Wedding Gazette

Holiday Wedding Decorations

By Jennifer Baumann

Decorating for your wedding at holiday time can be kind of a gimme - there's already so much stuff everywhere. And if you're looking for some more unusual ways to decorate your holiday wedding, we've got some great ideas for that, too.

Church Decorations

• Line the sidewalk leading up to the church with Holiday luminaries, a Mexican Christmas tradition. You can buy them at craft stores anywhere, or you can create your own design.
• Make wreaths out of holly, pine boughs, pine cones, and grapvine. Hang them on sanctuary doors, behind the altar, or on the doors to the church.
• Instead of bridesmaid bouquets, use these old-fashioned Victorian traditions for a more unusual look with a Holiday theme: make large grapevine "hoops" for the bridesmaids to carry. Deocrate with long ribbons, bells, or dried flowers. Or, have them each carry candles in antique hurricane lamps.
• Line the floor of the aisle with garland runners, perhaps sprinkled with flocking or wound with twinkle lights.
• Poinsettias make the perfect altar flowers - surround the base of the altar with the potted flowers for an easy decoration. Then, donate them to the church for the remainder of the holidays.
• Have the entire service in candlelight.

Reception Decorations

• If there's a fireplace, be sure you light that fire. And don't forget to decorate the mantel with pine boughs strung with holly and twinkle lights.
• Purchase full-size or oversize Christmas trees and simply string with white lights for an awe-inspiring Christmas effect.
• For more of a Winter Wonderland, "plant" bare tree branches in pots of plaster of Paris. String with white twinkle lights; flock trees and centerpieces with faux snow; make paper chains or hanging decorations to look like snowflakes; use white tuberoses, amaryllis, or other white forced bulbs for centerpieces that are wintry white. And, there's always ice sculpture!
• Candlight always warms the room in winter. Float candles in clear bowls for centerpieces; place old fashioned hurricane lamps with candles on gift, buffet, and guestbook tables.
• If it's snow and ice you're into, think blues: pale, pale sky blue, royal blue, night-sky navy blue. All look gorgeous separately when mixed with silver or white, but they also hold up very well together for a wintry Holiday effect.

Centerpiece Ideas

• Ask your baker if they make decorated gingerbread houses.
• Wrap mini Christmas trees with battery-powered strings of lights.
• Use wrapped mini gifts of different shapes and sizes in your wedding colors.
• Use pillar candles in hurricane glass, or surrounded by garland-and-holly wreaths.
• Mini sleighs are available at most craft stores. Fill sleighs with Holiday candies, favors for the guests, or the table card.
• Use white candles in clear votives and sprinkle white table linens with white and silver confetti shaped like snowflakes, or stars.