DIY Wedding Centerpieces with Branches

Another DIY Wednesday is upon us! Today we will be having our guest blogger, Charlotte Jarrett, sharing her own experiences with making DIY wedding centerpieces with branches! Take it away Charlotte …

It doesn’t take long to realize just how expensive weddings can be. $1200 for INVITATIONS? They’re paper! $200 a centerpiece? Who wants to spend that for something you use for a few hours? After the initial panic sets in, you may find yourself trying to figure out how to have the wedding of your dreams without going bankrupt. How can you have a fabulous centerpiece without breaking the bank?

DIY, of course.

When I decided to start my own event planning company, I knew the best way to get the word out was to host a launch party with a friend who had recently opened a bakery (shameless plug…you MUST check out Select Confections…to die for!). We were both new business owners, and on a VERY tight budget. We tried to save money wherever we could. I had to get creative to come up with a centerpiece that was glamorous and CHEAP.  I had seen beautiful centerpieces using manzanita branches dripping with crystals, but those were way out of my budget.

So here is what Charlotte did …

I did a little nature hike (ok I walked to my backyard) and started collecting branches. I spray-painted them black, let them dry, then hit them with a healthy dose of spray adhesive, and coated them with Martha Stewarts black onyx glitter. Once these humdrum sticks were dry and transformed into glamorous pieces of magic, I stuck them into a piece of floral foam that I had cut to fit into the bottom of a 20” cylinder vase.  Obviously floral foam is hideous, so I had to cover it up. I used black sand from Michaels to fill the bottom of the vase, and topped it off with black glitter for added sparkle. I’m a firm believer that you can never have too much shimmer, sparkle, or shine, so I tossed some clear gems in the vase.

Now that I had the branches firmly anchored in the vase, it was time for more sparkle. I couldn’t afford beautiful strands of crystals to hang from the branches, so I had to improvise. I found clear acrylic gems at Michaels for $3.99 a bag, and they had holes in them that I could string black wire from. I wrapped these around the branches in random places, and the impact was fantastic.  The picture doesn’t do it justice…when the candlelight hit the centerpieces, they sparkled and shimmered and looked absolutely gorgeous, if I do say so myself!

I had a lot of the supplies on hand (the vases, which I had used for another event, were the most expensive part!), but if I had to guess I would say it cost about $30 a centerpiece, including the vases. You can get spray paint for $0.99 a can, and you could always try skipping the spray adhesive and just glittering the freshly spray painted branch. Also, Martha Stewart glitter is the couture of glitter, so you could always do silver or white glitter from the dollar store (which would look best if you used silver or white spray paint).

Happy DIY Wednesday!

Thank you Charlotte with another fabulous guest blog feature! Let us know if any of our readers made DIY branch centerpieces for their own weddings or events!!