Mrs. Lollipop, Pittsburgh
Age and Occupation: 26, Computational Linguist
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 26, Project Manager
Engagement Date: August 2, 2006
Wedding Date: September 2, 2007
Blogging Since: July 17, 2007
Venue: The PPG Aquarium at the Pittsburgh Zoo
About Me: I'm a Pittsburgh transplant who grew up in the deep south. I have a weakness for exotic alphabets, DIY projects, mobster movies and international travel. My fiance and I are both non-native Japanese speakers and we have a bullfrog named Skinny.
Handing Out The Goods
November 19th, 2007 @ 2:53 pm by Mrs. Lollipop
I’ve never received an out of town bag, but I decided to give them out because everyone loves tiny gifts in bags, right? They are a fun way to welcome guests who traveled far, but due to the flurry of activity before the wedding might not get to see the bride and groom until the big day. Nothing says love like a nice note and a snack when you can’t be there.
It wouldn’t be a gift bag without a bag. I screen printed canvas totes with an image of a ticker tape machine:
Gift bags are ideal for distributing two things, information and stuff. Really, the information is the important part. We enclosed the following in our welcome note:
- A schedule of all wedding related activities
- Directions to our ceremony and reception locations
- Walking directions to nearby restaurants that we like
- A local contact phone number just in case anyone got lost
If you’re on a budget, this will be more than enough to keep guests on track for the weekend. The rest of the stuff, including the bag, is just for fun. Our fun stuff included the following:
- Something to help them find their way: maps of the our city, Pittsburgh
- Something to represent our city: tiny bottles of Heinz ketchup and mustard
- Something that guests might need: single serving packets of sun screen
- Something sweet and themed to our wedding: rock candy sticks
- Something to drink: bottled water
- Something to snack on: little takeout boxes of our special blend of trail mix
My mom helped me mix up and package the trail mix in our kitchen.
We handed out a mix of banana chips, sunflower seeds, vanilla rum peanuts, golden raisins and pepitas. Our concoction was a big hit with our guests.
7 Responses to “Handing Out The Goods”
awesome bags! nicely done. i think these are really appreciated by guests. how many did you make? those bags look like they were expensive and quite a bit of work!
one word of caution for those of you putting nuts of any kind in your OOT bags — make sure to indicate that it contains nuts for those with allergies! my BIL is REALLY allergic to peanuts and we made sure to label all our nuts so no one would learn the hard way.
Great ideas…thanks for deconstructing!
I love the bags, why did you print the ticker tape machine on front? I love it, just curious about the significance.
I’m so impressed you screenprinted youself. Was it difficult? Great idea. I love out of town bags, especially on the drive home from the wedding!
These are fantastic.
We haven’t decided were the wedding is going to be yet but werever it is at least half if not all of our guests will be from out of town. I’ve been trying to find an economical way to do bags without them seeming cheap and empty.
I gave out about 20 bags, and the total cost was around $5 each, including the bags which were purchased during a sale.
We didn’t have any guests with peanut allergies, so we went ahead with the trail mix.
Mr. Lollipop picked out the picture. We wanted an image that would work for both men and women.
Another idea that we considered was to give each guest pre-stamped post cards. We ran out of stamps before we could make this a reality.
