing. If she used silk flowers she can work on them weeks or even months ahead of the wedding at any time she wanted without having to worry about producing 40 centerpieces over night if they were fresh flowers. With the exchange in flexibility of time it was a done deal–we hired KC Floral Designs for the job!

Now without further adieu…check out how they turned out at our wedding.

About 14 of the birdcages lined the aisle at the church ceremony.

Some unique shots and angles to follow from Anha Nguyen Photography who was a guest at our wedding and my make-up artist.

These 2 larger floral arrangements flanked the altar at the ceremony and the cake at the reception. After the wedding each went to our mothers to decorate in their homes. The hanging chandelier was made of fresh flowers!

I know the silk floral arrangements don’t have the same pop and fresh feeling that real flowers do, but at least our guests can keep these forever in remembrance of our wedding day. It’s also been fun seeing the pieces in our friends’ and families’ homes.

Photos from the wedding day are courtesy of Kim Le Photography.

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