Wedded Wednesday: Thrifting!

I hope you are all doing well this week! Sorry I didn't live up to my promise last week of a fun little rainy day DIY but I went down to the Fashion District in LA and was stocking up on fabric, so time was not on my side ;) but maybe today will be a two post kind of day!

So, lets move on to this weeks topic, thrifting! This is one of my favorite things to do anyway but when you have a wedding to plan you have excuses and reasons to go an unhealthy number of times in a week.

One awesome resource I had near me while I was planning was an auction house! Let me tell you, this place was (and is) full of treasures!! I scored big with one of my favorite furniture items that now sits in our home, this beautiful blue secretary desk!

this is the desk in our home

here is how we used it first at our wedding, a sweet display of our parents and both sets of grandparents on their wedding days! It was such a fun touch and we love having those pictures to hang in our home now. Such great examples of love

The frames on this desk were thrifted as was the flower box (I used some mod podge and scrap fabric and lace to beautify it a bit). It was really neat to have to ask my parents and grandparents to look through their wedding pictures so I could find one to use on our wedding day. I really liked this way of including family in our special day and if you have a wedding coming up, regardless of if you will use this picture idea or not, I would tell you to ask to look through those wedding pictures anyway, it was really a special experience for me.

So my biggest thrifting project was for our dessert table! When I was visiting the wedding venue the woman who is a big part of running it showed me this wonderful idea and I ran with it!

Here is what you will need:
- Plates of your choice ( I prefer the more vintage looking and different sizes and shapes add interest)
- Candle sticks (glass works the best and varied heights work the best as well)
- Glass glue

This is a super simple project and I wish I had better pictures of our dessert table all set up before the carnage happened! People do love their desserts! However here is what we did, we (including my Mamma) thrifted like mad people for beautiful vintage plates and glass candle sticks. We had 14 plates and candle sticks in all.

Once you have your plates and candlesticks it's time for you to play around with which plates you want on which candle sticks...trust me this can take much longer than you might think...or maybe it is just my indecisive nature.

Once you have the combinations decided, make sure you have washed both the plate and candle stick well so the glue will stick! Use your glass glue and put a bit around the top of the candlestick. Lay your plate upside down and center the candlestick on the plate and place it there and let it dry a little before you flip it around. Let it dry according to the package (mine was 24 hours I believe). Make sure you use glass glue! I used a glue that seemed like it worked well until the wedding day when I was setting them up and a few had lost their candlesticks!!! Luckily there was hot glue to the rescue at my wedding venue. But all that to say...use glass glue.
Here is one in action at my bridal shower:

This would also be a good place to say that we did not do the traditional cake thing. We had this little cake for us to cut and smash in each others face, but our guests got quite a spread!

We had a dessert table with all home made items! We had wonderful ginger molasses cookies, oatmeal raisin cookies, chocolate chip cookies, mini brownies, lemon bars, cherry pie, apple pie and probably more that I am forgetting! It went so well with the feeling of our wedding and gave everyone a chance to find something they like. We loved it and loved the sign we made for it too

(Thanks to a wonderful friend, Kelly, I didn't have to embarrass myself with my handwriting on this sign!)

If you go back and look at my first post about stories you can see some of my other thrifting treasures. Every single vase/container for the centerpieces we found at thrift stores, garage sales or bottles we might normally throw away (trader joe's dressing bottles are great fyi). I took some of the bottles and added some flair to them, things like twine, fabric, buttons even hearts cut from dictionary pages. Here are a few of the bottles we saved

and one of my favorite thrifted items we used as a 'vase' was this flour sifter!

I hope that you enjoyed this little (or maybe kind of big) post and that you will find treasures of your own in your local thrift stores! What is the best thing you have found thrifting?

this will be a two post day so check back later for a cute little DIY.

With love from Burlingame,
Whitney