Showing posts with label thrift stores. Show all posts
Showing posts with label thrift stores. Show all posts

Friday, September 9

Our Wedding: I Heart Thrifting!

Our wedding incorporated a lot of DIY and thrifted elements.  Since we did not hire a wedding planner, we were able to have total control over the design of our wedding- but had to get creative about how to get the vintage-inspired, elegant look we wanted on a tight budget.  That's where thrifting and DIY came in, and it was a nice coincidence that our wedding date was I Love Thrifting Day in Roanoke!

Chalkboards

Venue Photo

I had fallen in love with the idea of menu chalkboards after seeing them on lots of bridal blogs and in magazines, but ready-to-use chalkboards can be expensive.  Like many brides and craft bloggers before me, I discovered chalkboard paint.  To create each chalkboard, I bought picture frames from Goodwill, spray painted the frames with ivory Krylon spray paint, distressed them with sandpaper, and then painted the glass with chalkboard paint.  I used a chalk marker for the lettering.

Our Wedding: I Heart Thrifting and DIY!

Our wedding incorporated a lot of DIY and thrifted elements.  Since we did not hire a wedding planner, we were able to have total control over the design of our wedding- but had to get creative about how to get the vintage-inspired, elegant look we wanted on a tight budget.  That's where thrifting and DIY came in, and it was a nice coincidence that our wedding date was I Heart Thrifting day in Roanoke!

Chalkboards

Venue Photo

I had fallen in love with the idea of menu chalkboards after seeing them on lots of bridal blogs and in magazines, but ready-to-use chalkboards can be expensive.  Like many brides and craft bloggers before me, I discovered chalkboard paint.  To create each chalkboard, I bought picture frames from Goodwill, spray painted the frames with ivory Krylon spray paint, distressed them with sandpaper, and then painted the glass with chalkboard paint.  I used a chalk marker for the lettering.

Venue Photo

This frame had a great pattern, so I sanded it quite a bit.

Milk Glass

Venue Photo

I collected milk glass for months before the wedding, and it was all from local Goodwill stores!  I found that the best store for large pieces like the ones shown here is the Westlake Goodwill, but I also found quite a few pieces in Vinton.

Venue Photo

The "milk glass" cake stands were a cheat- they're actually from Pier 1.  But the vases are thrifted!


Books

For our centerpieces, I looked for books with wedding-related titles, like Bartlett's Words for the Wedding, shown above, covers in our wedding colors like Ultimate Wit here, books with significance to our guests, like Coal Miner's Daughter on my mom's family's table, and books we personally love, like the Harry Potter series and Catherine Marshall's Christy.

I found these initial mugs at Ross.

Our wedding party's table had a Nicholas Sparks book because MOH Breeze and I love him!

Saturday, March 5

Thrift Store Roundup

In which I evaluate the potentially wedding related contents of local thrift stores:

Cave Spring Goodwill
Findings: clear glass vases for .25-.50, a copy of Offbeat Bride by Ariel Meadow Stallings for .79. Book score!

Westlake Goodwill
Findings: MY FIRST MILK GLASS (okay, not real milk glass but it's white and pretty) SCORE! Two large vases for 3.99 each and a pedestal vase for 1.90; an Andrew Greeley book. They have two other small vases I'm thinking about going back for...

Daleville Goodwill
Findings: LOTS of really cool books including "When You Marry" from 1953. No milk glass- the "wares" section was pretty picked over.

460 Goodwill
Findings: My mom picked up a beautiful pedestal vase for 1.50, a bud vase and several books.

My growing collection of white vases!

Vinton Goodwill
The books were disorganized and there was one piece of milk glass in the store... that didn't match my hobnail pattern.

Rocky Mount Goodwill
Findings: Two books. The Wedding by Nicholas Sparks and another called Eat Cake.


My centerpiece books... a combination of blue and purple covers and books with cool wedding and love-related titles. We will need about 30 for the wedding, I think.

STUFF I have for my wedding centerpieces:
- 2 large "milk glass" vases
- 3 pedestal "milk glass" vases
- 2 "milk glass" bud vases
- 12 hardcover books