How to Decorate the Food Tables at a Wedding Reception
While much fanfare is given to centerpieces, wedding favors and the color of the bridesmaid dresses, little emphasis is placed on the food tables. Nonetheless, food tables occupy a sizable portion of a reception area and should be decorated as well. With some paper, foliage and layering, the food tables can look just as spectacular as the rest of the wedding and complement your style perfectly.
Other People Are Reading
Things You'll Need
- Card stock
- Fonts, great handwriting or stencils
- Plants and/or flowers
- Balloons and/or paper poms
- Tiered serving trays
Instructions
-
Make Placards for the Dishes
-
1
Go to any crafts store and select sheets of thick paper that complement the color scheme of your wedding. Just like brides make placards for their guests for the purposes of seating them, placards can also describe the name of the dish, along with the ingredients.
-
2
Fold the card stock in half: if the paper flattens from its propped-up "/\" shape, thicker paper should be chosen.
-
-
3
Choose the desired font and type the name and ingredients of the food, or write it by hand on a sheet of paper.
-
4
Cut out the label and glue it onto the folded card stock. Decorate the placard as desired, using ribbons, stickers or other adornments. Martha Stewart Weddings online offers a list of card displays you can use for seating or for your food table.
-
5
Prop up the completed placard and place next to each dish.
Use Foliage
-
6
Choose hearty flowers. If you decorate the food tables with flowers, use tough flowers that are unaffected by temperature from hot foods and do not bend easily. Weddingchannel.com explains that some of the heartiest wedding flowers are birds of paradise, calla lilies, carnations, chrysanthemums, day lilies, sunflowers and roses.
-
7
Place flowers on the sides of the table, or even directly on trays. Place flowers so they are fully visible, remembering that guests will be looking down on them and not eye-level. This step may require you to stick the stems in foam from a floral or craft store. The book "Creative Wedding Decorations You Can Make" lists other items such as curly willow, moss and wood to enhance the do-it-yourself look.
-
8
Place plants on the table. In comparison with flowers, potted plants occupy a large amount of space for less money per square inch. Some tropical plants, like bromiliads, are very colorful, too.
Layer the Table
-
9
Use balloons or paper poms. These two items add height and color to the food table. While many tables limit presentation to a horizontal plane, think vertically by adding objects such as balloons and paper poms to enhance the area above the food.
-
10
Make a "staircase" table. In continuation with "vertical" decoration, use heavy, flat objects (like small cardboard boxes full of books) to create tiers on which to place the food. Place the table cloth over these tiers.
-
11
Use tiered trays. Pastries like petit fours are routinely placed on tiered trays. Consider using these trays for other foods such as mini-appetizers, cheese cubes or other small finger-foods. Tiered trays add depth to the table and can make certain colors in the foods stand out.
-
1
