Recycling for an Eclectic Vintage Wedding Look

Yesterday, Wednesday, was the last day before the wedding Merri and I will go to the gym together. There seem to be a number of "last" times these days. Her last day at PSU was Tuesday. My husband, Keith celebrated by taking her and picking her up from school. It reminds me that even good change is a loss of sorts and bittersweet. The good part about these kind of "lasts" is they're followed by "firsts." So in the midst of changes and the upcoming empty nest phase, we are busy getting ready for the big day.

We hadn't actually set out to have a "green" wedding but now that I think of it, we are reusing, repurposing and recycling most of the decorations from what we have or found.

The loose vintage style of the wedding lends itself to eclectic and creative applications of decor.  Although it did take some time and effort to get the projects completed, we had fun doing it together.

We repurposed an old atlas and music book to make paper chains and hanging hearts. The paper chain will swag and be hung from the chairs going down the center isle. The hearts will likely be hung from branches in the reception area. I got the idea of the hanging paper hearts on Pinterest.

Another project we did for the wedding is a bit more of a risk since I haven't seen it before: using a large group of pre-recycled wine bottles as a decoration. It won't look the same at the wedding as it does here, but this photo gets the idea across. At the wedding the background will be a cream color with white cord twinkle lights behind it. The bottles will be lined up, slightly overlapping covering two 10 ½ foot sections on either side of the floor in front of the stage where the ceremony will take place. The peacock feathers will likely be shorter, but we're waiting to cut them until we get to the venue.

I imagine we looked a little ridiculous riffling through a local bistro and bar's recycling bins the night before trash day, collecting wine bottles… but it makes a good memory.   When we took a few to the venue we were pleased at how they looked, which was a relief since we hadn't seen it done before. The one thing that was some work and time consuming was getting the labels off the bottles. It helped to soak them in water and then use Citrasolv and a scrubby sponge.