Table Centerpieces doubling as Wedding Favor Gift Baskets

Table Centerpieces that doubled as DIY gift baskets / wedding favors. Many of you know that Lodi and I got married on June 11th. It was an outdoor wedding with kind of a casual theme and only about 20 of us on a beautiful paddle boat. It was just wonderful and I’m so glad we chose to have a small wedding and then a big shindig later in the year for the reception. It took so much stress off and really let us focus on each other, the whole day and spending time with the people we love the most. For the ceremony we wanted to dress up the tables on the boat and racked our brains for months looking for ideas.

As you might imagine we did as much ourselves for both events as we could as we are do it yourselfers after all! (Not to mention quite frugal…) One thing I love about planning things out so far ahead of time is that it gives us the opportunity to really brainstorm.

We knew we wanted table centerpieces on the boat and started out considering mason jars, little lights, flowers, maybe pine cones, maybe peonies, maybe fake flowers etc.

There are about a gazillion different to dress a table!

We absolutely planned on one thing for sure though and that was we wanted to use mason jars and twinkling lights in some way.

Simple enough and farmhouse pretty.

It was when we started looking at wedding favors and keepsakes though when the light bulb went off.

There are loads of customizable wedding favors out there but, at least in my opinion, not that many that most people are even going to keep for very long.

I looked at magnets and even customizable candles. There’s always the can coozie idea too but we would have to buy a minimum of 50 0f them and, again, I didn’t want to spend a bunch of money on something that would probably be tossed anyway.

(Seems to me most wedding budgets are about 80% nonsense… You can imagine that wastefulness is something I can not participate in.)

That’s when I found The Knot website and I got really excited!

We could take out two birds with one stone: Etched mason jars as a keepsake that we absolutely could fill with twinkle lights!

On the jars we had our names, the date of the wedding and “Better Together” put on the side on them. This is where we ordered them.

From there it was a question of what else… we needed to put the mason jars ON something or have something around them to make real table centerpieces.

I loved the idea of wrapping flowers and greenery around the jars plus adding twinkle lights all over the tables but we were going to be on a boat… wind was going to be a thing.

So that moved me to the idea of decorative boxes or trays and then that led me to baskets.

BOOM LIGHTBULB

Table centerpieces that would double as gift baskets!

We were only going to be on the boat for a couple of hours so it would make clean up a total breeze, every household would literally just be taking our table centerpieces home with them!

With the basket idea came the picnic basket theme (we’re in a national park – picnics are absolutely the theme lol) so I also purchased red checker napkins that were plenty large enough to look like a little table cloth to put under each basket.

These are the baskets we used.
Here are the Twinkle Lights.
These are the checkered napkins.

The baskets would even double as weights to keep our “table cloths” in place too.

From there Lodi and I had so much fun filling them up!

Just a few days before the wedding we hit our local main street and explored all our little town had to offer. We found locally made popcorn, coffee, honey, jerky, candy, seasonings, soaps, you name it!

We had so much fun choosing what to add!

One awesome thing about having such a small ceremony was that we could afford to spoil our select loved ones that joined us that day.

I purchased faux peonies and greenery to create bouquets in the mason jars too.

I put my own wedding bouquet together using faux hydrangeas and lilies of the valley too.

All three types of flowers are significant as my Grandma grew them all here on the farm and now so am I 🙂

As table centerpieces I think they turned out absolutely perfect! Lodi’s choice of red velvet cupcakes echoed the red checkered table cloths on the boat too.

It was totally sweet watching our guests exit the boat with their little picnic baskets in hand and everyone enjoyed their snacks for the whole boat ride. (The boat offered bottled drinks and we brought drinks in a cooler as well or else we also would have put a bottle of water in each basket.)

Here’s the list of what ended up in each basket:

Keepsake etched mason Jar
Peony and greenery bouquet
Twinkle fairy lights
Locally made cheddar & caramel popcorn
Locally made assorted jelly beans
Locally made dragon fruit suckers
Locally made BBQ seasoning mix
Bagged mixed nuts (purchased locally)
Small wood wick candle (purchased locally)
National park keepsake magnet (purchased locally)

To save a little money we purchased the mixed nuts and popcorn in bulk and bagged them individually ourselves.

I loved that so much of what we added was supporting our local small businesses too!

(The awesome photos of the baskets are due to our incredible photographer: Flo Bretz Photography.)