My Eco-friendly Wedding Centerpieces: Recycled Glass Bottles & Greenery
In this guide featuring my eco-friendly minimalist wedding centerpieces, I’ll walk you through how I designed my tables featuring the flowers, recycled glass bottles, wedding place cards, & more.
Early on in the wedding planning process I knew I wanted to focus on natural, earthy tones and include as many sustainable elements as possible.
For my centerpieces, I was inspired by a Pin that featured spray painted wine bottles filled with flowers. After a few sad attempts to spray paint some bottles myself, I decided I liked the simplicity of the clear bottles best.
I started buying greenery from local shops to try different leaf shapes, flower styles, and finally settled on eucalyptus on the outside and baby’s breath inside the recycled bottles.
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How to Create Recycled Glass Bottle Centerpieces for Wedding
During the year long planning process of wedding planning, I had my family save glass bottles. By the time the wedding rolled around we had 70 recycled bottles featuring quite the variety from unique liquor bottles to simple soap jars.
We rinsed off the labels and started transforming the bottles into centerpieces.
Collect Recycled Bottles
I organized the recycled bottles by height and grouped them three to a table featuring a variety of sizes.
Add Baby’s Breath & Greenery
We added in some baby’s breath, surrounded the bottles with eucalyptus leaves, and included three silver candle holders.
Find Candle Holders
My mom & I collected silver candle holders wherever we saw them during the year long process.
It was a mix of candle holders we already had, some we bought from discount stores, & some online. The mismatched candles added eclectic style to the table.
When the lights were dim and the candles were lit the silver candle holders created a beautiful reflection off of the recycled glass bottles. I honestly couldn’t have designed a wedding centerpiece that was more me with the earthy tones and eclectic style.
Eucalyptus Garland for Head Wedding Table
For the head table I went with Eucalyptus Garland. Whole Foods did all my wedding flowers and our florist, Estella, did a particularly fabulous job on the eucalyptus garland. I chose to go with Whole Foods because of their focus on organic, locally grown, and Whole Trade.
“Whole Trade® flowers provide a 10% premium that goes directly into important community programs for the flower farmworkers.
Those few extra dollars end up funding first homes for people that work in the flower industry, for their children attending school, for community art programs, for medical and dental treatments and for an overall improvement in the quality of life of workers, their families and their communities.”
The seeded eucalyptus garland added texture to the table. I think it helped make the wedding table stand out. The garland was great for the long table by creating a dramatic feel that drew everyone’s eyes to the wedding table.
Accessories on Our Wedding Reception Tables
Along with our baby’s breath and greenery centerpieces we added a few other goodies on the table!
Sustainable Wedding Place Cards
For the wedding place cards I used Paper Culture. Paper Culture matches modern design with sustainability through their beautiful wedding invites, save the dates, & stationery.
Paper Culture’s cards are made from 100% post-consumer recycled paper which means no trees are cut down in the process. AND each order plants a tree. I loved the simplicity of the green place card with the white modern font.
Wedding Favors That Give Back
I love how our mini milk bottle candle wedding favors blended in with the centerpieces and became part of the tables. Our mini milk bottle candles featured the Citrus + Sage scent from Light Shine Candles.
Light Shine Candles are ethically made in Tennessee by mom-preneur, Anna. Light Shine Candles donates a portion of proceeds to Global Outreach Developments International to encourage community development in El Salvador. Community development projects focus on aspects education, agriculture, and more.
I’m so glad our wedding favors from Light Shine Candles were an item people could actually use. This was another sustainable element of our wedding.
So many wedding favors are disposable and create more waste, but with our wedding favors that give back, people can burn the candle and recycle the bottle. Our wedding guests loved these mini gifts.
