How to Decorate for a Valentine Banquet With Wedding Dresses

Wedding dresses represent marriage and love.

Wedding dresses are a widely recognized symbol of romance and love, making them an appropriate material and inspiration in decorating for a Valentine's Day banquet. The dresses can be used intact or they can be cut into pieces to lend it themselves to a wide array of decor elements. The wedding dresses can reflect a certain theme, such as a specific dress style or fashion era, or can simply serve as a varied compilation of wedding dresses that invoke feelings of nostalgia, love and romance. Does this Spark an idea?

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Wedding dresses
Mannequins
Centerpiece bases
Blue ribbon
Signs

Instructions

- 1
  
  Choose a theme for the wedding dresses, such as dresses from a certain era, such as the 1980s, or an era theme with a dress to represent each decade. You could also opt to simply collect a random variety of dresses for the decorations.
- 2
  
  Check thrift stores, garage sales and online auctions for wedding dresses to meet your theme specifications. You could also ask friends and family members to donate their old dresses.
- 3
  
  Sort the dresses into two piles: one pile for dresses that can be deconstructed and one pile for dresses that need to remain intact. Some of those donating the dresses for the occasion may want them back, which means you cannot take apart those dresses. Other dresses you may want to keep in one piece to fit your theme or style for the decor.
- 4
  
  Gather old mannequins acquired from thrift stores or even department stores.
- 5
  
  Position the mannequins around the room. Dress each mannequin in a wedding dress. You could opt to choose one dress from each decade for a mannequin or simply choose the most beautiful. In lieu of mannequins, you could also opt to tack the dresses to the walls of the banquet hall, dressing up the walls of the venue.
- 6
  
  Add a sign next to each mannequin denoting the style of dress or the era it originated from, if applicable.
- 7
  
  Cut the skirts off the wedding dresses that you can dismantle. Attach the skirts to the sides of table linens so they line the sides of the tables.
- 8
  
  Cut squares of fabric from the dresses and place them under the centerpiece vases. Gather the material up and around the vases and tie them in place with ribbon around the lips of the vases. Use a blue ribbon as a nod to the old adage, "something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue." It also provides a contrast to the white dress material.