Buying Guide to Wedding Favors for Any Season, Any Budget

Weddings are about making a memory of a special event, that you share with family, and friends. The wedding favors help make the tables festive and give your guests something to take home to help them remember your special day. Favors can be personalized to include the date; and the bride and groom names. The favors can also say a lot about the style of the couple. The look of the favor can say “sophisticated”, or “glamorous”, it can also say “informal”, or even “funky”.

Favors can come in all kinds of shapes and sizes. They can be edible or simply decorative. They can certainly be expensive, if you choose them to be. You can also purchase them from your local dollar store. They can serve multiple purposes like favors that contain rice or birdseed wrapped in a lacy handkerchief that is embroidered with the date and the couple’s names. Favors can be designed to fit the bride’s color scheme. They can also reflect something unique about the couple. Some popular examples of favors for 2006 are soaps, pens, jewelry, disposable cameras, mini salt and pepper shakers, gel candles, kissing bells, and glass coasters. Many of these items can be personalized. My personal favorite is personalized candies or snack items.

Personalized items give the added time value of the bride and groom having spent some time on thinking about their guests and coming up with a favor that reflects the couple and the guests. Engraving is a common way to personalize favors. Typical choices are favors that are made of metal like the kissing bells, mini shakers, or jewelry. Items made of other hard surfaces like pens, cameras, coasters, or pewter candles. Molded items can also be personalized like candy, candles, and soaps.

Practical wedding favors serve a purpose after the event is over. Some ideas would be luggage tags, charms, candleholders, card decks, bubble bath or soaps. These items can be labeled with the date and the name of the couple on the outside wrapper. These are easy to fit into themed weddings. If the couple met on the golf course and fitting favor would be personalized golf balls or golf tees.

Favors can be centered on the season like picture frames with leaf motif, or candles in fall colors. Winter favors might be crystal snowflake glass coasters, hot cocoa packages with personalized mugs, holiday ornaments, personalized wrapped festive candy. Spring favors could center around the out of doors like vegetable or flower seed packets, spring colored ribbons tied around mints in netting, parcels of birdseed. Summer favors could have a beach theme to them, or drink glasses. Some of the more modern wedding favors are: cake toppers, personalized toiletry bags, slippers, personalized coffee packets, engraved flasks or bracelets, personalized place cards or napkins. Popular send-off type favors are packaged wedding rice, mini bubble bottles, confetti poppers, and kissing bells.

Favors can be top of the line, professionally designed or engraved by a specialty shop or wedding planner, that will cost anywhere from $2.00 to $39.50 per guest and even higher. You will be paying for the item to be engraved as well as the engraving charge that can vary by lettering or by piece. There may also be a shipping or delivery charge. As mentioned earlier that are plenty of dollar stores that sell wedding favors that you can purchase and then either engrave them yourself or take them to an engraver, controlling at least the cost of the items to be engraved. There are plenty of do-it-yourself ideas that can be found while browsing the aisles of craft supply stores, or shopping online for the sites that sell wedding supplies.

Your wedding favor options are as endless as your imagination. When deciding on favors, think about who will be your guests. Are they the formal type or the easy, happy, carefree, have fun teasing types. Select favors that will please your guests but maintain some of your personality too. This is your celebration and making it memorable can be fun. Themed weddings can spark all manner of exciting and unusual favors that will kinder memories of your wedding for both your guests and the happy couple. Favors can be practical and useful for your guests to appreciate after the event, or they can be used to send off the wedding couple at the close of the event. Favors can say “thank you for coming”, or “help us remember our special day” or just a funny way of reminding your guests of the unusual way the couple met. The favors can also be a tasty treat, perhaps something that will remind them of what candy or snack item the bride or groom just loves. Candy or any snack item can be wrapped with color and flair. Wraps can be personalized and designed by the couple to reflect their personality. Wraps can also come pre-designed in a typical wedding outlay that just needs to be personalized with the wedding date and the name of the happy couple. Wedding favors can add just the right touch of humor, or uniqueness that the couple desires when planning their memorable day.