In all the excitement of your big day, while planning your wedding reception, the practicalities like crockery can often be overlooked.
When starting to discuss details with the wedding venue, one important choice to make, together with décor, tables and linens is what kind of wedding crockery you will use: your table settings make a silent first impression on your diners.
How your table looks depends intrinsically on the wedding crockery that you have selected based on your taste. Besides being functional, your wedding plates and cutlery should also be stylish. It can be simple and classic or colourful and trendy; the choice is yours and reflects your personality.
Our expert teams at Events @ No.6 can help you with suggestions and recommend one of our wedding crockery trusted suppliers that can deliver specific wedding crockery for your special day.
We have asked our events teams and wedding planners to help us with their experience, and they gave us some useful advice:
- Start from the food menu: what food have you chosen?
This gives you a good starting point when choosing the wedding crockery as you need to consider the colours and texture of your food before choosing the plates that will hold it.
You can create contrast or pair your wedding plates with the food to reference each other. If you have chosen a particular cuisine because of your other half and your culture or your personal taste, then this could be a significant option to reinforce the reference.
- Think of your wedding theme: have you chosen a wedding style in particular?
Wedding crockery is a great opportunity to channel a feel and make a statement of what is the mood you want for your day. If you’re having a rustic ceremony, for example, you might want to choose earthy tones and natural materials. Alternatively, if you’re going for a more formal affair, white porcelain and golden wedding cutlery would be a more appropriate choice.
- Wedding venue style: when you are choosing your wedding crockery you most probably know already what your wedding venue is. Make sure that you have grasped the feel of the building, the interiors and think what would go best with it. A “Versailles Antique Gold wedding cutlery” might not be ideal for a modern, industrial venue, while a “Grace Matt Black Wedding cutlery” will go with it very well.
- Sustainability: If you are planning a buffet or food station, you might be able to get away with fewer pieces, which means less washing up and reduces the cost of the hiring. You can also check with your venue what type of wedding crockery they might have already in-house, reducing the impact of delivery and collection. Check with your wedding plates and cutlery supplier if they can hire banqueting chairs, linen, napkins etc. altogether to reduce transportation. Biodegradable wedding crockery is now available on the market as well and could be a great option to reduce washing and don’t add to landfill.
- Enquire well in advance about wedding catering, wedding cutlery and plates.
There are so many styles and colours of cutlery, and a really nice way of elevating your table is by bringing in different flatware. Be that carved, copper, modern, scandi or traditional, there are really fun ways to play. If you want to make sure that you get what you want, it is better to plan these details plenty of time ahead and to ask your wedding venue already at the first inquiry stage, before someone else gets your favourite – a bit as you did when proposing!
We work with some of the best rated and innovative leading wedding catering equipment hire in London and we have had the pleasure to chat with Kelly Baker, Sales & Marketing Director at Well Dressed Tables, here’s what she told us about choosing wedding crockery:
A Well Dressed Table is exceptional . . .
. . . in turn we are dedicated to making your event exceptional to your guests. That is why we care so much about the smallest details of the crockery, cutlery, glassware and linen adorning your table. It’s hard to choose the right pieces to make your table settings look extra special. From classic white crockery to bright coloured glassware, think about the style you would like, colours you’d like to see, how vibrant you’d like it to look, or how formal and a little more classic or contemporary you would like it to look. All the tiny details count. Think about your menu and the colours in the food to help you choose the right plates. Look at the detail in the room you’re using, is it a blank canvas? Could you brighten up your place settings with coloured water glasses and gold cutlery with a brightly coloured napkin to match?
Look at the textures in the room, consider adding some texture to your tables with plain tablecloths but fuller textured napkins to add a sense of luxury and style.
Think about your centrepieces: if you have flowers, what colours are they, could you pick out some accent pieces of glassware or linen to further compliment the table setting? Create mood boards to help you build how you would like your table to look. Create some drama or simply keep your look delicate and refined. You can have a beautifully set table even by just making one small change such as a coloured napkin or by adding gold cutlery, a coloured charger plate or even a cut crystal or coloured water glass. Find out more about our venue here and enquire now!