InTents magazine (you all read this avidly, right?) features us in this month’s magazine. The article, “Fabulous Tablescapes,” includes a photo by our friends Evantide Photography.
Check it out for talk on trends and table-design tips!
Also see these posts:
Tablescapes: Q&A Four
Tablescapes: Q&A Three
Tablescapes: Q&A Two
Tablescapes: Q&A One
Here’s the wedding gallery we promised from Kayla Lynn Photography. Don’t you love the warm, inviting colors this couple chose?
Check out the complete gallery of photos from this Bellingham wedding.
Red and white check linens complement this wedding’s all-American summer feel, where the reception spread included carved watermelon baskets of fruit, jars of cookies and glass bottles of root beer.
For this event, we installed two tents:
See the rest of the wedding photos in our Galleries.
Q: Where’s the balance between blah and overdone when it comes to table decor?
A: That age-old battle of form vs. function comes into play on this one. Since most people we work with seem more concerned with function than form, we take that stance as well.
Our philosophy is that you hit the mark when the table design dovetails with the rest of the event. We’re blessed with such an abundance of breathtaking rural venues in this area. Some of the best table designs we’ve seen have played a supporting role to the event’s setting, either complementing the site with linens of blue and green or contrasting with violets and cherry red.
Kayla Lynn Photography just shared photos — including the one above — with us from a recent event for which we provided red and white check tablecloths (check back for an wedding gallery next week!). It was a humble decor choice, but the result was terrific: an all-American summer feel that complemented the couple’s reception, where they served fruit in carved watermelon baskets, jars of cookies and glass bottles of root beer. It was simple and appropriate, and to us that’s a well-designed tablescape.
Stay away from precarious towers of candles and baubles. It’s a hopeless situation for people who talk with their hands, and really, no guests can have a relaxed conversation with lit tapers tottering between them.
One way we’ve found to keep tablescapes from feeling cluttered is to keep the decorations below guests’ eating and talking spaces (or, alternately, above them).
Use beautiful linens and chargers layered under the dinnerware or on the chairs. Similarly, keep floral arrangements and favors low, or at least in scale with the table, to avoid crowding guests. Short vases stuffed with monochromatic flowers like mums work well with a modern, urban style, while keeping the scale intimate.
Photo by Kayla Lynn Photography
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Q: What colors, themes and decor items are hot for 2011?
A: The trend we see in tabletop rentals is that there is no trend.
Personalization, fueled ironically by Internet access to everyone else’s event ideas, has been the theme for the past several years.
We see trendy color combos trickle in, but the impact is minor. White and black, and often the two together, hold the strong majority.
Brides punch up the neutrals with a color, but of those there’s no favorite. In the last few months we’ve had requests for linen colors ranging from eggplant and royal to goldenrod and sage.
In table rentals, however, we have seen a trend. Though classic eight-seater rounds are still popular, lately we’ve had more and more clients requesting long tables.
There’s debate over which — round tables or banquet tables — is more conducive to conversation, but lately many people have been loving the look of long tables.
We find banquet tables more flexible for decorating than rounds in some ways. We like to use fat runners laid the short way across the table, under each pair of plates, with small bunches of flowers or candles down the centerline. The scale is more intimate than with a single ornate arrangement towering over each round.
Alternately, you can place a runner down the length of a banquet table, or use square or round overlays. With banquets, you don’t run into the awkward symmetry problems round tables pose.
A recent client of ours used two long rows of tables set with white linens. Then she laid colorful runners and ribbons, crisscrossing at intervals, and deep blue napkins on the white plates. See the elegant outcome in the wedding gallery.
Photo by Suzanne Fogarty
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Q: What are some tips for designing on a modest budget?
A: On a budget? Use color!
Just like fresh paint on your walls at home, inexpensive shots of color — in napkins, say — have a big impact on the event space. We recommend using napkins for color because they’re versatile and relatively low-cost, even in specialty fabrics like satin and crush, and everyone needs them anyway.
Even if you serve dinner buffet-style to save money, and the dishes and flatware will be stacked on the buffet tables, we suggest setting out colored napkins at each of your guests’ places. It doesn’t cost anything more, just a few minutes’ time, and you get this rhythm of color swatches down the length of the table that’s striking (see photo above).
One of our brides last summer did this with orange napkins, and she picked up the hue with big red, orange and yellow pom-poms in the ceiling of the tent. The bursts of fiery color seemed to bounce around the white reception space, from table to tent. She got a big impact from a small investment.
Universally, the key to staying within a budget is multitasking equipment. Everything on the table — favors, menus, place cards, linens and napkins, even donation envelopes at a charity gala — can be tapped as a decor item.
Photo by Evantide Photography
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