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Hydrating Your Guests :: DIY Modern Wedding Water Bottles

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 at 3:42pm

Our Wedding Ceremony is in May… in Florida… outside… and in the afternoon. Quite possibly one of the hottest times of the day (besides noon). Granted, it will be absolutely beautiful being married as the sun sets behind us, our Guests may become quite parched. So, we’ve planned to have water bottles in ice at the ceremony to hydrate our thirsty guests.

We ran out to Sam’s Club (with our newly minted Sam’s Club cards, courtesy of Gator Mom and Gator Dad) and purchased over 192 water bottles (we only need 180… but pre-packaging makes it difficult to get the exact amount needed). We also ordered 180 polyester water-proof labels from Online Labels (specially sized for water bottles!). Then, it was time for me to get designing (my favorite part!!), and this is what I came up with: (I normally hide our names or blur them out but, these labels are too cute… and if any of you did a little searching on the internet, it would probably be easy to find out our names)

Aren’t they cute? I knew I wanted something modern, and a few variations of it (to make it more fun for the guests… or maybe more fun for me to design!).

After printing all our labels on our Lexmark Color laser printer (which has been an invaluable investment not only for wedding related activities but, for graduate school, and work), Mr. Knight got to work de-labeling and re-labeling the water bottles with our custom labels.

Mr. Knight even had some help from Gator Kitty!

And on to the final product!

I think they turned out fabulous! The only issue we ran into was storing them. After Mr. Knight figured out this situation wasn’t going to work (he couldn’t even pick up the container!):

We opted for 3 smaller plastic containers to store them in until the wedding (in 3 short months!).

We are planning on displaying them in galvanized containers (which we have yet to price or purchase..eek!):
source

Okay… and now for the cost break-down:

  • 192 Aquafina Water Bottles bought at Sam’s Club $31.26
  • 180 Labels from Online Labels (including shipping) $22.34
  • Printing $0
  • Mr. Knight’s Labor paid through kisses :-)

TOTAL:  $53.60
Which comes out to about  .30 cents a water bottle

This is a super easy, and relatively inexpensive, way to add that ‘little somethin’ to your Wedding! There are tons of free online templates for Water Bottle Labels that can be easily customized for your Wedding (which can be found here, here, and here).

If you really want something custom and don’t have the design/software experience to do so, you can always contact me and we can work something out! I love designing Wedding items and would love to help!

♥
Miss Gator

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  1. Stacy Marie Says:

    February 10th, 2010 at 6:21 pm

    I have mad respect for you dedication to your wedding my friend, those look wonderful!

  2. Emily Says:

    February 10th, 2010 at 6:39 pm

    SO cute!!! And your in luck, those buckets are EVERYWHERE during summertime. I already saw some at target!

  3. Miss Gator Says:

    February 10th, 2010 at 6:52 pm

    @Stacy Marie: Thanks! I try not to be ‘too’ dedicated. But, Mr. Knight and I are sort of work-a-holics. So when we have free time between work, and school (and our Netflix DVD hasn’t come in), we spend it doing any little wedding projects we have on our to-do list.

    @Emily: Ohhhh Galvanized buckets at Target? I’m THERE!

  4. Lauren Says:

    February 10th, 2010 at 7:15 pm

    If I have time to do this, I so totally want to! These are super amazing.

  5. Debbie Says:

    February 10th, 2010 at 7:57 pm

    Try galvanizedpail.com for the buckets–they’re so cheap there!

  6. LauraLou Says:

    February 10th, 2010 at 8:57 pm

    Precious!! I want to make some of these for our OOT bags!

  7. Mr. Knight Says:

    February 11th, 2010 at 1:12 am

    @Debbie: Thanks for the link. I think we need 2 or 3 super big ones to fit all the ice and bottles that we have.

    If anyone has any that they’d like to donate to us, we’d be happy to take them. :-)

  8. Christian Says:

    February 11th, 2010 at 10:06 am

    you guys are insane, the effort is admirable. When I get married, I will pay you to organize my wedding.

  9. Mr. Knight Says:

    February 11th, 2010 at 11:13 am

    @Christian: Thanks bud! Yes, we are a little bit insane. As for organizing your wedding someday, I think your future fiance will have more to say in the matter.

  10. Miss Gator Says:

    February 11th, 2010 at 12:12 pm

    @Lauren: DO IT!!

    @LauraLou: That is a great idea. I do plan on throwing these in the Bridesmaid bags too. Have to keep my girls hydrated on the big day… plus a great photo op of them drinking the water! I love me a good photo op!

    @Christian: Yes… I think the water bottles were the tipping point into crazy. We are officially crazy. But, we are having crazy fun being crazy!

  11. Alison Says:

    February 15th, 2010 at 7:37 am

    Hi! I love the blog and the water bottles. I was wondering what software you use to do all the design stuff? I’m getting into that kind of thing and am looking for a good program to use.

    Also, we were going to use galvanized pails at our wedding too, but found cute brightly colored plastic ones much cheaper at Wal-Mart and Target. This should be the time of year when they start appearing. I think we go them for $5 each. They held 3-4 dozen bottles each. Good luck!

  12. Mr. Knight Says:

    February 16th, 2010 at 10:17 pm

    @Alison: Due to our professions, we’re both basically Photoshop gurus, so we’ve naturally been using Adobe Photoshop for almost everything mixing in Adobe Illustrator here and there. Unfortunately, if you have no experience using Photoshop it can be quite intimidating (and very expensive).

    There is Photoshop Elements, though. I’ve never used it but, I’ve heard good things about it and it’s much cheaper than Photoshop and not quite as intimidating.

    The closest free thing to Photoshop is the GIMP. It’s very feature-filled but, in my opinion, suffers from an even-more intimidating interface than Photoshop.

    If you’re really serious about getting into graphic design (or something similar) bite the bullet and download a trial version of Photoshop from Adobe’s website and watch some beginner videos on YouTube (there are literally millions).

    Good luck!!

  13. Nancy Says:

    March 9th, 2010 at 6:46 am

    If you didn’t find galvanized pails you can go The Party Store and get some bright yellow plastic ones that would look great with your bottles. Very nice look! Not a photoshop pro but using the design program on the site isn’t hard at all, although not quite the quality you managed!

  14. Winnie Says:

    May 27th, 2010 at 12:32 am

    Wow – this is really great! You’ve inspired me to learn photoshop & illustrator. :) Youtube tutorials are definitely on my to-do list. Can you advise on where I can find some of the graphics that you used? For example – the frames & birdies?