Themes for Your Wedding

As weddings get more expensive and involved, brides and grooms are looking to find ways to make their wedding stand out in the crowd without breaking the bank. A great way to throw a fun wedding is to design it around a central theme, which often provides creative, inexpensive ideas for centerpieces, decor and catering and provides an entertaining atmosphere for your guests. You want a theme that represents your life together as a couple, and here are some ideas for developing your own theme.

The Honeymoon

Your honeymoon is a great place to start looking at your wedding theme. Designing your wedding around an exotic location can be a lot of fun, just be careful that you don't go too far, a theme is one thing, tacky is another. Here are some examples of honeymoon inspired themes:

The Beach Wedding:
Catering: Surf and turf. If you can find a caterer who can do a luau-style pig roast, these are tons of fun and everyone will remember the food! Ask the bar to stock margarita and pina colada mixes.
Centerpieces: A few tropical flowers and seashells on a mirrored plate or charger with some tea lights is inexpensive and easy to do. Just stay away from using real sand, it can get into the food and ruin your catering.
Decor: It's so easy to go too far with a beach theme! You can do most of your themed decor just in the colors of the linens you choose. Beaches are colorful, and you can pick your colors from a picture of a beach scape or even more romantic, an ocean sunset. Raffia ribbon can add the look of "Tiki" without resorting to setting up grass huts. Tie some raffia bows around your bar and catering table for a beachy feel.
For More Fun: Add a limbo contest to your DJ's dance mix. Make sure your photographer gets tons of pictures!

The Vegas Wedding:
Catering: A buffet! What else would you expect from Vegas?
Centerpieces: You can name and design each table around a popular hotel on the Las Vegas Strip and design centerpieces around each of them to avoid being too themey. For example, the Flamingo table could have a glass bowl of pink and yellow flowers, the Bellagio could have a shallow bowl of water with floating candles. If you're good with Internet auctions, you could purchase decks of cards from each of the hotels and write the table assignments on the face of the cards for guests to find their table at the beginning of the reception.
Decor: Las Vegas is full of lights, and while a neon reception might not be what you're looking for, you can get the same effect draping shiny, colorful fabrics around your reception hall.
For More Fun: Consider hiring a band that specializes in Rat Pack songs, there are some wonderful love songs in that songbook perfect for a first dance. You can also rent game tables, dealers and supplies and set up a mini Monte Carlo night.

The European Wedding:
Catering: French, Irish, German, English, Spanish, wherever you're headed on your trip, there's a catering menu for you! If you're doing a tour of Europe you might want to have a sampling for each country you'll be visiting, guests will love the variety.
Centerpieces: You can base each centerpiece on the country/countries you'll be visiting. Scour Internet auction sites for folk art from those countries that will fit well on a table, add some flowers and small candles and you're ready to go.
For More Fun: Incorporate some of the wedding customs from the country you choose into your own reception. For example, if you're going for a Spanish theme you might want to ask the best man to write a poem for the bride, as is customary in a Spanish wedding. Depending on your best man's sense of humor, it could be the most memorable part of the night.

Memories

At a wedding, it's natural to think back to the beginning. Where did you have your first date? Your first dinner? Your first kiss? What were your memories of growing up? Of your family? As much as weddings are about the future, your future, specifically, they are also about the past. Here are some ideas for a truly "memorable" wedding:

Dinner and a movie, the first date:
Catering: You never know, that first restaurant where you met for dinner just might be able to cater your wedding, and how romantic is that! If not, you can probably find a caterer who can at least get close.
Centerpieces: A movie theme is so easy, scour the web for stills and posters from the great romances, Casablanca, Gone with the Wind, even modern love stories like Sleepless in Seattle. Print or order them in 8x10 inch size and buy some inexpensive frames from your local dollar store. A few flowers and candles and you've got an instant centerpiece. Name each table after the movie represented and print out tickets with the movie title and the guest's name for their seat assignments.
Decor: It's not just a movie, it's a red carpet event! Rent a red carpet, and, if you're feeling like adding a fun touch to the atmosphere, some red velvet ropes. Guests can walk down the red carpet as they enter your reception. Have your photographer take some red carpet shots so they get the full Oscar experience.
For More Fun: Have the DJ mix in some romantic and funny lines from great movies, easily recognizable, to segue between some songs. You can find these all over the Internet and occasionally on some movie soundtracks.

Weddings of the past:
Catering: Anything goes with this option, but if you really want to save money, you can ask members of your families to prepare "signature" family dishes and create a delicious, inexpensive and memorable buffet you know everyone is sure to love.
Centerpieces: Raid your family's stash of wedding photos, from your parents on. The older and more generations down you can go, the better. Print 8x10 copies of the pictures to keep the originals safe and sound and frame them among candles and flowers. Your guests will enjoy walking from table to table to see the photos from the past. You can create aged bouquets of dried flowers by tying ribbon around the stems, a great way to give your tables an antique feel, and the flowers will be much less expensive.
Decor: Creams and beiges will set off your old photographs beautifully. Stick with traditional wedding decor, after all, the theme is weddings.
For More Fun: Before the wedding, ask all of your married guests to send a copy of their wedding picture and a brief, memorable moment from their own weddings. Put them together in a wedding scrapbook on display at your reception for guests to browse through. On the first page, put only your names and the date, and leave yourself plenty of room to add your own picture and wedding story.

Be Romantic

Weddings are all about love and can bring out the romantic in anyone, and there is nothing more romantic than a love poem. Here is a theme guaranteed to keep Cupid fluttering around your wedding:

The Poet:
Catering: You don't need much different to cater this event, but some standard romantic foods like chocolate covered strawberries add a nice touch.
Centerpieces: Print out excerpts or whole poems in a script font on nice paper and put them in a frame. You can buy a tall feather, spray paint it gold or silver and set it in a small glass jar like a quill in an inkwell. Add a candle in a glass or a small oil hurricane lamp and you have a very poetic centerpiece. Name each table after the poet who wrote that table's featured poem.
Decor: You can go two different ways with this one, light pastels and metallic with cream or white, or deep, rich colors like you would find in an old library. Both fit easily into the theme.
For More Fun: Instead of buying a traditional wedding guest book, get a nice, hardcover edition of love poems. Let each guest sign on the page if his or her favorite poem.

You can also design wedding themes around the seasons, your hobbies, or a common interest you both share. Throwing a creative, tasteful themed wedding is a great way to ensure that your guests will still be talking about it on your anniversary.