Rustic Outdoor Weddings in Parks - Do NOT Use Glass Vessels for Drinking!
Within days of getting engaged I already had a pretty solid theme in mind. I wanted rustic, vintage, and outdoorsy. This would allow my fiance and I to blend my vintage side, with his families farming heritage, with our mutual love of the outdoors. Perfect! I also knew I wanted to use handled mason jars for the drinks. I was so enthusiastic about this I wrote a whole blog post about it. I found a great deal on them at The WEBstaurant Supply Store, but since I knew they would take up a lot of space I was delaying on ordering them. I was certainly glad I did!
Did you know if you have your wedding within the confines of a park you cannot use GLASS drinking vessels? I certainly did not know this. You cannot use glass for regular drinks, beer, or even coffee. If it is meant to be carried around - then it can be dropped and broken. You CAN use glass like Mason jars or vases for centerpieces and for toasting flutes, but even if you have wine glasses on the tables they must be plastic. You can however use real china for the plates.
We will be having our wedding at a historic home that is owned by a park. The caretaker of the home and grounds said that no matter how careful people are, they will drop glasses out on the patio or in the grass and they break. She also said that if this happens, guests will not tell anyone out of embarrassment and eventually someone will step on the glass. I understand this all too well. My fiance and I spend almost every weekend in the summer hiking at parks and we practice "pack outs". Basically this means we bring a trash bag with us and pick up garbage people have thrown away in the woods. Most of it are beer cans, and broken beer bottles. It is very dangerous for children when people discard glass and other sharp garbage in parks.
Hallelujah! New this year (2014) I discovered that some online merchants are carrying PLASTIC mason jars. And yes, I have found examples with handles and plain ones. They typically have "Daisy Cut Lids".
If you type this into the Etsy search, you will find many sellers hawking these jars with different colored lids.
Since these are new to the market, I would imagine by summer everyone and their mother will be selling them and you can find them really cheap. Another plus is these plastic jars are MADE IN THE USA. They are also BPA free.
I also found HUGE plastic ball jars that hold a whopping 32 ounces. While I think these would be great for filling with ice and using for small backyard parties, I think that is way to much liquid to use for a wedding (there would probably be a lot of waste). They do sell 16 ounce Mason jars with handles under the Aladdin brand at Wal-Mart for around $7 a piece. I believe they sell these at Target too, but they are larger and $9.99 each.
I do think if I hold out until summer there will be multiple manufacturers selling the handled jars as cheaply as the plastic jars without handles. As of today there are nearly 700 sellers on Etsy selling plastic mason jars. Some of them even sell in bulk. The prices now are about $1 more a piece than what I had anticipated on paying for the real glass jars at The WEBstaurant Supply Store - which adds $150 to my drink glass budget. They do at least have lids. I think if I hold out and can find a seller who has free shipping that would shave nearly $50 off the total cost.
Currently, The Party Fairy on Etsy has listings where you can buy 100 jars with lids in bulk. With shipping added on you get 100 jars for $186.75. $36.75 of that is shipping, so, they are basically $1.87 each. The nice thing about this vendor is they also sell paper straws, treat cups, and adorable labels for the jars if you want to purchase those as well. All their stuff is color coordinated too, so likely this can be a one stop shop for you. I am going to e-mail them and see if they offer deals on custom orders since I would need 150 jars with lids and straws that all match. The only drawback is I wish they had handles...
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