Tips for setting a beautiful guest table

At a wedding, where does a guest spend the most time? Possible answers include A) the dance floor, B) the (open/cash) bar and C) their tables. There’s not a lot you can do about decorating the dance floor and the only thing you can really decorate a bar with is pretty bottles of alcohol. So you should spend your time and energy decorating the guest tables.

Flickr photo by lisarunolfson

The table above is super fancy. I’m not suggesting that my tips will make your guest tables look like this, but you can take different things from this example and the others I found on Flickr to make your wedding look all the nicer.

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Baby shower decoration ideas

If you want ideas for how to decorate a baby shower, you should not look to my recently passed baby shower for my second son. I’m not knocking my husband, who planned the event, but it was the bare minimum of baby showers. The shower was held at Dave & Busters, since I wanted it to be a co-ed event. My brother brought blue and brown balloons, the colors we had decided on. When you have a party at Dave & Busters, they take care of the food setup, plates, napkins and tablecloths, so all that is taken care of. But there were no favors and hardly any of the traditional shower games. (But at least I had a baby shower this time — my first son was early, so I didn’t have a shower at all.)

Thank God the cake, at the very least, was adorable.

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Wedding cakes from the Bombshell Bakery

Looking for the perfect wedding cake? Trying to find someone to create the perfect cake for your perfect day is just one of the many difficult tasks you’ll face when planning your wedding. If my opinion matters at all, I’d like you to consider Kathleen Gutierrez of The Bombshell Bakery to create your wedding cake.

Kathleen is an old college friend of mine. We worked together at our college newspaper, where I was executive editor and she served as the entertainment editor, so I can personally attest to her work ethic. She’s also a hilarious person with empathy for the stressed-out bride, since she’s been in that particular position for, oh, about a year now.

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Decorate your buffet table with food

I could probably create a whole new category on decorating buffet tables. I really like buffet tables, as a decorator — odd, I know, but the bigger table gives you more canvas to work with, so to speak, and it doesn’t to be as exacting as, say, draping a sweetheart table or a head table. That’s just my opinion, of course. Recently, my undercover wedding attender was at a wedding that made some genius decorating choices at the La Venta Inn in Palos Verdes Estates.

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Garden wedding decorations

Even as the weather cools, there’s nothing more romantic looking than a garden wedding. There’s really no one way to decorate a garden for a wedding — you can go as elaborate as this one, at the Arroyo Trabuco Golf Club in Mission Viejo, with flower arrangements and rose petals lining the aisle, plus hanging bowls of flowers along the sides. Most of the attention was paid to the aisle decorations, and the square-shaped arch is pretty simple.

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Recap: Holy Matrimony Batman!

What is this you ask? Well, first, this was the wedding of my friend Moonie, more popularly known as the editor and publisher of Flavor and its predecessor Pinoylife. He decided to get married on Oct. 1, the peak of the fire season and sure enough – a brush fire was burning the hills of Burbank the day of his wedding and reception, which was at the Castaway, nestled right in the hills of Burbank. Oh, and yeah, my family and I also decorated the wedding, so we got to deal with all the fun wrangling with the Burbank police and fire departments, trying to get past the roadblocks so we could unload all our flowers and equipment. Now, I can put “decorating amidst brush fire” up there along with “decorating amidst Long Beach Grand Prix” on my list of things I’ve done as a florist’s daughter.

There’s the water-dropping helicopter flying into the hills, as my mom and her teacher Silverio feverishly put together their arrangements.

I thought this was a nice environmental photo of my mom – what do you think?

Oh, yeah – besides decorating amidst the flames, we attended the wedding too. I was so tired at the end of the night….. Unfortunately, to Moonie’s disappointment, there was no flames lighting the hills as the reception went on. This was, however, the most fun and crazy wedding I’ve ever seen – and I’ve seen plenty. May King Choc Nut live on!

Lovella looked absolutely beautiful and actually, clicking through their online wedding proofs, she was absolutely photogenic this night too. Too bad I can’t say the same for the other female in this picture…. *ugh*
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