Recycled Wedding Goods

Mr. Ball Cap's brother was married in September of 2010.  We are very close to his brother and sister-in-law, and their daughter is our Jr. Bridesmaid.  With their wedding not far behind us, they still have many of their supplies on hand.  Future Sister-In-Law let me know early on that I was more than welcome to use anything they had left over.  It was a sweet offer, but one that I sort of forgot about once I got into the heavy planning stages.

Fast forward a month or so ago, and we needed to make a decision on the card box.  This wasn't something that was a high priority for me or anything I wanted to spend a lot of time or resources on.  I just wanted it to blend in with the overall look of the wedding and be practical and useful.

My first thought was to follow the movie "Up" inspired mailbox trend.  I find this idea beyond adorable and love the personalized touch.

Image via DisneyWeddingBlog.com / Photo by Wildflowers Photography

(Super cute "Up" inspired engagement shoot.)

The biggest concern about using this type of card box is that the cards could easily disappear.  I know that it is appalling to think that someone would steal from a bride and groom on their wedding day, but I have heard many horror stories about cards disappearing before the end of the night.  I would never believe that such a thing could happen, let alone happen to us, but did we want to take that risk?  I'm not even sure I should worry about such a thing but it crossed my mind.

During my possibly needless worrying, FSIL reminded me that she still had her card box and we were welcome to it.  She said we could do anything we wanted to it and to just keep passing it along to friends and family who could put it to use.

Image via JoAnn.com

MOB took one look at this white card box and instantly knew how she could jazz it up a bit. 

The first thing she did was to pop off the little crystals on top.  She then replaced them with silver sequins to give it a little more bling value. 

Next, she removed the white cording around the top lid and swapped it with navy.  She also adding a navy, satin ribbon around the middle of the box along with an embellishment reflecting our last name's initial.

It's amazing what a few simple changes and the addition of some color will do to change the overall look!

I am happy we were able to re-use an already existing card box and one that provided a little more security.  It was an easy item to check off our list and perhaps we helped reduce our "wedding footprint," even in a small way. 

FSIL has also given me other goodies I'm hoping to re-use including frames and photos for our memory table.

Are you using any recycled wedding items or re-purposing previously used supplies?