Church and ceremony pew decorations


Decorating pews for the ceremony can be difficult. Not all wedding ceremonies are performed in churches, and sometimes churches are the most difficult places to decorate of all. A lot of churches, especially Catholic churches in my experience, do not allow tape on their pews of any kind, so trying to attach some sort of decoration on pews usually ends up with a wrestling match between you and some rubber bands. There are also clips, but those slip off easily, and you don’t want a flower arrangement slipping off as you walk down the aisle in your full-skirted wedding dress.

Above is a picture from a wedding in which I was a bridesmaid a few years ago.

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Wedding decorations for sale

I knew this time would eventually come — time to sell some of my mom’s wedding decorations. At this time, it’s time to sell some of her draping materials.

If you follow Wedding Decorator regularly, you probably have recognized many of the materials that are for sale in the pictures I’ve posted. For example, you’ll recognize both the baby blue sequin fabric and charmeuse in one of the pictures in this post about head table decorations.

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Elaborate Backdrops

Most of the backdrops I’ve ever decorated have used columns, balustrades and colonnades. However, most backdrops, I’ve found, have been on straight PVC frames like the one below.

There are several benefits to decorating a straight frame, rather than a combination of columns or colonnades.

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Wedding in a church gym

Katie and Dustin, a couple whose wedding was photographed by my friend Lori, are a couple of smart cookies. They’re budget conscious — and who isn’t these days? — so both their families pitched in to help make their wedding a spectacular event.

By Lori Anderson Photography

Has your church gym/rec room ever looked like this? Yeah, me neither. Let’s take a closer look at all the details.

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How to decorate a simple head table and backdrop

Very quietly, I added a Contact form to this site, and a few people have been using it to ask how to do certain things they’ve seen pictures of on this blog. Here’s one of those questions.

Hi Darleene, I found the attached photo on your blog and had questions regarding they type and width of the fabric used for the head table.. I just love this look and would like to attempt to recreate it for my wedding in September. Any advice you have is greatly appreciated.

Brenda McNemar

The photo she’s talking about is this one:

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Two backdrops and flower balls on branches

I haven’t draped a wedding in years, so I didn’t know what it would be like to put organza back in my hands again. Thankfully, its like riding a bike — you really don’t forget how to do it. I didn’t need to do any tables, which in my opinion is more work, so doing two backdrops was a snap. The day wasn’t without its complications, as is the case with any other wedding, of course. But all in all, it all turned out well.

The decorators happened to have a personal stake in this wedding — the groom was the brother of Sophia Truong, my brother’s design partner. Above is the photo backdrop, in the lobby outside the reception. The location of this backdrop was a pickle — first it was opposite the entryway, then it was along the far adjacent wall, then we had to move it all the way next to the entryway. That would be why that last column seems to be a little too far from the rest, a fact I only noticed when looking over the photos.

And, I’d like to point out that my sister did the majority of the work on this backdrop. I mostly just finished it off. I think I’ve taught her pretty well!

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Preview: Orange and pink at the Universal Hilton

I draped a couple of backdrops for my brother and his design partner Saturday for the first time in a few years. I forgot how much fun it was to see my work go up!

I ordinarily would not have paired orange and pink together, but it came out surprisingly well. Kind of like a rainbow sherbert backdrop. Anyway, I’ll have more and more photos soon!