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Ok but hear us out!! They aren’t so much ugly as they are recycled candles – full of love!
As you know, we do a LOT of weddings. Like, a lot. Not only do we create the florals (our favorite part!), we also provide some rental items… the most popular? CANDLES!! They’re so popular, in fact, that we already wrote a blog all about them, you can check it out here.
But once the glow of the reception has ended and the newlyweds are off to their honeymoon, those romantic ambiance candles turn into a lot of half-burnt stubs – very Cinderella style. We’d never send those out to another wedding, your “something borrowed” can definitely be our rental items, but we’d never want your “something old” to be pre-used candles!!!
That being said, we also can’t stomach the thought of just throwing them all away. There’s plenty of waste in the wedding industry and we really don’t want to add to that. So.. we decided to try our hand at recycled candle making!
left photo: Rachel V King; center photo: Honeybee Memory; right photo: Kemp Collective
Ok… Tell Me More
After we unload the van on Monday morning after a busy weekend of weddings and late-night breakdowns (of table setups, not the personal kind😄), the first thing we do is put the candle racks right into the cooler!! The lower temperature actually helps with wax removal – a little tip of the trade for you that we picked up along the way from other wedding vendor friends.
Honestly, the next day sounds like a construction site in the Flower Barn – we lay down some cardboard or dishcloths for cushioning, then pound the votives upside down until the wax pops right out!! Definitely not a job for those who get headaches easily, but a great way to reduce stress (ya know, from the other kind of late-night breakdowns). All the leftover wax and candle bits get scooped into a bucket, and set aside for the next steps. The candle holders themselves get thoroughly cleaned and stored with our other rental items for the next wedding!
This is where we used to pause, and the buckets would just keep building up in the corner while we pretended not to notice. I mean really, what do you do with endless amounts of half-burnt candles? We have partnered in the past with local schools, daycares, and kids’ activity centers to provide them with wax for arts and crafts projects, but even they had a limit on how much they could use!
I Can’t Take the Suspense! What’s Next?
Well, that’s when we figured we might as well try out making our own recycled candles, what was the harm? We clean up the wax (you’d be surprised what ends up stuck in the top layer after a wild/outdoor wedding reception), and melt it down a few stubs at a time in a metal pot. Adding our own mix of scents, placing wicks, repouring into new candle pots, and decorating the tops with dried petals from the farm comes next!
There was absolutely a huge learning curve with this – it wasn’t as simple of a process as we thought it would be but we’ve loved the challenge along the way! Between finding the right temperatures and melting points for each scent, how to not have our petals sink to the bottom, and the dreaded bubbles.. THE BUBBLES!! We’ve come a long way in our latest adventure.
And who knows, maybe each candle even comes with a little bit of wedding love infused for an extra touch of magic 😊 Either way… we have LOVED finding a way to reuse instead of trash, as the wedding industry certainly seems to have a *bit* of excess waste these days. We hope you love these little votives as much as we do!
I NEED These In My Life!!
Did we convince you? You can find them available in our flower shop website, our Etsy page, and in person at our booth at the Chestertown Farmer’s Market! Check in throughout the seasons to see which scents and florals we add in next!
Or… maybe you want to make your own recycled candles!! We sprinkled a few of our favorite product affiliate links throughout the post, but you can find all of our favorites here as well! It can be a lot of fun making these with friends, let us know if you give it a try!
