Creative ideas for centrepieces (sweets?) please!

scotrae

I just know there are some people out there, including Rusty and fiddle who will have some wonderful ideas so I'd be really grateful for inspiration on this one please!

I've been asked to sort table decorations for a rather smart 40th party next weekend but due to suddenly starting work again I don't have so much time to spend on it. We've got as far as naming tables after different sweets (Brithday Boy's childhood favourites) so I thought that incorporating sweeets in the centrepieces might work, with guests getting to take some home. I wasn't sure whether to give each table different ones - to match their table name'.

I am up for using things like jam jars so long as it looks enough on a round table of 10! And birthday boy loves candles too, so it would be nice to incorporate these. (I wouldn;'t mind buying some bigger candles as he can keep these afterwards, ditto possibly for vases/containers if they aren't too dear.) He likes flowers - probably something striking rather than pretty posies, IYKWIM. Or we could stick with sweets and candles (taking fire hazards into account of course!).

All tips and inspiration will be appreciated - thank you!

NEgirl

This is my absolute favourie photo of a party setting - could you adapt something like this for the party tables??

scotrae

Wow! Thank you! I suppose I could have one as a centrepiece for each table then perhaps let people help themselves to bags and take some home at the end of the evening. Nice and simple, although quite costly for some of the sweets to do big enough jars for impact perhaps. Got me thinking though ...

Any more ideas? Thanks again.

esmf73

How about doing a centre piece along the lines of the photo, but then making each guest a little gift bag. Thought is that if you make them before hand and fill them yourself it might be cheaper than having people fill their own.

Plus if you had the time you could make the gift bag look like a sweet and then print the name of each person on it (as a place setting) OR you could print "Happy 40th Birthday XXXXX" on it so that each person would know where it had come from if they kept it rather than eating it.

To keep costs down you could try making the sweets - like peppermint creams etc, but I'd probably buy from Costco, Makro or somewhere like th 1/4 lb sweetie website as its quicker and less fidly!!
Best of luck

wanna-b-rich

What about making the lollipop topiary shown in NE Girls picture. Instead of putting it in block, you could put in a nice cheap plastic planter (spray it with acrylic paint to tie in with your colour scheme). It would make striking centre piece and you could sprinkle a handful of the sweets relating to the table name to cover the surface material holding the topiary.

craftfairies

How about somthing like these


I am refering to the little round butterfly after dinner mints
They are made using a stampin up scaloped punch and elizabeth shaw mints just sandwich a mint between the 2 punch outs decorate as you please and scatter, you dont need the punch you could use a plain circle punch or even a larger square i have a few other ideas using this punch on my blog here

crazy_girl

at my wedding we bought a load of 'old dear' style tea cups from charity shops, tied co-ordinating ribbon (we had red and white) around the handles and put three in the centre of each table with co-ordinating sweets in on a circle of red tulle (bought on a roll and cut up by me, dead easy)

scotrae

Thanks again for taking the time to add your ideas, everyone! They all sound and look gorgeous but I unfortunately I won't have enough time to make something for each guest. I've looked around online now and it seems that this is an established wedding idea nowadays (my own big day was SO conventional!)

So the current thinking is something along the lines of vases of sweets on each table with scoops and bags being issued later on for people to take some home for their children. I've seen some scoops, am just about to go off for some 'research' in sweet shops with my sons, and am going to try to scrounge some vases or giant martini glasses through friends.

Candles and flowers might not get a look in, unless I put a jar-within-the-vase with some stems os flowers in. I shan't go and bother the florists til they've recovered from this weekend's rush!

Thanks again,

Edinburghlass_2

I noticed some nice glass vases in Tesco for 30p each in with the Manager's Specials, however these can be store specific.

RustyFlange

Scotrae, do you have a home bargains near you? You can get a whole variety of sweets from there which would be fab! Alternatively you could just do 1 variety of sweets eg jelly beans or something and spread them throughout the tables? Depending how big you want them is then entirely up to you?

You can buy some tealight holders from somewhere like Ikea (They do a pack of 4 plain ones for 89p) These would look lovely filled with jelly beans or even something else if you went for a variety, plus with them being small then you don't have to spend as much if you went for bigger ones?

Morrisons do packs of 4 glass desert bowls for 99p and these could be filled?

If you kept the selection basic or even to a single style of sweet then you could buy in bulk? again keeping the costs down. Then just add a small sweet scoop to each bowl?

Personally I think this would look brilliant.

I sat the last couple of days and wrapped twilights choccys individually in valentines paper, I haven't finished them yet and I have a meal planned for OH which means he won't get all of them. I plan to put them in his big wine glass just to set infront of his place sitting at the table this evening