We had a fall wedding, so we filled little cloth teabags with mulling spices, fully intending for people to use them (either in cider/wine or as potpourri). For a spring wedding, though, you could do bulbs (as above) or seeds, or seeded paper. You could print place cards (if you’re doing them) on the seeded paper, or maybe the wedding program? Anyway, I think that would be kind of fun.
Since I eloped, it was a non-issue. I can’t remember any of my sibs having favors, but the most recent was 15 years ago, so I may have forgotten.
My daughter is getting married in May and she hasn’t said anything about favors. I’m guessing she’ll pass because this is most definitely a wedding on a shoestring. We shall see. Personally, I think it’s a silly idea. But I tend to be an old grouch…
My Nonna has several glass cupboards filled with every favor from every wedding she has ever attended. Most of them are those candied almond things wrapped up in tulle.
Honestly, I don’t think anyone will notice if there’s no favors. Sounds like you already have the perfect day planned, and people will remember your wedding for what it IS not for what they came home with.
Cheers!
the goody bags for the hotel are greatly appreciated. i was so very thankful for one when i got to the hotel after a delayed flight, 3 hours later than i expected. i was so glad not to hunt down a convience store at 9pm.
favours are optional. i’ve liked the pencils or pens, chocolates, seeds, and bubbles. not so crazy about the really strange “what is it” ones.
I didn’t want to have favors, but my wedding-fascist SIL convinced me that I HAD TO or it would be a heinous faux pas. We wanted matches, I figured people would use them or keep them in their kitchen drawer or something. We looked at the ones they had on wedding sites, but they were so damn expensive and corny.
We found a guy on eBay who did custom matchbooks for businesses. My husband’s best man drew us a logo (it was a robot with arms outstretched, kinda weird but cool, something he’s been drawing for a while, so it was kind of an in-joke), which was printed on one side with our names and date on the other. They looked awesome, and we got 1000 matchbooks for $125 with shipping. We will have those matches until our 25th anniversary, I’m sure.
We put those out with some small travel candles that had a sticker on them with our name and date. Useful, inexpensive, personalized, got SIL to STFU-- everyone’s a winner.
When we had my sister’s wedding, I did center pieces that got lots of compliments. They were topiaries with fall picks and leaves on them. I made 75. I took 70 home. Not that I mind too much, I just tore most of them apart and did something else with them.
Another great idea is Nugget Boxes. Here is the link to the tutorial: (It’s my tute BTW.)
Tutorial in post eight. The ones shown are holiday themed, but I’ve done other holidays as well. Limited by your own imagination and all. In the link there’s the original link, and a ton of PDF files for various sized boxes if you wanted to go bigger or smaller.
That, my tendency to guilt over throwing a “gift” away, and the adult children of hoarders thread is enough to set off butterflies in my tummy.
Some friends got married last fall. Rather then table favors, there was a table outside the hall, at the end of the night, full of bags containing homemade chocolate chip cookies. Yum.
This same couple also sent a care package to the rooms of all their wedding party members. It had a bottle of water and some chips. After all the running around that the wedding party did, it was nice to be able to grab a snack to tide you over, without paying the hotel prices for it.
We got married 30 years ago, and it never even came up (besides people taking back centerpieces and such, which were there anyway.) And we had few enough people that it wouldn’t have been that big a deal. I think this comes from the recent habit of kids having birthdays having to give goody bags to their guests, which we did do for our kids, but which didn’t exist when I was a kid. I guess if people grew up expecting to be given stuff at someone else’s birthday, they expect to get stuff at someone else’s wedding.