My newest project as of late was to determine what sort of favors I wanted to give our guests. Something I did not know prior to planning our wedding day was the level of controversy surrounding the subject of favors. The wedding industry has produced a literal plethora of favor options, simply google the term "wedding favors" and you will receive a nearly endless list of possibilities. For example, it seems that nearly every trinket imaginable can be personalized, such as shot glasses, coasters, and wine stoppers; then there are the cutesy favors with their little poems; and then don't forget the endless array of edible favors, ranging from grandma's cookies to individual packets of tea. There are also the less traditional options of skipping favors all together, or donating money to charity in lieu of favors. There are a variety of arguments for and against charity favors, and it's really not something I want to get into. I also definitely want to give my guests favors, there is just something about a little box with ribbon and a "for you" tag that completes the wedding table setting. Our guests are also travelling a significant distance to join us for our wedding, so I want to do something more than feed them dinner and provide a DJ. I then got to thinking about past weddings that I have been to, and the favors that they used. One friend gave out little trinkets, that I held onto for a little while, before throwing them out because they just collected dust; then another friend handed out personalized CDs of a rather odd mix of music; finally, my cousin, who handed out little scrolls of paper with poems that looked like tampons. Yikes.
My first thought was to hand out edible favors. I was going to make cookies or brownies for each guest to take home. Then the reality of baking 300 or so cookies the week before my wedding kicked in. So I looked into purchasing chocolate lobsters or whoopie pies. The prices for both were prohibitively expensive. I also started looking into the before mentioned pre-made favors. My problem here is that I wanted to hand out a favor that guests would actually want to keep around their homes and use. I nixed the idea of anything personalized, because it increased the cost, and not everyone would want to display something in their homes with our names and date on it. I was looking at cookie cutters and bookmarks in the shape of a starfish, but I was really uneasy about that idea too. What if a large portion of guests opted to leave the favor behind? What would I do with several dozen cookie cutters?
This is definitely something that is going to require more thought and creativity than I had originally planned.
Did you hand out favors at your wedding? How did you decide what to give out?
No comments:
Post a Comment