Is your committee selecting a cornucopia or a single piece?

When I worked as a corporate event planner, I knew the trick. The least expensive way to decorate an event “on the cheap” was to dress up the table. Let the room décor fall by the wayside, but just make sure the table looked good. It was the table – not the room – where guests would focus most of their attention.

So let’s talk centerpieces.

Centerpieces are fun in that they can bring the theme of an event together. And talk about variety! There are a vast number of options for centerpieces, and your choices are growing. There is no end to the creativity of committees as they look for ways to be elegant, unique, and budget conscious.

For this post, consider the single item centerpiece versus “the cornucopia” centerpiece. I know there are many categories for centerpieces, but I want to look at this one segment before your committee heads too far down the road. An example of a single item is the floral centerpiece in a vase. Think pink tulips in a glass vase. These types of centerpieces offer uniformity and repetition at the event. In contrast is what I call “the cornucopia.” These are the tablescapes created with a collection of items which may or may not be consistent across the tables. Both work fine for benefit auctions, but there are pros and cons to each.

First, production is usually easier to coordinate for single item centerpiece. Whether it’s you or your florist doing the math, you’ll determine exactly how many flower stems you need for each vase, and exactly how many stems are needed for the entire room. On the other hand, the cornucopia option requires more flexibility with items as you’ll have beautiful collections that are unique to each table.

If you are hiring a florist for centerpieces, a single item centerpiece maybe less costly and easier to execute. You don’t want to incur the expense of professional time to source, sort and deliver individual elements for a cornucopia piece. Set up could also take a bit longer. When you are looking to trim all the possible hours from an expense, you want to focus on a fast set-up.

In contrast, if you have volunteers overseeing the centerpieces, each member might be assigned a table and have a list of supply options to be sourced from a personal collection or a home. The varied centerpieces will help execute the theme, but each will be slightly different as one scans the room. For this type of centerpiece, it will be easier for volunteers to pull relevant items from their homes to coordinate the tables. The tables won’t be exact matches, but the cost of a professional is eliminated and the theme can still be carried out. For instance, a beach theme centerpiece might incorporate shells, sand pails, and shovels sourced from different homes. Or a Broadway theme might showcase different musical playbills and tickets on each table. In the cornucopia model, each centerpiece is different, but the theme holds across the space.

Also consider the transportation of your centerpieces. If your guests are accustomed to buying or winning your centerpieces, then cornucopia could be a challenge. It’s much easier to grab a single item from a table at the end of a night than it is to pack up eight bottles and some sand!

Last fall, my team and I worked an event in southern Virginia which was one of the most attractive events I’ve ever attended. It wasn’t a large audience — the crowd only numbered around 225 — but the decor and atmosphere were exquisite! It was one of the more magical auctions I’ve attended. The theme was Treasures of the Deep, and all-things-of-underwater-intrigue could be found here. The dark, mysterious, quiet of the ocean seemed to come alive in this auction fundraiser.

One of the elements that made this event so eye catching was the centerpieces. I couldn’t help but admire how creative the florist had been to create such elegant focal points for the tables. Every centerpiece was different and created using the cornucopia fashion.

Some tables had a somewhat more traditional centerpiece of flowers in a vase, but many of the tables had collections of items one might imagine to be found on a sunken ship, like unusually shaped and dark-colored bottles. Collections of shells, starfish, and stones were scattered about the table. For those tables with a “living” element, the predominant vegetation looked like sea grasses. Other centerpieces consisted of arrangements of unusual plants that were reminiscent of an underwater garden.

Use what works for you. When time is of essence and budgets aren’t as tight, a single-item centerpiece from a florist may be your best bet. But if you’ve got a team of volunteers itching to show their creative sides, the cornucopia approach might be your centerpiece of choice.

P.S. As a side, if you are interested in centerpieces, you’ll also want to read my posts on shrinking floral centerpieces and about selling auction centerpieces.

Visit Sherry’s Red Apple Auctions blog for advice and photos on charity auctions.

This article has been published with permission from Red Apple Auctions LLC.

Photos courtesy of Susan Amar and Kathleen Harrison.

Feature photo courtesy of stevendepolo, Flickr.com