Selecting a Centerpiece Vase

Rebecca Henry: Hi, I am Rebecca, co-owner of Petal's Edge Floral Design in Alexandria, Virginia and today we are learning how to make a wedding centerpiece. In this clip, we will be talking about different types of vases and how to pick the right vase for your centerpiece. Just to go over some of the different kinds of vases you will find out there, obviously, there are lot of different kinds of vases in glass. This one happens to be a footed bowl, a very popular one right now is the Square Glass Vase. That's a really great centerpiece. It's a good size and it's a good shape for a wedding centerpiece.

Similarly, a Cylinder Vase about the same size is also a great choice for a wedding centerpiece. Other possibilities include ceramic, this happens to be a ceramic bowl, but you can also find different kinds of ceramics. You can even use things like teapots or teacups or anything you happen to have that you really like if you have enough of them for your different tables and metal gold or silver, brass or bronze anything that you happen to like if you see them, that's a possibility too. This happens to be a Silver Footed Bowl. I will talk about these guys in a second but let's talk a little bit about the size you want to use for your wedding centerpiece.

If you are seating your guest at a five and a half foot or six foot round table which usually seats about 10-12 people anywhere from 8-12 actually, then you want to pick the right size centerpiece. You want to make sure that your vase and the opening of your container is at least five inches in diameter or wider. You need to have enough of -- the centerpiece has to have enough presence on the table to take up that open space in the center, but not so big that the flowers are falling into your guests' drinks. These containers here are really good for that. They are the right size, the right opening. They also -- and one think to consider is how high that vase is. You want to avoid a vase that's going to be too high so that when the flowers are in it, they are right in people's line of sight.

Right here we have a vase that would be an example of choosing something that would be too high for your guests. If a guest is seated here and you put flowers on top of this or even something that's just even a little shorter than this, you are going to wind up with the flowers right in their face and they are going to take it right off of the table. So be very careful in thinking about that. A vase like this or like this, not only are they little too narrow in their opening, but because they are a longer, taller vase, you will want to put flowers that are bigger and longer in the vase so that the whole overall height of the centerpiece becomes so tall, but again, the flowers would be in your guests' vision, not a good idea. Save these vases for things like placecard tables or places where people don't have to look through the flowers.

You can also put your bouquets in vase of this shape and then there is all sorts of great funky shape vases like this cool snail shape vase. This could definitely be used as a centerpiece, maybe in concert with another one or a set of three of these kind of vases. Filling them is kind of tricky. You will get a very modern design, something that fits inside the vase where the flowers heads are inside there or where the flowers are popping off to the side on a slant. So you want to be consider when you think about unusual shape vases, think about the size of them and the way the flowers will fit in the vase before selecting those. I would recommend if this is the first time you are doing this, picking something really basic like a footed bowl or a glass vase.

Next, we will start demonstrating the different techniques for the flower arrangements. We will do a simple centerpiece in a glass vase with some glass arranging beads to hold the flowers in place.