Feels Like I've Been Planning Another Wedding

No, I'm not dead. I just haven't had any time for posting lately because I've been so busy! Combining planning and creating all of the decor for a huge charity event with the busiest time of the year at my job means I haven't had time for much else the past few weeks.

But things are finally all coming together with the charity auction decor I've been working on, and I am mostly done now. Which is good, since it's this Sunday! And now that I have a moment, I wanted to take a minute to share what I've been working on.

First, some background. It is for an annual holiday auction for the OCRCC, which is their biggest fundraiser of the year. And this year it is the 25th anniversary of the auction, so the theme is silver and sparkles, since the 25th anniversary gift is silver. We also have to work around some of the holiday decor the venue already has up, mostly some Christmas trees, but that is alright, since we want to encourage people to buy gifts at the auction. We just didn't want to go all out with the holiday theme for decor. And one issue with the venue is that we aren't allowed to attach anything to the walls or ceilings. Another factor is cost. Everything has to be done as inexpensively as possible, since it is a charity, and anything not spent on decor goes right back into the organization.

Budget and venue constraints? Basically feels like I've been planning another wedding!

In past years they haven't done much for the event, mostly just some simple table arrangements or a pointsettia for centerpieces and additional arrangements on a few of the tables in the lobby. But since it's such a special year, being the 25th anniversary, I was tasked to come up with something a little more special, while still keeping the budget to a minimum.

Which means non-floral centerpieces, when we are talking about 35 dinner tables that need to be decorated. So instead, we are going to have two types of centerpieces. Since we can't have anything on the walls in the ballroom, I'm going to bring in taller topiary arrangements for the tables to the sides and back of the room, to add interest and height. For the center and front of the room tables, we will have simple but elegant shorter centerpieces, so the view to the stage won't be blocked.

Here is a mock up of the tall rose snowball pomander topiary centerpieces, however the actual vases will be 16" x 4" and in my mock up I only had a 14" x 6" vase to use, so the final look will have the pomander ball and vase much more in proportion to each other and more topiary-ish with a taller and thinner vase.

The centerpieces will all be on 10 inch mirrors that the venue provides, and surrounded by 3 or 4 votive candles, also provided by the venue. We are doing all black linens, as a nice backdrop for the sparkly elements.


For the short centerpieces, we will have a 9 inch pillar candle in a 10" x 5" vase that the venue is providing (we're trying to work with whatever we get for free from the venue to save money). The vases for the short centerpieces will also have the same sparkly paper cut wraps, to tie everything together. They will also have an extra band of crystal ribbon around the centers (not pictured) to give them some extra sparkle.

The paper wrapped vases will also be duplicated on the arrangements I will have out in the auction area, which will go on the bar, raffle table, coffee station, etc. I wish I could take credit for the vase wrap idea, since it is SO much cheaper than buying things to fill the vases, but I stole the idea from the centerpieces my mom did for my aunt's wedding earlier this month.

So I've been busy every night putting together the elements for the 35 centerpieces and 6 auction arrangements. Each of the rose snowball pomander balls have 50 handmade white roses (which I made out of quilt batting because I liked the fluffy look and it was cheaper than felt) hot glued to 6 inch foam balls (Polystyrene, not Styrofoam, because it is way cheaper. I got them from LACrafts.com, and they equal out to be only $1.83 each, instead of $5.99 each from Michaels). Then I defined each rose with a crystal (from ebay for $1.18 for a 50 pack, vs. $2.99 for only 40 at Michaels).

For the vase wraps, I've been busy running them through my Silhouette machine. For my mom's centerpieces they used pre-cut sheets from Michaels that were $1.99 each. However, for mine I'm using large rolls of black art paper, cutting them on the Silhouette myself (I made the design myself, based off of the pre-cut sheet design), and then gently spraying them with glitter, and it equals out to be about $9 per 24 vase wraps ($7.09 for a roll of the paper plus about half a can of glitter spray). The time to cut out the wraps is definitely worth the savings, considering how expensive that many vase wraps would be if we were buying the individual pre-cut sheets!

(before being glitter sprayed)

I've also been working on the stage decor, with the help of my husband. We wanted to do something special, but also inexpensive and easy to decorate the back of the stage, and tie in our sparkly theme, and were inspired by this.

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Doesn't it look festive and sparkly? It also just so happened that I already had a ton of tulle around, so I got busy sewing 16 panels of tulle curtains while my husband built a 24 foot long PVC structure to hold the curtains (well, technically it's a few inches shorter than 24 feet, since the stage is 24 feet long). 

(all of my sewn curtain panels, draped over one of the four sections of the PVC structure)

We are going to use little S-hooks to attach the strands of twinkle lights to the back side of the curtains, and my husband is in charge of setting it all up on Sunday.

So that is the ballroom decor. For the silent auction decor, they've never really done anything in the past to decorate the area. But this year, we are going to adorn the fronts of the tables with sparkly half circle garland, and hang sparkly circle garland down the front of the tables for the dessert section, inspired by the two photos below.

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I've even shoved everything in our garage over to make a glitter spraying station, to make the garland sparkly too.

And have been hot gluing it to yarn on the back side, since there is no need for two sided garland.

In the end I will have about 240 feet of just the half circle garland, and it will look something like this mock up, although with more things on the tops of the tables of course.

And on top of the hundreds of feet of garland, 35 centerpieces and 6 lobby arrangements, 24 foot long pipe and drape structure, we will also have custom table numbers, various signage for the registration room, another structure for a photo booth backdrop and signage for that, and silver paper wrapped empty boxes for displaying small auction items. And all of it will be sparkly and festive!

Hopefully next week I will have photos to share of how everything all came together. But until then, I'll be busy tying up the last few projects for the auction, running a 5k Saturday morning, and spending all day Sunday setting up at the venue.

Now only if I was getting paid for doing all of this work. :) But at least it is for a very good cause!

Have you ever been to a charity auction before? Did you win anything good? I've only seen them on TV, so I'm excited to see what an auction is actually like.