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One of the first things your guests will see when they enter the reception for the wedding breakfast are the tables.

Although our reception was held in a nice venue, I did not leave everything entirely up to them. I really wanted our tables to look special, so I added my own touches. I was thrilled with the way the tables looked and the compliments we got made all the extra effort worthwhile.

I bought all my table decorations at less than half cost in the January sales. They were amongst the Christmas table decorations in silver, pink and white and taken out of the Christmas theme and into a summer wedding they looked lovely.

When deciding on the table decorations we had to bear in mind that we only had the small area in the centre of the table in which to decorate, as the rest of the table was made up of crockery. I didn’t want to spoil the look of the table with sauces, sugar and milk etc. so I asked the caterers to put these on the tables after all the guests were seated.

We bought pink candles, which fitted in with the wedding colour theme and put these in silver candlestick holders (I checked with venue that it was alright to use candles). I bought crystal stones that were scattered on the table and they looked very effective.

Place Names (click to enlarge)

I made the gentlemen’s place names out of card and used diamante gems to decorate the corners of each one (these diamantes came from bracelets, we also bought in the January sales). Inside each one I inserted the menu and order of proceedings, which was a great talking point.

For the ladies place names, I bought all my female guests a small silver heart shaped frame. Then I typed their names in a fancy font on pink card and cut it out to the shape of the frame and inserted it where the picture normally goes. I let them know that they could take them home, that this was my gift to them.

For children there was a puzzle book or cardboard cut out doll to dress. This gave them something to play with at the table and allowed their parents to be able to relax for five minutes.

We had some background music playing during the meal (this was arranged by our DJ) and we also had the microphones set up ready for the speeches. To avoid the room getting smoky we requested that people didn’t smoke until after the meal and asked that they retire to the bar to do so. We also asked that mobile phones be put on ‘silent’ as we didn’t want phones ringing during the speeches.

Following our meal and all the speeches we moved away from the tables and they set up the evening reception. We decided on a disco and had someone recommended to us. We came up with a list of records, which we gave to the DJ plenty of time in advance – it gave him an insight into the type and style of disco we wanted.

We chose numbers that we thought the oldies would dance to as well and ours went with a real swing. I attach our song list, which may be of interest to you.

Download Wedding Song List