herbs make great centerpieces

It has been so much fun thinking back on my wedding, which was one year ago on the 19th. Craig and I had a lot of fun planning our wedding and putting together a celebratory weekend without spending a ridiculous amount of moolah. One of the ways we saved a ton of money was growing our own herbs that we then potted and used as table centerpieces and decoration. These also doubled as our wedding favors, as guests could choose a potted herb to take home.

We grew parsley, thyme, oregano, and rosemary. The parsley, thyme, and oregano I grew from seed, and I bought rosemary starts because, well, rosemary is gorgeous! But rosemary takes quite a long time to grow.

After starting the seeds indoors, I put the trays outside for a few weeks late last spring and then potted the herbs in 4″ pots I got a great deal on at A.C. Moore (4 for a $1).

Herbs... hangin’ out in trays by the tomatoes and eggplants.

I used trays that I got from asking nicely at Home Depot and Lowe’s to put the pots in. These worked so well to transport the herbs by car to our ceremony location in Northern NH up in the mountains at the Attitash Grand Summit Hotel. We put the trays in the back of our car and even with the usual jostling involved in travel, they held up great. Once we were at the hotel, I sunned the herbs outside for a day before delivering them to the ballroom.

We arranged some of the pots on the tables along with river rocks and votive candles.

I had made labels for the herbs incorporating design details from our wedding invitations and wedding website.

On our wedding day we hiked to the summit of Mt. Washington and got married at the top. At our reception that evening, we named the tables after mountains we had hiked together that we loved.

The staff did a great job decorating. They also used some of the potted herbs for the long buffet table.

Total out of pocket cost for the centerpieces, decorations, and favors combined was around $60 and covered the cost of 120 terra cotta pots, soil, seeds, rosemary plants, river rocks, and candles. Not too shabby.

Tags: herbs, summer

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 25th, 2010 at 10:58 pm and is filed under Reduce Reuse Recycle, The Growing Season. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.