When planning your wedding reception, you have so many things to tick off your to-do list. From whittling down your long list of potential guests into the shortlist of people to invite to planning a seating arrangement to keep them all happy, from choosing a menu to deciding on place settings and decorations, from finding the right venue to keeping on top of all the admin that comes with the legal side of getting married, it’s one of the biggest jobs in your life. During all that, it can be easy for wedding favours to get lost, but they’re a truly important part of the day, symbolic of the memories your guests will carry away from your wedding, so it’s important to keep them in focus.
By taking a close look at what wedding favours are and what they can be, you’ll discover the help you need to make those all-important decisions.
Mementoes
One of the main roles played by a wedding favour is a memento of your wedding day - something that guests will keep that will remind them of the experiences they’ve shared. This immediately suggests something important about a good wedding favour: it’s specific.
Originality and uniqueness are important qualities for your wedding favours - they need to be based on something about your wedding day, the venue, the aesthetic, or your relationship. If you’re putting together a DIY styled wedding, then that originality comes built-in: “that’s the decoration Kate and Arthur made for us at their wedding!”.
If you’re buying your wedding favours, that uniqueness must come with careful selection and perhaps customisation. Choosing local products and businesses is an excellent way to root your wedding favours in the place you’re getting married and make sure people connect them with the day itself. Whether its honey made on the grounds of the wedding venue or decorations made by a local craftsman, it makes your wedding favours a memory of that specific and special day, not a generic gift.
Novelty
If it’s going to be memorable, this leads us to another important thing your wedding favour can be: novel. It’s well worth looking around for original wedding favour ideas that will stand out.
Some of the most original wedding favours you can find are recovery kits for the inevitable morning after, individually addressed gin miniatures, and maybe best of all, personalised temporary tattoos of the bride and groom! All bold ideas and not likely to be forgotten in a hurry.
Fun
Another important strength to consider is how fun your wedding favours are. If they actually play into the celebrations on the day, they become part of those memories, and they’re all the more effective, all the more memorable and all the more appreciated by your guests!
Wedding favours like disposable cameras, dressing up boxes and games all function better on the day than as a keepsake, but they’ll be memorable without a doubt and help your guests create a truly special celebration for you and each other!
This is where CherryTop Weddings enters the equation. Our wedding favours are specific and personalised, novel and a great way for your guests to have fun on the day. We make personalised printed quiz and puzzle books filled with challenges based on the story of your relationship. Guests will get talking with questions and riddles to act as ice breakers, and your wedding booklet will become a key part of their memories from the day - as well as something they can take home and treasure.
Placement
When you’ve decided what form your wedding favours will take, you need to determine how to incorporate them into your guests’ experience. Placement is all-important here: do you hand them out as your guests come in, place them at the table or leave them to be collected by your guests as they leave?
What your wedding favours are will dictate this for you for the most part. If they’re personalised, you may want to hand them out individually or use them as part of the table decorations. With your seating plan, you’ll know exactly where everyone will be and can pair them with their personalised gift.
Some couples like to hand out a ‘party bag’ style gift bag at the end of the night, with a slice of wedding cake and favours to take away. This ensures your wedding favours can’t be lost or forgotten, but it does prevent guests from strongly associating your chosen favours with the events of your wedding day.
If your wedding favours are intended to be used as part of the celebrations - like our booklets, disposable cameras or dressing up props - then the earlier they’re introduced, the better. We’d suggest putting them at the table - as said above, the seating plan allows you to make sure any personalised favours are placed with the right people, but more importantly, they fill an important social function.
As people seat themselves and wait for food to arrive, speeches and toasts to start (or finish, depending on the quality of the speech!), there’s a natural gap. This breathing space can prove awkward as different groups of friends and family mingle for the first time. Unfamiliar people need to find ways to start conversations, or your wedding party will fragment into insular groups that already know each other. Introducing wedding favours at this point both breaks the ice and sets up the social atmosphere that you want to last all night!
What are wedding favours? In our opinion, they’re absolutely vital.