Thursday, November 11, 2010

Mission Milk Glass – Success! Plus the back up plan…

When we last left off on the saga that is our centerpieces, I had a vision for milk glass bud vases filled with flowers set up along our tables. 

Milk-Glass-Vases-500x333Flowers by La Partie Events/Photo by Erin Hearts Court/Image via Elizabeth Anne Designs

Just to give you an idea of what our reception space looks like, here’s a picture of the set up:

randal kurt.jpg.crop_display Photo by Randal Kurt Photography/Image via Brock House

We’ll have three tables of ten people and two tables of twelve people.  How pretty would it look to have bud vases set up down those long tables?  I figured I’d need 22 vases in total, so I was on a mission to source them!  If I wasn’t able to track enough down I had a back up plan however…

The other week Mr. Gazelle was working the 7 am to 7 pm shift at work.  I decided to put the hours between when I got off of work to when I had to pick him up to good use.  I printed off addresses for almost every single Goodwill, Salvation Army and Value Village in town.  Plus I scoured Kijiji for ads and estate sales.  Armed with my trusty Garmin GPS I ran around the city on a mission.

I had no success at the Salvation Army at all, and while Value Village did have vases, they were clear glass versions of the milk glass ones I had been searching for.  It wasn’t quite what I wanted but it would have been a good back up plan.  I lucked out at several Goodwill locations though.

Luckily I was able to find all of the vases I thought I would need!  Here’s a look at some of the ones I found:IMGP2725IMGP3220I love the short round hobnail one that is actually a perfume bottle!  I pulled the cork out to give it a rinse and it still had some extraordinarily stinky perfume in it.  I also found a few large vases to hold our bouquets at the head table.IMGP3224

In order to save costs on the floral centerpieces we’ll actually be doing them ourselves.  Costco has an amazing selection of fresh cut flowers and did you know that you can order flowers in bulk from them in Canada?  I figure that we will pick up a bunch of white or cream roses and fill in with other colours or other flowers if there is anything else that catches our eye.  I would have loved to echo the flowers in our bouquets but sadly that was a little out of our budget.

The Back Up Plan

What was my back up plan if I couldn’t source milk glass?  Well, it starts with the snartig vase from IKEA, available for $0.99 here in Canada:

69512_PE184566_S4 snartig vase via IKEA

I found a great DIY milk glass tutorial on Ruffled where a can of white glossy spray paint can turn ordinary glass into pretty white glass! 

DSC_0011Image via Marry You Me

So if you want the look for less or can’t source inexpensive milk glass this would be a great alternative!

Do you have any suggestions for inexpensive vases or flowers?

4 comments:

Marlene said...

You are resourceful!

Meg said...

LOVE the vases!

And the Costco flowers look AWESOME in my experience! I totally regret not going with them. Superstore has AWESOME prices and a lot of selection too.

Unknown said...

Hee hee, you and your spreadsheets...the engineer is very much alive and well in you!

Nicole @ Haute Runner said...

Love the vases!! What are you going to do with them once the Big Day is over??