Weddingbee Blog

…is a savvy bride’s gold! Like many brides before me, I have learned that weddings are expensive and that it is often frivolous and wasteful to spend so much money on decor that will eventually be boxed up and stuffed in a basement, or even worse, in the trash. So what better way to be eco-friendly and save money than to repurpose everyday items?

For example, Mrs. Poodle showed off these very neat finds (found here and here):

While, Ms. Plaid recycled these jars:

And, Sand-Dollar created these can-luminaries:

Well, here in the Locket household we are all about re-purposing and I am happy to say that Mr. L has finally found a few tasks he can put his hands on.

First up was to cut our collection of wine bottles for our centerpieces.

Months ago Mr. L called up our local wineries and was able to score many free boxes of empty wine bottles (left over from weekend tastings). The plan was to de-label all the bottles and cut them to various heights.

We started off by soaking the bottles in hot-soapy water per Mrs. D’orsay’s suggestion to easily remove the labels. I then scored the bottle using Ephrem’s bottle cutter, which was generously given to us by FMIL Locket (she seriously owns every random thing possible!). While Mr. L repeatedly heated the glass with a candle flame and followed it up with a run under cold water until it was “cut”.

Soon enough, Mr. L got the idea that it might be nice to leave some of the labels on, especially on those from Heron Hill. I figured blue masking tape would do the trick so I wrapped a strip around the top part of the label to protect it from both the water and the flame.

While I scored and taped Mr. L continued to cut the bottles. After each cut I removed the tape to reveal a perfect protected label. On occasion a little bit of water would leak under the tape, but with a slow pull the label was usually saved.

After a few hours we had cut many bottles with only a few casualties. I really want to show you what we did with them next, but I am saving that for another post…okay, maybe I can give you a sneak peek since I am so excited !

Next, we worked on our place card holders…

Much like Mrs. Jellyfish, Mrs. D’orsay, and many other bees that I just can’t think of, we really liked the idea of using corks as our place card holders. Mr. L took full charge of this project and with Dremel in hand got to work cutting off bottoms and putting in slits.

He did make the mistake of initially working in our living room which left everything coated in cork-dust. After spending a few hours cleaning up his mess he learned that he needed an alternative so he set up a workstation in a portion of our hallway that could easily be sealed off with painter’s plastic. Within a couple of hours his job was done and we now have our very own set of 100+ cork place card holders ready to display our guests’ names like the ones below.

Source

And, as you previously read, we’ve already used an old book to make our paper heart garland and  have used leftover fabric scraps for flowers.

Another cool thing is that we could also repurpose the heart-hollowed book from which we cut our hearts.

If we wanted, it would definitely make a perfect ring holding box for a ring bearer.

Are you re-purposing any found items for your wedding? What ideas have you come across?