Wine in the center

I'm trying to do all my wedding decorations on a budget. Meaning, I will not be purchasing any flowers from a florist and I'm trying not to purchase any random containers, expensive fabrics, chair covers etc. I can do this frugally gosh darnit! I can right?

Since our wedding colors are yellow and blue, my idea was to use a blue wine bottle from one of our favorite local wineries, Chateau Morrisette, for part of the table center pieces. Since Our Dog Blue is one of Dan and my favorite white wines we though it would be easy to drink 20 or so bottles before the wedding. I mean, we had 11 months that's two bottles a month. The first few months went great, friends and family were helping out and we collected quite a few. But then it got cold and white wine is a warm weather drink and well, we got pretty sick of Our Dog Blue. But luckily being the "Chatty Kathy" that I am, I managed to corner a Sommelier at a Christmas party at the Holiday Inn, explain to him why I was a good customer but wanted to drink some red wine for a change and convince him that he should give me free bottles left over from the tasting room at the winery. Actually, he offered and it didn't really take much convincing, but it just goes to show that being friendly to the right people and asking them the right questions, can often get just what you are looking for.

A week later I had a case of blue empties delivered to me at work. Now that is service!

Now for the hard part, scraping those pesky labels off so it is just the pretty blue bottle.

Step one: I gave them a bath.

Step two: I used a spoon to scrape all the soggy labels off.

Step three: There was still sticky residue on all the bottles so I just gave them a little squirt of googone and rinsed them with soap and water again. Rubbed them dry to get any remaining stuff off and ta-dah ...

Pretty blue bottles all in a row!



Now, all we need is something to spruce them up a bit. How about a yellow flower?

Next task: Hand making the yellow flowers. I found this template for beautiful DIY flowers on one of my favorite blogs designsponge.

Yes, I'm going to hand make all of the flowers for all the tables center pieces from coffee filters! Think I'm too ambitious? I've got a secret ... I have enslaved my bridesmaids for a weekend of wine and crafts where we will complete all of the ridiculous projects I have set out to do for the wedding. Hopefully the wine doesn't spill all over the crafts after a few bottles.

But at least we won't have to be drinking Our Dog Blue.