Put together a beautiful table centerpiece for your dinner party table, quickly and easily.

Help is at hand! We don’t have to agonize over our centerpieces anymore. And no, we don’t need a flower-arranging gene to make beautiful centerpieces..

We might not need a flower-arranging gene. But we should have some basic flower-arranging tools - the kind the experts use. Just a few simple tools can make your job som much easier. If you don't have items like floral foam, and floral tape - and especially if you don't know what these are for - take a quick jump over to the page on Flower Arranging Tools before you read on about creating your centerpieces.

Two key secrets for stress-free table centerpieces.

Luckily we’re not aiming to win first prize at the garden show. Instead we just need to learn a few simple skills that the experts use to produce beautiful arrangements consistently.

1. Start with these tips for all your dinner table arrangements

• Plan an arrangement that looks good from all sides of the dinner table, since you will have guests seated all around it.
• Plan an arrangement about 5 “ or lower, so guests can easily see over it
• Don’t put highly scented flowers on the dinner table because their aroma can fight with the food aromas and a guest may be allergic to the strong scent as well.
• White taper candles work with almost anything
• White or crystal candlesticks work with almost anyting

2. Another key secret - reduce your choices to a few simple arrangements Are you a novice at flower arranging? Do you feel insecure about flower arranging? Or maybe you’re just too stressed and busy to spend a lot of time on making a centerpiece. Then reducing your choices will really help.

Go to the flower store with one simple table centerpiece arrangement in mind. Then you won’t be overwhelmed by the choices and end up coming away with nothing. Nor will you be swayed by a beautiful but impractical purchase. Tall orchids are stunning, but they don’t cut it as a sit-down dinner table arrangement.

So I’ve asked the flower-arranging experts for several basic arrangements you can always count on. Think of these arrangements as the equivalent of the ‘little black dress’ of flower arrangements. It’s the same concept as on the Table Settings Page, where we talked about the little black dress of tablecloths.

If you have three tried and true arrangements for your dinner parties, you can always produce eye candy for your table. Later, as you become more practised and at ease with the routine of planning a dinner party you can add more arrangements to your repertoire. But for now, let’s concentrate on three arrangements.

With just three arrangements, you can cover almost every dinner party you give over a year.

Arrangement # 1 - A simple white table centerpiece arrangement
Choose white flowers and some simple foliage. Often this takes a lot of discipline at the flower store, because there will be other, beautiful flowers in eye-catching colors. But be firm. You can buy those flowers for the house if you want, but remember your agenda – to create a simple, elegant white table centerpiece arrangement for the dinner table.

In this picture, some white carnations and a couple of ferns provide a simple, inexpensive white arrangement that would go on almost any dinner party table.

For detailed directions on creating this table centerpiece, click here

Arrangement # 2 – A table centerpiece with a touch of drama
Choose a color with some oomph to it, no pastels this time. You can pump up the drama very easily if you have napkins the same color as your flowers.

Roses always work. They’re also relatively easy to find in the stores, and often red are the easiest to find. So we’ll use red for this arrangement. But you might choose gorgeous purple or brilliant yellow-gold as well.

This is the simplest of arrangements.

A shrimp cocktail glass makes a perfect vase. Here I simply put roses all around the edge, and then added a few in the middle. There aren't even any added ferns or decorative greens.

For detailed directions on creating this table centerpiece click here

Arrangement # 3 – The “emergency” table centerpiece No matter how organized you are, emergencies happen. There will come a day when you just won’t get to the flower store, or you wrecked your arrangement, or it’s the dead of winter so you can’t go out to the garden for a few blossoms.

Here’s where your emergency table centerpiece plan saves the day.

Take a look at these two examples.

Notice there are no flowers at all, but they still make lovely centerpieces.

The first one is more formal.

The second one is charming and whimsical without being overly cute.

For more information on creating this kind of table centerpiece click here

Simple, stress-free, and inexpensive, these table centerpieces will do the job for you every time you need a quick solution to the no-flowers table centerpiece problem.

Here’s to beautiful table centerpieces!