Susan Snyder: BEACH WEDDING - SAVE THE DATE NOTICE

Message in a bottle save the date notice

OK, so I've decided to start posting fun stuff from our beach wedding in May of 2009. Thank goodness for friends and family who supported me with ideas, shared opinions, and helped out along the way. (Just in case anyone is wondering - I'm loving the idea of revisiting all these fun details.) So, here I go, and will start with a post from the beginning...

I had seen ‘message in a bottle’ type wedding invitations, but the ones I found were plastic and a little too ‘kitchy’ for me. I liked the idea of this for Save-the-Date notices, but wanted something simple and sophisticated. After some searching, I found this website which sells the small glass bottles:

https://www.bottles.com/our-glass_message_bottles_(corks_included).html

We purchased the 7oz bottles. The best part is they include corks and white cardboard boxes - the perfect size for each bottle and suitable for shipping. We used parchment paper for the message. A tearing ruler was used on the sides of the paper to give it a more rustic look. After rolling the paper around a pencil (to make it small enough to fit into the mouth of the bottle) we tied yellow ribbon around the message and removed the pencil.

Torn parchment paper save the date notice

We originally tried adding small white shells to the bottom of the bottle, but quickly found these either fell out or jammed up the paper when trying to get the message out (we decided this would be frustrating for recipients) so the shells were left out. Note - I would not try to use sand in the bottle either – imagine the frustration of your guests having to clean up after opening your invitation (yikes).

For padding inside the box, my first thought was neutral and rustic packing materials (the stuff that resembles dried grass), however a friend of mine suggested something blue for water – good idea. I had already purchased a ream of teal blue paper for other wedding projects so the paper went through a shredder. Now we had instant packing materials which made the bottles appear to be floating in water.

We used one of the bottles in our wedding photos on the beach (a nice twist to the typical bridal bouquet in the foreground)...

Message in a bottle foreground wedding photo

My favorite thing about this project is that it inspired me to be creative with the rest of the wedding planning and décor. My advice to all brides out there - be creative! Make the day a reflection of you and make it fun and interesting for your guests.

For all of my beach wedding posts see my Beach Wedding page where you will find posts like these: