Wedding Centrepieces: A Photographer's Perspective

This is really interesting (and funny too). An article by Durham wedding photographer Cliff Spicer, offering his unique point-of-view on how your wedding centrepieces will affect not only the decor, but also the social interaction among your guests, and the photography as well.

I want to give you another wedding photography tip, but this time it is indirectly related to photography but still important. One of the big mistakes couples and decorators make at weddings (in my opinion of course) and then give you my top 5 centerpiece tips.

One of the things I see at so many weddings is large centerpieces on the tables. While these may look nice, they can be a terrible choice for a few reasons. With a large round table most guests have no easy way to talk to people on the other side of the table if they can't see them and they end up talking all night to the people beside them who they already know. The big problem with this is that the other guests have embarrassing stories about you that they can't easily share with everyone at their table. Without these new stories there will be nothing new for people to smirk about every time they see you after your wedding.

The other big problem is that the guests like to take photos at the wedding and the best subjects are those who are at their tables. They usually post these on places like Facebook and if they can't see around the monstrous thing in the middle of the table you are going to miss photos of things that took place at your wedding that you had no idea about.

With all that said, if you love these large center pieces and have them at your wedding and I am the photographer, I will make sure to tell you how awesome they look and that they fit perfectly in with the rest of the decor. Hope you don't mind a photographer giving you decorating advice?

Cliff's Top 5 Wedding Centerpiece Tips

1. Keep your centerpieces small so guests can see around it and talk to each other
2. If you are going to be giving the centerpieces away make sure not to fill them with anything too heavy
3. Be original  and pick something that is unique to you such as hand painted flower pots with trees the guests can plant
4. Make sure that whatever you pick as your table centerpiece it is something you would have in your home and that the guests would want to dance around for
5. Skip the centerpieces all together and give each guest  something personal that is nicely presented to them and write a small handwritten note on each one to thank them. I love to see things personalize at weddings and I think the quests see how important they are if you take the time to use their name and thank them personally. I am sure florists would have other great suggestions what also might work.

Photos? Examples?

I would love to post some photos of centerpieces that I think don't cut it but I don't want to offend any of my clients by using photos of their centerpieces and I don't want to take someone else's images without permission. So, I thought I would give you some links to some photos that you can check out for yourself.

• At Least the base is clear, ahhh, Bob is that you over there?
• Watch your eyes and hope there is no wind
• Someone is going to get hurt with this one
• Watch your eyes when you stand up to go to the bathroom
• Not sure if this is the centerpiece or the salad