little bits and pieces [wine bottles]

let me introduce you to our centerpieces. i mostly referred to them as whine bottles.

i knew i didn’t want something traditional for our centerpieces. and by traditional i imagine in my head some elaborate flowery thing, or mirror plates or something like that. i like simple and i like clean and that was the look i wanted. i decided i wanted to paint some wine bottles. it’s a simple look that doesn’t hold a ton of flowers so we wouldn’t have to worry about a huge flower order and it’s something i could do myself.

our sweet friend johanna works at a fancy restaurant here in austin and hooked me up with all the wine bottles i needed. then i spent a little time googling about what would be the best way to go about de-labeling and painting them. i didn’t find a whole lot of information about painted wine bottles at the time (although since pinterest is now a thing, i could be proven wrong), but i did come across this website which had pretty good instructions.

i filled our second bathtub up with soap, added our wine bottles and let them soak for a good 24 hours. despite that, they were still a complete pain to de-label (hence the term “whine bottles”)

i bought some spray paints in various greys, silver, and white, took the bottles out to our courtyard and spent a day spray painting. i put a primer on all of our bottles and then a couple of coats of the spray paint. i had a little trouble getting them even (i think the secret is to hold the can at a distance from the bottle. and keep your dog inside so she doesn’t breathe fumes) and then i had some trouble with the paint peeling off a few of them (which was weird and i still don’t know why it happened).

by the time i got done with them (there were about 50), they truly earned the name whine bottles. i put a top coat on them and then let them dry a few days.

luckily, we didn’t have to figure out how to get them from texas to alabama. marty’s little brother stayed with us for south by southwest and we had him take them back to starkville. from starkville, one of my bridesmaids picked them up and drove them to huntsville. where they stayed for 9 months and i didn’t have to think about them again.

except these. i kept them because they were messed up.

i wish i had a picture of the finished product. i ended up adding a little ribbon around each of the bottles (mostly to hide where they’d gotten a little banged up on their travels) and putting them in groups of 3 on each table. i also got small mason jars with votives in them to go around the bottles (thanks for hunting those down mom!) to give the table a little something more to it.

i loved the end product. i walked into the reception room once all the flowers were added in and it just added to the insane amount of happiness that i was already feeling.

Advertisement