Wedding Table Centerpieces

I'm getting married by the seashore in May 2010. Being such a lover of the seaside and all things beachy I have decided to have a wedding with a nautical/seashore theme. Having begun to research my theme, I am amazed at the extent of ideas and lovely beach themed wedding related items that are out there. Although I do love flowers, my biggest bugbear with budgeting for this wedding was the thought of spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars on flowers as wedding table centerpieces. I now realise I can improvise and make my own beach centerpieces without much fuss or expense. So I am now writing a series of blog posts focusing on a few of my ideas for my beach themed wedding table centerpieces. 

Post One - Focus on Fish Bowl Centerpieces

I love the idea of fish bowl beach centerpieces because a fish bowl is so simple, yet extremely effective. You could really go to town varying each individual centerpiece or you could keep them all very much the same. Here are a few suggestions:

1) Layer sand in the base of the fish bowl, put a candle in the center and decorate around it with pretty shells and starfish. The addition of coral or artificial shellfish could really enhance the ocean effect of these beach centerpieces. 

2) You could fill your fish bowl with polished coloured glass, collected from rock pools and gravelly beaches, then top off with a few exotic blooms such as orchids or tropical tuberoses.

3) Filling your fish bowl with water and adding real, live goldfish would make a surefire talking point at your reception but is not terribly humane and you may offend a few guests or worse still end up with some dead fish on your hands. 

4) Coloured sand (such as Children's Moon Sand) could be layered and topped with fish or pebbles. 

5) You could fill the fish bowl with water and use dye to colour the water to match you wedding color scheme. Then add long stem flowers or cut flower heads such as white chrysanthemum blooms. Alternatively floating candles would ensure romantic and peaceful beach centerpieces. 

6) My final suggestion would be more suitable for a gothic style wedding, but you could make your waters rather murky and add frogspawn and tadpoles. Again this would be a real talking point. 

Whatever you opt for there are many elements you can add or substitute to jazz up you beach centerpieces and really make them memorable. Setting your fishbowl on a mirror reflects your creation and you could make it really dramatic by lighting candles on the corners of the mirror or covering the mirror with tiny little lights which shine up and into the fish bowls. Diamond ice, confetti, ribbons, petals, shells, artificial crabs and lobsters are all items you might like to incorporate into your beach centerpiece designs.