Wedding Centerpiece Display Case

In 2009 I got married to my wife Jenn. One of the things about weddings is that there are a lot of decorations that get accumulated in the process of pulling off the big event. Once everything is said and done, something needs to be done with those decorations. Often, people store some of the decorations in their basement, disperse them amongst their friends and relatives, or find other ways to get rid of them. When our wedding was done, we had 18 centerpiece boxes left over. My cousin Darrell had made the boxes, and they were very nice pieces. During the reception they were filled with pink flowers and placed on each of the tables that the guests were sitting around.

This is the idea I had in mind.

This is what I had to start with. A picture of the centerpiece on one of the reception tables

All of the centerpieces together when we were constructing them initially

After the fact, though, we were left with all these boxes. They were nice boxes, but what are you supposed to do with 18 boxes full of flowers? They were too nice to give away, but too cumbersome to keep as is. So I decided to do something with them instead. After thinking about it I figured they would make a nice display case.

I had to wait until spring to make the case. My garage is neither heated, nor insulated, and I moved in to the house in November. In addition, I did not have any of the tools I would need to make the case either, I had to go with my Dad to buy the air compressor I needed to make it.

Finally though I had the garage ready to go and I could get to making the case the way I wanted to.


I started with a quarter sheet of MDF. I had to trim one of the sides about a half inch in order for it to match the measurements of the boxes laid out. I didn't have a table saw, so I used a circular saw and a belt sander to trim the board. Then I painted the board with spray paint. It's harder to paint well with a spray paint can than I thought.

After the paint dried I took the boxes and laid them out on the board the way I wanted them to. I then took them off and laid them upside down on the table. I used PL glue to glue them to the board and to each other, and nailed them together with brad nails.

Laid out on the board

laid out beside the board being glued on the board

laid out beside the board being glued on the board

Assembly Finished

After the assembly was done, all I needed to do was fill in the few nail holes with paint (I sprayed into a plastic cup and used the spray paint for touch ups) and install it on the wall. It is heavy. it required four screws into the studs to keep it up.

There it is in the space I picked for it

Perfect place for me to store my rock collection

Now I don't have the wedding boxes cluttering up my basement, instead I turned the clutter into a storage solution for one of my collections instead. I also still have two loose boxes lying around, which means I can have the shelving unit without totally destroying every centerpiece.