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Mrs. Lemon, Los Angeles/Monterey Age and Occupation in 06: 26, Graduate Student (Public Policy) Fiance's Age and Occupation: 29, Environmental Consultant Engagement Date: April 7, 2006 Wedding Date: July 7, 2007 Venue: Rosary Chapel & Monterey Marriott, Monterey, CA About Me: My FI and I met online, but we like to tell people that we met at a "cookie shop" which is the technical location of our first encounter. He proposed exactly 1 year, 1 month and 6 days after our first date (it's the only part of his proposal speech that I remember), and we're planning long-distance from Los Angeles for a July wedding in my hometown of Monterey, CA. I have a passion for all things "cool, cute and quirky" and I enjoy video games, reading blogs (WeddingBee, trashy celeb, consumer & political) and crafting in my spare time, if I have any!
About Mrs. Lemon

DIY Details: Out of Town Bags

July 30th, 2007 @ 7:16 pm by Mrs. Lemon

It was a hit with the guests long before we ever saw them: our OOT bags!

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Most of our guests were travelling to reach our wedding… some from SoCal, others from the midwest and the east coast, and we wanted to make sure they made the most of their trip. For that exact reason, I made sure I bought reusable bags that people could keep… which was obviously a good idea since Mr. Lemon’s mom used hers throughout the entire trip!

Step 1: Find & buy the right bag!

I found my bags online at JiffyShirts.com for the amazing price of less than $2.61 each (I saved about $30 on the order from using some coupons)! I decided to order royal blue and navy blue, just to mix things up a little. The company is great and my order was delivered THE NEXT DAY. The bags are pseudo-canvas, but are definetely durable and perfect as a beach tote or extra shopping bag!

Step 2: Motif it baby!

Oh yes… yet another gold rose! :) This time… I painted it onto the bag with gold silkscreen ink and made myself a useful template that made the job go by quite quickly!

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Here’s the print-out from the computer. I made sure to include a box in my graphics program that was the same dimensions as the pocket on the bag, so that when I printed it out I knew exactly how to position it.

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Time to cut out the stencil! I used my x-acto knife to cut out the rose, and traced the box with my sharpie for alignment purposes.

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Inking up the stencil with my brayer and gold ink!

Step 3: Fill ’er up!

I had heard that this was the part of the project that got expensive quickly… so I spent some time at Costco picking out snacks that we could “repackage” in our little bags instead of spending extra money on individually packaged snacks.

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2 Water bottles per bag ($10 total for the water). I attached a simple laser paper label that I had printed out to each bottle with a ZOT.

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Animal crackers and gummi bears! ($8 total)

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Goldfish ($4) and prezels ($3)

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Salted Peanuts ($4)

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Sugar cookies! ($4 for the mix) I added the motif by cutting a very small stencil and applying blue food coloring to the royal icing top with a sponge.

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For the bags, I used 6″x4″ plastic poly bags from PaperMart ($4.94 for 200) and Avery 1″ round white labels ($3.99 at OfficeMax). I created the graphic in Illustrator and then made a template to print them onto the labels, since the Microsoft Word templates from Avery.com didn’t work out too well.

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BUNCHES of tourist brochures, magazines and coupons = FREE!!!

Step 4: Take them to the people!!!

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Mr. Lemon delivered all of the bags to the hotels (thank you Mr. GPS for making that easy for him) in one big trip (9 hotels and 4 different rented houses!). Two of the hotels (the Marriott and Portola Plaza) tried to make him pay $4 to hand out each bag until he pointed out that we had deliveries of over 10 bags to each hotel and that our wedding provided them quite a bit of business, and they quickly changed their mind. In the end, all the bags were either in the guest’s rooms upon arrival or waiting at the front desk when they checked in. Way to go Mr. Lemon!

Would I do it again?

After hearing all of the guests thank us for them… in a heartbeat! Everyone loved getting the treats after a long day of travel (driving or flying or both), and I’ve had friends ask for another bag (minus the treats)… since some split rooms and only got one bag for two people.

In the end, the cost for the goodies was about $1/bag (inclusive of the packaging), so for a little over $3/bag it was well worth it! :)

26 Responses to “DIY Details: Out of Town Bags”

1.
Abbey says:

Your bags turned out soo cute! I have decided to do OOT bags for our guests, especially since we’re having a destination wedding.

2.
Linda says:

Absolutely amazing!

3.
katie says:

you are absolutely amazing. This was something I decided not to do but now I think I will do them. Seriously. You rock!

4.
Valerie says:

WOW you put Martha Stewart to shame! Thanks for the awesome ideas!

5.
Kristen says:

wow those are incredble, and they look so professional, too. It’s all in the little touches. Very cool.

6.
katie says:

just a quick question…..do you think a print out image transfer would work well on the bag? I am not super precise so I thought I’d let my printer do the magic and I could iron on our logo. What do you think?

7.
alexinwonderland says:

Um… can we talk about the fact that I was just watching an episode of Platinum Weddings where the couple spent $10,000 on 100 OOT bags? Yes, that is $100 per bag. So you beat them by about 97 bucks each… and might I say yours were 97x cuter! Congrats Mrs. L

8.
misslisa says:

wow, $3 for the bag and goodies!! you’re awesome. :-)

9.
Say Say says:

That’s awesome! Thanks for sharing!

10.
tyffaknee says:

Thanks for sharing!
Seeing you do it for $3/bag, makes me think that I might actually be able to do them too!
:D

11.
Jessica says:

Awesome! I was getting worried about how expensive the OOT bags (we’re actually doing baskets) would get, but using those little plastic poly bags to make your own “travel size” snack is brilliant - thank you so much for the inspiration!

12.
Jessi says:

ive been looking for those bags! Thanks!!!

13.
Anna Bella Stationery says:

Wow, these are beautiful!! You put so much hard work into these and it definitely shows - no wonder everyone was raving!!

(can I have one? those goodies looked yummy!)

14.
aoedorothee says:

thanx for the link to the canvas bags! that’s the cheapest i’ve seen them!

15.
My says:

I think that its great that Mr. Lemon told them…. :) I also think that it’s great that all of your goodies were very reasonable.

16.
JoJo says:

Thank you so much for sharing!!! They’re super cute, and I will definitely be taking advantage of this, since most of our guests are from out of town as well.

17.
Jen says:

i love the canvas tote idea!!! we were goign to do gable boxes but i like the “green” reusable idea…plus they’re bigger.

question, mrs. L - for the screen print, is it just a special paint for screen printing? is it washable? thanks!

18.
acklesgrl says:

I didn’t think about doing OTT bags.. These are great, I think I may have to steal your idea.

19.
Bee Icon
Mrs. Bee says:

wow you spent so little for such a fabulous outcome! :)

20.
Nicole says:

In adding to the the “little toiltries” idea, I found a great site http://alltravelsizes.com and http://minimus.biz that carry all those tiny shampoos that you find in hotels, plus toothpaste, dental floss and face wash too! (Oh and they are REALLY cheap…like 10cents for a toothbrush!)

21.
Jen says:

fyi i ordered a bunch of these bags last night. after i read your post i couldn’t stop thinknig about them, i had to have them! thanks for sharing!!!

22.
Vivian says:

Wow! Those OOT bags are fabulous! We’ll be doing a destination wedding and those bags are perfect for our beach locale! Thanks for the tips and links for savings! $3/bag is incredible!

23.
Weddingbee » Blog Archive » Attack Of The Killer Boxes says:

[...] this advice from the brilliant Mrs. Lemon, I got these OOT bags from jiffyshirts ($2.61 a [...]

24.
A Template for an Easy Way to Dress Up Water » Weddingbee » The Wedding Blog says:

[...] year, when we were preparing our Out of Town bags for guests, we knew that water bottles would be an essential ingredient to include. Yet, since it’s me, [...]

25.
OOT - Out of Town Bags » Blog Archive » Out of town bags at Wedding Bee says:

[...] Here are some great looking out of town bags from the crafty brides at http://www.weddingbee.com [...]

26.
rhodeygirl says:

what is a ZOT? i love these bags and think we will do something similar!


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Mrs. Lemon Mrs. Lemon, Los Angeles/Monterey Age and Occupation in 06: 26, Graduate Student (Public Policy) Fiance's Age and Occupation: 29, Environmental Consultant Engagement Date: April 7, 2006 Wedding Date: July 7, 2007 Venue: Rosary Chapel & Monterey Marriott, Monterey, CA About Me: My FI and I met online, but we like to tell people that we met at a "cookie shop" which is the technical location of our first encounter. He proposed exactly 1 year, 1 month and 6 days after our first date (it's the only part of his proposal speech that I remember), and we're planning long-distance from Los Angeles for a July wedding in my hometown of Monterey, CA. I have a passion for all things "cool, cute and quirky" and I enjoy video games, reading blogs (WeddingBee, trashy celeb, consumer & political) and crafting in my spare time, if I have any!
 

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