Your wedding day is going to be hectic. It will also be beautiful, goregous, amazing, wonderful, etc., but it will still be incredibly hectic. You’ll probably wake up at 7 AM, even if you’re having an evening wedding. One of the things a bride loves to do before she starts getting ready is making sure the reception hall is ready to go before everything starts for the day. Often the bride, along with some friends and family, will decorate the reception before heading to the ceremony (unless you get lucky and can do it the day before!). Even if you’re planning on hiring a professional wedding decorator (like me!), mapping out your wedding decorations is an amazing time-saver, and a savior of sanity.
Before you decide on your decorations, take a good long look at your reception hall. I can’t think of a hall that wouldn’t let you take an additional tour to decide how to layout your decorations. While you’re there, make a mental map, or a simple sketch of the layout of the hall, where the entrance is, where your bridal party table will be, where to put the buffet, and so on. When you get home, draw a map out of where everything will be. It doesn’t have to be drawn to scale, or anything fancy. By now, you’ve probably figured out that you want tall floral centerpieces for the tables, medium-height floral arrangements by your cake, and candles on the bridal party table. Make a list of all your decorations, and assign each a number or symbol. Take your map, and place a blue dot wherever you want tall candles, or a pink dot where you want short ones.
The following is a very bad sample of a wedding decor map for a reception hall (My Walcom tablet is acting up and I can’t find my laptop mouse, thus forcing me to use MS Paint and the touchpad on my laptop. Not fun).
With a decor map, it really helps make the decorating go much faster and with much less headache. Make a few copies, have everyone look over it, and there should be no questions about what goes where. If you’re unable to see the reception hall decorations before your wedding, a map is even more important so you know whoever may be doing the decorating will be following your wishes.
You can also a decor map for everything from parties to your own home’s decor.
Tags: ceremony, decor, decorations, Kentucky, map, mapping, Ohio, reception, wedding decorations, Weddings, West Virginia
