Decorations are an important part of any wedding, but they’re often thrown away when the day is over. That’s not the best way to honor the memory of your big day! Instead, you can reuse your decorations to make the most of the money you spend on decor and give yourself little reminders of the happy day in the weeks, months and years to come.

Use it As Intended 

There’s no reason to let perfectly good decor go to waste. From hanging decor like lanterns to candle votives and chalkboard signs, many of the items used to decorate your wedding ceremony and reception venues can be repurposed for use throughout your home. You can either save these items for special occasions or make them part of the everyday look you enjoy in your bedroom, living room, dining room or outdoor areas.

In some cases, you can simply reuse your wedding decor exactly as it was used on the big day. For example, outdoor string light sets can come down from the reception venue and get put back up in your backyard at home to create a fun fairytale atmosphere that you can enjoy whenever it’s nice out. However, you may not want to reuse your wedding decor exactly as it was on the day of the event itself. For example, if you have chalkboard signs that say “this way!” to point guests toward the ceremony, you can either erase or paint over that text and use it to signify something else at home.

Think Outside the Box

There are some wedding decor items that are great for some out-of-the-box restyling and repurposing. If you had a chuppah or another kind of structure supporting draped fabric for your ceremony, you can use that fabric as a swag hanging on a canopy bed or as draped hanging decor for your bedroom ceiling. You can even get super creative and use fabric decorations to create a fun party dress to wear on your first anniversary. As you shop for your decor supplies, try to think about ways you’d use those items again to try to regain some of the value you spent making the purchase in the first place.

Create a Shadowbox Frame Collage

Unlike standard picture frames, shadowbox-style frames have depth and dimension, which means you can put objects other than paper inside. Many brides opt to have their bouquets preserved and framed in a shadowbox, but you can take this idea a few steps further by not only preserving your bouquet but also adding some decor into the arrangement. For example, you can use your aisle runner as a backdrop in the shadow box and then arrange dried decor flowers, a wedding ceremony program and the table number from your sweetheart table all together. This is a creative way to capture the visual essence of your wedding while supplementing the photographs you’ve taken. You can even create multiple shadowboxes and display them all together in the same place to create an artistic presentation of artifacts from the best day of your life.