When you’re planning your weddingyou want to ensure that the look and feel of your big day captures your unique style—and that includes your wedding reception decorations. But, if you’re not a designer by nature, coming up with the right wedding decor ideas can be a challenge.

Here are six wedding reception decoration ideas that will help you create a reception space that feels stylish and sophisticated—but also allows you to inject your own personal style into the mix.

Light It Up

There are few reception decoration ideas that will add as much impact to your wedding day as lighting.

Lighting can completely change the look, feel, and ambiance of your reception decor. Do you want your wedding reception to feel soft and romantic? Add plenty of candles and warm lighting to create the vibe. Do you want to create a more whimsical, fun atmosphere? Hang twinkling fairy lights. Going for a more rustic look? Put tealights in mason jars to create lanterns for your tables.

Drape Away

If you’re having your wedding indoors (or outdoors in a tent), hanging drapes from the ceiling can be a great way to add glamour to your wedding reception.

If you want to keep your reception decorations classic, stick with a more traditional fabric color, such as white or cream. If you really want to up the drama factor, try draping your reception space in more bold colors. If you want to add visual interest without too much color, look for drapes in a softer hue (such as a pale pink or blue) or with a delicate pattern (such as white drapery with a subtle gold or silver trim).

Photo Credit // Unsplash

Go Boho

Boho wedding style is having a serious moment—and if you decide to embrace a boho look for your reception decor, it opens the door to a ton of fun wedding decoration ideas.

If you’re going boho for your wedding reception, decorations that you may want to try include:

• All the Greenery: One of the biggest trends in boho design is greenery. Look for ways to incorporate greenery into your reception decorations—such as making mason jar and succulent centerpieces, or using garlands made out of greenery in place of table runners.
• Macrame: Macrame is another distinctly boho design trend. Use a macrame hanging as a wedding backdrop for your photo booth, or hang macrame plant hangers throughout the reception space.
• Rugs: Vintage-inspired rugs have a distinctly boho feel—and scattering a few vintage rugs around the space will lend your wedding reception a distinctly boho style and up your wedding decor.

Mismatch Your Place Settings

If you want your reception decorations to feel unique and interesting on your wedding day, you might try mismatching your place settings.

Mixing different dinner plates, salad plates, cutlery, and glasses can add visual interest to your dining tables—and lend your reception style an unexpected and unique feel.

The key to success with this reception decoration idea is to choose a design element that ties them all together. For example, you might incorporate mismatched dinner and salad plates—but make sure that they all have gold in their color palette to tie the look together. Or, maybe you set every place with a different colored wine glass—but each glass is the same shape and height to give a sense of consistency to the table.

By choosing a design element to tie all your place settings together, you can ensure that they look purposely mismatched—and not just haphazardly thrown together for your wedding decor.

Create a Display Wall

If you really want to wow your guests at your wedding reception, one of the best decoration ideas to try is a display wall.

A display wall is a large installation that will act as the focal point of your wedding reception and wedding venue—and will be sure to grab the attention of your guests.

Display walls are also extremely versatile. Depending on your wedding style, there are a number of different display walls that you could create for your reception, including:

• A Flower Wall: If you have a large floral budget, creating a display wall from flowers and greenery can lend an elegant (and dramatic) style to your wedding reception.
• A Donut Wall: Donuts are a popular wedding cake alternative—and if you’re planning to serve donuts at your wedding, you can actually turn your dessert into a display wall! Hanging donuts on the wall and allowing guests to choose their own throughout your reception kills two birds with one stone—reception decorations and dessert.
• A Photo Wall: Creating a display wall out of photos of you and your partner will add a personalized touch to your wedding venue.

Photo Credit // Unsplash

Use Your Photo Booth to Create Wedding Reception Decorations

Speaking of photos, another fun reception wedding decoration idea is to use your photo booth to create real-time wedding reception decorations—and get your guests involved in the decorating process.

Equip your photo booth with an instant camera, such as a Polaroid, and have guests snap photos of themselves enjoying the reception. Then, create areas in your reception space where guests can hang their photos. The longer your reception goes on, the more photos will decorate the space—and the more personal your reception decorations will feel.

You want to create a space for your wedding reception that feels beautiful, stylish, and uniquely you—and with these reception decoration ideas, you have everything you need to create that space.