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Can I get cranberries for my centerpieces?

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tberube

tberube

Brilliant_Rock
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Oct 22, 2007
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The biggest issue for my wedding is what I''ll do for centerpieces. After 8 months of thinking about it and agonizing, I decided to make some centerpieces using cranberries, to go with our "autumn" theme. But my cousin just told me that cranberries aren''t harvested until October!
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My wedding is September 6th.

Does anyone know if I''ll be able to get cranberries in early September??
 
do you mean bagged, whole cranberries? i think those are sold year round?
 
yes, whole, fresh cranberries. I can''t find anything on the net that tells me any exact dates on harvesting times.
 
Hey, T!

I have to say, the cranberries I used in my centerpieces caused a minor ulcer for me.

The bottom line is that it just depends on the season. My wedding was Sept. 28th of last year and I literally found cranberries about 6 days before the wedding. In mid September when I had been scouting all of the grocery stores/local fruit markets for cranberries and was coming up empty handed, I decided to call a few bogs.

There are many large and small bogs all over New England, so I called a half of a dozen or so to see if I could just buy 5 - 6 pounds of cranberries. Most of them laughed at me since they generally sell cranberries by the ton and not the pound
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, but I did find one that told me they'd just started harvesting their cranberries that week (the week before my wedding) and she could help me out. The issue was that the weekend before my wedding was already so packed that I couldn't figure out how I was going to have the time to drive down to Plymouth to go to the bog. On my last day of work I tried a few grocery stores one last time and completley lucked out when I found some bagged cranberries that they'd just gotten in THAT DAY.

I literally jumped for joy.

One thing I did make sure to do was have a backup plan--I'd bought a whole bunch of seashells from The Christmas Tree Shops to use in the lanterns in case the cranberries didn't come through. Luckily, I didn't need them.

So I would say that the 6th is probably pushing it a little if you want fresh cranberries, but I can only guess that based on my own experience. I have heard that cranberries freeze really well, so you might even be able to buy a few bags now when they are still in season and just freeze them until September when you need them.

ETA: I had a whole bunch of extra bags of cranberries (I went a little crazy and bought too many when I found out the grocery store had them) and froze them for a few weeks just to see how well they froze. When I opened them again I'd say about 95% were perfect and maybe 5% had gotten mushy. So if you freeze them, you might have to pick the miushy ones out (if you even care).
 
hm. Thanks NEL! Looks like I''m SOL when it comes to the cranberries. That sucks. I really had never thought about that before. Darn. Anyone have centerpiece ideas for a wedding that has an autumn and wine theme - no flowers and at least 9-12 inches tall???
 
Why not try frozen ones? They are available year round--i use thawed frozen crans in my xmas center pieces---you may want to do a mock-up first to see how well they hold up of the type of centerpiece you have in mind, but i think it would work.
 
I would say try a test run with the frozen cranberries and also go to Michael''s and any arts and crafts store. They might have fake ones. If you can find the fake ones, maybe make a circular topiary on a pedestal. If you want to submerge the cranberries in water, have you tried used purple and black grapes? Those are available year round
 
oooohhhhh GTN - great FREAKING idea!!! GRAPES! Of course!! It is a WINE theme after all!! I''ll have to see how that works. I do want to submerge them in water. Hmmm.....does everyone think that would work?
 
Pedestals -- maybe like cake pedestals -- with grapes and other ''fall-like'' fruit? Or a variation of that theme using a pillar candle as centerpiece, either with a hurricane, or in a lantern, with fruit around it? Red hypericum berries used in lieu of cranberries?

Someone at our church once used cylindrical glass vases with citrus fruit and floating candles. Would grapes or apples be usuable in this way?
 
You could defnitely use frozen and just thaw them a couple of days beforehand. I would have done this and saved myself some stress had I known I was going to use them. I didn''t realize it until June when they were out of season.

Michael''s does sell fake cranberries and I think they look great. My only fear was that they would catch on fire since I was using the cranberries to surround candles in hurricane vases and lanterns. Since yours will be submerged in water, that shouldn''t be an issue.

As HollyS pointed out, red hypericum looks like cranberies. I had them in my bouquet and they are the exact same color as the cranberries.

Grapes are also a great idea, I''d do a test run with your options and see what you like best. I did submerge mine in water to see what would happen--I thought the cranberries would float to the top, but because I had them pretty tightly packed, they didn''t.
 
I used red hypericum berries in my bouquet too. I got them from freshroses.com: Hypericum berries.
 
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