DIY Photo Lantern Centerpieces

Photo by Dexter Davis

And now for my favorite DIY wedding project, my photo lantern centerpieces! I decided to do lanterns because I wanted something I could personalize and thought they went perfectly with the lodge-y style of my venue. I got a ton of compliments on these and they were a great conversation starter during dinner.

Instead of using table numbers, I named the tables after important places in our lives. For example, we had a "Linden" table (the street I grew up on), a "Russell" table (the dorm where we met) and a "Bellevue" table (the park where he proposed). There were a few a few cases where I had to get a little creative to keep the names elegant - rather than name a table "Jackson Hole" to commemorate our Wyoming vacation, I decided to go with "The Granary," which is an amazing restaurant we went to on the trip. Each lantern had text explaining the meaning behind the table name on two sides and a photo from that location on the other two sides.

Photo by Dexter Davis

The whole project probably took about 5 hours, including writing table descriptions, hunting for photos, formatting, printing and assembling. Pretty quick compared to DIY invitations! I should specify that I made the lanterns only - my amazing florist was responsible for the gorgeous wreaths around the lanterns.

Photo by Dexter Davis

I started by ordering a set of ten bronze lanterns on Ebay. Then I sized my text and photo templates based on the lantern dimensions and started writing and formatting. I printed everything on cream vellum paper, made sure the ink was dry then cut all the pieces to size. The lantern actually had little flaps on the inside that held the paper in without having to secure with anything else.

Photo by Dexter Davis

I also made a seating chart go to with the lanterns, tied in using the same fonts. Just printed a poster and put in a large wooden frame.

Photo by Dexter Davis

And there you have it! Probably the most rewarding and worthwhile DIY project I did for my wedding. If you're interested in further details feel free to send a message!

Alyssa