Happy Monday, lovebirds! We have quite the treat for you today. Amy Petersen from Kneaders Bakery and Cafe (a dearly beloved #UVBvendor of ours!) is with us to share her top three tips for creating the perfect table display. Read through them and find endless inspiration.
Then, head over to our Instagram feed (@utahvalleybride) and enter a $500 GIVEAWAY to win Kneaders catering at your wedding! WE KNOW. eek!!
Weddings On The Shelf by Kneaders with Corporate Retail Designer, Amy Petersen
Just engaged? Then hang on tight because the wedding planning roller coaster is about to get real! Your normal routine is a thing of the past and has suddenly been replaced with an obsession for finding the perfect flowers, dresses, invitations, caterers, music, food, and who you should seat your awesome but crazy Aunt Mary next to at the luncheon (trust us; we all have one)! With all of that going on, the last thing you need to worry about is how to create beautiful table displays for your guests to “ooooh” and “ahhhhh” over, so we brought in an expert to help you out. Brides, meet Amy Peterson, Corporate Retail Designer for Kneaders Bakery and Cafe. Amy designs the beautiful decor collections you see in the Kneaders corporate stores and on their newly launched e-commerce store On the Shelf, which offers specialty decor, food and gifts to customers all over the United States. Below, we share Amy’s top tips for wowing guests at your wedding!
1. Get Personal. It’s important for you, the bride, to personalize your wedding so that your flowers, colors and decor come from your heart and represent your love story. Remember, some of your guests may only know your romantic story through the little information on your invitation, so when they come to your event, they want to know more about you, your groom and the story of your romance. To get started, I suggest making a list of all the things in your relationship that have come to mean something special to you and your fiancé. Then, make a list of all the things that have come to mean something special in your family and in your fiancé’s family. My husband lived in Scotland for a time, and when our guests arrived to our reception to the sound of bagpipes, there was no mistaking they were at our wedding! Your guests should know when they have arrived at your wedding event, because it will feel like you and your husband! If you fell in love over Kneaders carrot cake, then serve Kneaders carrot cake and share your story. If you met at Barnes and Noble, decorate with beautiful books. My mom, Colleen, has always loved gardenia flowers, and when she got married, guests were met with the scent of gardenias which adorned everything from her decor to her stunning headpiece. There was no mistaking that guests had arrived at her wedding when they came to celebrate her love story. As the Corporate Retail Designer, I begin my collections with one amazing piece; it could be a quote that reminds me of my childhood, a great color, something I’m currently obsessed with, or a personal favorite. Because Kneaders is a family business, family is the heart and soul of our brand. Many collections are centered around family! After I find that one piece then I pull in accent pieces that reinforce the emotion of the story the main idea. This helps our guests feel the personal nature of our collection-like they are part of our journey.
NOTE: Keep a list of personal sentiments on your phone. Add to it when inspiration strikes and highlight the thoughts that make you feel the most emotional. Those are the sentiments you want to focus on in your hunt for the perfect table display items.
2. Choose a Theme. After you have chosen your one personalized piece to build around, the next step is to choose a theme. When thinking specifically about wedding decor collections, it’s important for a bride to be personal. Creating your theme from what speaks to your heart will let your guests know they have stepped into YOUR wedding. If you are planning a farmhouse wedding, you could lean toward simple, rustic, light table display ideas. Maybe you want a more modern style, then look for straight lines, simple greenery and more geometric shaped place settings and accessory items. Perhaps you want the elegant garden wedding that you have been planning since you were a little girl, you might want to look for full florals, more traditional shapes and textures and decor items with curve. Once I have a theme direction for my retail display, I create a photo collection of the theme I want to emulate and then the real fun begins. I start a search to find the products I want. Creating a personalized theme vision board of the exact items you want from your own photo collections will also help you know exactly what you are looking for, which is going to make your search easier and more successful. Whatever your special wedding theme is, you should be in love with what it represents. If it represents your story, your guests will love it, too!
NOTE: Creating a theme vision board of the exact items you want from your photo collections, will also help you know exactly what you are looking for which will make your search easier and more successful.
3. Balance Your Act. Although your wedding obsession may not feel very balanced, with just a few small staging tips, you can create beautifully balanced and dramatic tables and displays. Balance means that while things might not be the same as each other, every piece of decor in a collection has a visual “weight.” Visual weight may come from the actual size of a piece, the color of the item or the physical material from which a piece is made. A balanced display flows in presentation, which means the pieces of your display complement one another and are proportioned to the display space they are featured in. If you have a collection that is just not working, step back and look at the table or display. I find that when I’m struggling with a display in the store or for On the Shelf, it usually comes down to balance. If something doesn’t seem quite right to you in your collection, that’s your intuition telling you that the balance is off. Don’t ignore that feeling because if it doesn’t feel good to you, it won’t appeal to your guests either. One way to create seamless balance is to position items of varying sizes in groups. I call this exercise in elimination “grouping,” which is an easy way to start a larger display typical of wedding tables. Placing the tallest item at the back of the display, the next tallest item slightly to one side, and the smallest item in front and toward the inside of your grouping, will create an eye-pleasing cascade effect. Practice makes perfect, so play around with spacing items in groups of three at home until your eye peruses the collection without noticing gaps. When you love it, you know you have a balanced group!
NOTE: You can make visual collection boards on Pinterest of items that you think tell your story and flow well together. Once you have a few different boards, you can use them as a guide for the type of collection you want and you can start practicing your own grouping exercises. Eventually, you will find the look you love, which will save you time and energy when buying items for your display collection at your actual event.
The most important part of decorating for your wedding is to enjoy telling your story. Incorporating basic design principles will help guide your story into organized reality. After all, this is your Happily Ever After!