How to Decorate Wine Bottles for a Wedding

The way your wedding day looks is key to making you feel happy on your special day. One way of spicing up a reception is with DIY decorated wine bottles. But how do you make them?
How can you decorate wine bottles for a wedding? You can paint them in a variety of designs, e.g. with initials, with words, with the names of the couple, with stripes, or with any stencil pattern that you want. You could also wrap the bottle in twine, cover it in glitter or fabric, or fill it with bottle lights.
Whatever you choose, you should do a professional job. It’s easy to end up with a bottle that looks like something a kid brought home from school, because arts and crafts is hard! So, if you need a guide to follow and some inspiration, read on...

How to Decorate a Wine Bottle

There are lots of ways to decorate wine bottles for a wedding. The most obvious is to paint it in any way that you choose, whether with stripes, names, letters or designs. But you could also do things like wrap it in twine, cover it in glitter, or fill it with lights.
Which method you use is up to you. But if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right! The guide below explains in detail the different ways you can decorate your bottles, and gives easy instructions to follow for you to do so.

Painting Wine Bottles for a Wedding

So, one option available to you is to paint the wine bottle. You can make it any colour you like, to fit in with the colour scheme of your wedding. You can also paint the bottle with a design suiting the theme, if you have one. Or, you can write your names or initials on them. Or, the table numbers or names…
You get the idea. Painting your bottles gives you lots of room to experiment and explore. But there’s no point doing so if you don’t do it right: what if the paint chips off? What if it looks bad? To help you avoid these issues, here’s everything you need to know to do the job right, first time.

What Kind of Paint Do You Use on Wine Bottles?

If you want to paint a wine bottle, you can’t use any old paint. If you used watercolours on glass, for example, they would drip right off and leave a blotchy, stain-like mess.
You should use acrylic paint for painting your wine bottles. Acrylic sticks to glass. Ordinary acrylics will do, so you don’t even need specially made glass paint. If you have any acrylics lying around at home, you can use these.
However, there are some things to bear in mind. While it will work, acrylic paint isn’t designed for glass. As such, it may dry too hard and get a little cracked. Not only does this affect the way your bottle looks, but it means that the paint will eventually chip off.
It also doesn’t give any transparency, which you may want in your design. If you want your bottle to last a lifetime, you should use glass paint instead.

How to Paint a Wine Bottle for a Wedding

Begin by buying your paint. Buy a high quality paint, because this is likely to last longer, and may have a nicer colour to it.
As for preparing the wine bottle, there are two ways for you to consider. The first is the easiest, but is less likely to result in a good-looking design.
Thoroughly clean your wine bottle. Use soap and water, but for best results, use rubbing alcohol. Then, allow the bottle to dry completely. Once dry, ensure that the bottle has no dust on it whatsoever by rubbing it with a damp cloth.
Then, paint your bottle with a paint brush in whatever design you choose. Allow it to dry overnight. Check that the paint is entirely dry before curing in the oven at 180 degrees centigrade for half an hour. This will keep the paint in place.
The alternative method takes longer, but results in a better finished job. Take the bottle and sand it with a fine-grained sandpaper, ideally between 120 and 220 grade. Doing so gives the paint a better surface to grip to. Once finished, clean the bottle and paint it as in the first method.

Designs to Use For Painting a Wine Bottle

So, now that you know how to paint your wine bottle… What should you actually paint? You can either come up with your own ideas, or use those that other people have tried before. Whatever you pick, hand-designed wine bottles will make your wedding look great. So, why not think of using the following ideas?

1) Your initials. Each table could have two wine bottles, one with the groom’s initial/initials, and one with the bride’s. Because you’re only putting the initials, you can make them quite large.
2) The couple’s names. This is essentially the same idea as above, but with names instead of initials.
3) A solid colour design. One colour, all over, the whole bottle (to fit in with your colour scheme).
4) A two-colour design. The top half is one colour, while the bottom half is another colour.
5) A striped design. You can paint over masking tape to create stripes.
6) A stencil design. You can print off a stencil of any kind online, cut it out at home, and paint over it. This allows you to paint difficult designs with ease.
7) A hand-drawn design. Hand-drawing is more difficult than using a stencil, but allows you to be creative.
As you can see, you have lots of choices available. So, do a little research and dream up something creative… Or just stick to initials!

Other Ideas for Decorating Wine Bottles

If painting has never been your forte, don’t worry. You can decorate your wine bottles in other ways, too. Here are some more ideas you might want to consider:

1) Bottle lights. You can stuff each bottle with tiny LEDs that sparkle when you turn the lights down at your reception venue. Bottle lights are cheap, and most kinds come with batteries rather than needing a plug.
2) Twine. You can wrap the whole bottle (or half of it, if you prefer the design) in twine. Glue it down with a glue gun as you wrap it around. Bonus: twine is as cheap as chips!
3) Glitter. Glitter gives any event some glam. All you need is glue that sticks to glass, and, of course, glitter. For best results, use a spray glue for even coverage.
4) Fabric. You can glue pretty lace around the bottles, and bookend the lace with twine.
So even if you don’t like painting, you still have options. You could also combine these ideas: so, for example, you could use a paint which dries translucent and fill the bottle with bottle lights. Or, you could paint the bottle, but still cover half of it in glitter. Let your own creativity be your guide here, and you can create something really unique!

Should You Decorate Your Wedding Reception with Wine Bottles?

But something to bear in mind is that if your wedding reception will have lots of guests, it might take a long time to decorate all these bottles. If you’re only having them at your table, that’s not an issue, but if you’re having them on every table? That’s a lot of wine bottles to decorate. It’ll take a while.
Another issue is sourcing the bottles. If you can get your hands on lots of empty bottles from friends and neighbours, that’s fantastic. But if you can’t, you’ll have to buy them. While empty wine bottles aren’t expensive, the cost will add up if you have lots of guests.
All that being said, they’re still a cute way to decorate your venue.