Excess Wedding Paraphernalia

Like any girl who succumbed to the wild world of weddings, I became a huge pack rat when it came to anything related to my wedding. I scrap-booked the tags to my flower girl’s dress. I documented every single place and person we checked out in my weddings notebook. I have a box of every RSVP card we received back. I even took pictures of the gifts I gave my bridesmaids.

Suffice it to say, at the end of my wedding, when the wedding coordinator asked if there was anything I wanted to take with us that wasn’t taken home by guests, I knew my answer: Yes, and all of it.

The result? On top of everything else, I went home with at least 10 glass vases of various sizes and shapes.

At first, I kept them on a pantry shelf as if it were a trophy case.

However, when the wedding hysteria finally died down for me, I realized I needed to do something with those vases. Filling my new apartment with bushels of flowers seemed tempting, but horribly impractical (plus, as I learned, the smell of rotting flowers is enough to nix that idea). As a teacher, I had spent countless hours finding uses for every possible nick-nack in my classroom, so it was time to put that same teacher ingenuity to use at home:

Use Number One: Spatula Holder
I was able to solve two problems at once with one vase: a vase that wasn’t being put to use and excess kitchen tools with no place to call home.

Use Number Two: Sea Shell Display
I filled a small, spherical one with the seashells I collected from my two trips to Forte Lauderdale (one in 2009; another from the tail end of our honeymoon). I paired it with a picture I took on the first day in Ft. Lauderdale/third-to-last day of our honeymoon. The black dot near the shoreline is my husband’s back.

Use Number Three: Bowl of Toiletries
Another spherical one was filled with cotton swabs. I tend to use cotton swabs for everything (including art projects with my students), so having them at an arm’s reach was incredibly useful.

Use Number Four: Piggy Bank
My husband originally threw all of his change into a cardboard box on top of our bookshelves. This is a much nicer holding spot.

Use Number Five: Sun Catchers
I brought home five small, concave vases from the wedding, and decided I wanted to make a type of combination sun-catcher/candle holder with them.

For that, I got translucent glass ovals and flat, circular candles -- all things you can pick up at your local crafts store.

Placing the ovals in the vase so that they filled the vase and created a flat surface at the top was an adventure in and of itself. I found I could fill the vase, or I could create a flat surface, but never both. I almost gave up before everything finally fit into place.

Everything else becomes immensely easy after you finally have a flat surface at the top. Balance the candle on top of the marbles and carefully move the vase to a windowsill. Lather, rinse, repeat with the other four vases and arrange them how you like.

And, as for other wedding paraphernalia that I just couldn’t part with: my seating chart. I mounted it on our office, which doubles as our guest bedroom and my yoga/crafts room. If you look closely, you can also see a basket that was used in our reception, the ribbon bouquet that I used during my rehearsal, the fake veil that I wore during my bachelorette party, a Bridesmaids poster – which I snagged when I watched Bridesmaids as a post-bridal-shower activity, and a framed picture of the girls who went to my bachelorette party. It's somewhat shrine-like but, then again, one could call it a symbolic gesture about how some women are powerless against the Gods of Wedding Pressure.