When you're planning your wedding, one of the things you must have in mind is what your guests will take away from the experience. The feelings, the impressions and the lasting memories they'll hold on to from the ceremony, the reception, the drinking, dancing and other entertainments.
Wedding favours are more than simply small gifts to say thank you for coming to our wedding; they're the physical manifestation of how your guests will remember the day you created, so it's well worth putting real thought into what you want them to be and how you want them to work. Do you want them to be functional on the day in some way, or just keepsakes? Should they be personalised to each guest or the day itself? How can they tie in with the larger themes of your wedding day?
Have a look at these wedding favour ideas and imagine how each one could be a stunning addition to your perfect wedding day.
The Handmade Look
One way to make your wedding favours truly personal is to make them yourself! You could put your craft skills to work, stretch your creative muscles or customise some bulk bought gifts. Handmade wedding favours are thoughtful, may save you a few pounds and they're on trend with the increasingly popular DIY wedding aesthetic.
If you're interested in handmade wedding favours, you might want to consider...
- Paper crafting. Whether paper flowers or folded table decorations, paper crafted wedding favours are beautiful, unique and a cost-effective way to create an atmosphere that your guests can actually take home with them!
- Dried flowers. If you have a large garden, then saving and drying your own flowers from the year leading up to your wedding gives you a wonderful resource for wedding favours, in the form of your own ecologically friendly confetti. You could even use them as a way to decorate cards and table settings.
- Thank you letters. Perhaps the most direct way to give your guests a lasting, personal memento of your wedding day is by presenting them with a handwritten letter telling them what they mean to you and why it's important to you that they are there.
The drawbacks of handmade wedding favours are that they are much more time consuming than simply placing an order and are harder to replace or scale up if any get lost, or you expand your guest list. They also require some measure of skill on your part - it might not be a good idea to commit to making fifty personalised folded paper table decorations if you’ve never tried origami before!
Handmade wedding favours fit best with a wedding that already has a handmade aesthetic and theme, and one with a slim guestlist of close friends.
Food and Drink
One way to make the impressions of your wedding day linger is to link those memories to a strong sensory experience - in brief, to give food or drink as a wedding favour! You have lots of options here, from the strongly personal to easily customisable, from homemade treats to mass orders.
You can make food-based wedding favours as something to treasure rather than eat - a small jar of honey or a liqueur bottle can be a beautiful, decorative object, only theoretically intended for consumption. You can also give foodie wedding favours that are so tempting they demand to be eaten within days or weeks of the wedding - a focused hit of reminiscence about the day.
If you're thinking about edible wedding favours you might like to think about -
- Honey. As noted above, a pot of honey can be a beautiful, decorative object in its own right. You could also choose local honey to link your wedding favour to the venue or an important place in your relationship.
- Chocolate. Does it need justification? Chocolate is rarely an unwelcome gift!
- Drinks or liqueurs. Again, these can serve as decorations as well, and if they're a sample of something served at the reception, they can be strongly linked to the event.
- Spices or herbs. While a less obvious choice, giving guests a sample of a spice or herb mix used in the food at the reception (or maybe for a dish you’re well known for cooking, or one that you love) is a very personal, specific touch, and it ensures your guests will think of your day whenever they use it.
Do be aware of the possibility your guests may have allergies and have alternative favours ready, just in case. This ensures your wedding favours will have the desired effect, and leave your guests with strong positive memories of your special day.
The CherryTop Solution
While this is far from an exhaustive list of possible wedding favours you could consider, at CherryTop Weddings, we think we've come up with something really unique.
Our wedding favour booklets won't get left behind at the reception or forgotten about. They're a part of the reception itself - an integral part of the memories your guests are forming on the day, as well as a memento to keep in the long term.
You can also customise the puzzles to make sure they're meaningful, relevant to your guests and personalised on the day, getting all the benefits of a handmade wedding favour but without the excessive time that you could be spending on planning the rest of your wedding! Why not request a sample today and see what's possible?