Wedding Blog

Check out how cheap we are. We’re giving our guests paper chips as favors. You don’t think they’ll feel cheated, do you? I mean, aren’t they pretty?

Ok, not really. These colorful chipboard circles (or “pogs” as Mr. LB likes to call them) are actually charity tokens, which will be given in lieu of favors to each guest in wee glassine bags, like so:

Each guest will get four tokens, worth $1 each. They will then be asked (via cleverly-worded explanatory note) to donate their chips, in any combination, to three different charities. If they want to give all $4 to one cause that they really like, they can do so. Or they can divide up their donation any way they choose.

Each charity will have its own glass bowl and accompanying sign (yet to be designed), naming and explaining the charity. As the bowls fill up, they’ll look like this:

At the end of the night, we’ll count the chips, tally the totals for each charity and make donations accordingly. This way, guests can feel a bit more involved in the process by having a say as to where “their” money goes. We haven’t chosen the charities yet, but there will likely be an animal cause (close to Mr. LB’s heart), a literacy/education cause (close to my own), and a humanitarian cause. Something to resonate with everyone, we hope.

Anyone who shops at Buffalo Exchange will recognize my idea thievery; for those that don’t, the resale shop offers a bag for your items or a 20-cent token when you check out. If you take a token, you choose one of three charity boxes to pop it into.

And as Miss Flamingo’s comment-riffic post proves, people have strong opinions about the whole charity-as-favor replacement issue, no matter how it’s worded. I feel pretty strongly about it, too.

I wasn’t planning on posting a how-to about our tokens because 1) I didn’t think anyone would want it and 2) I didn’t think anyone would need it (it’s wickedly easy). But then I saw how popular the topic was, so I thought what the hey.

MATERIALS:
paper/cardstock
1.25 inch chipboard circles
1.25 inch punch
sticker machine

Step 1: Pick a pack o’ pretty paper to match yer wedding palette:

Of course, you could also just print up paper with whatever image/words you want and use that, too.

Step 2: Punch. Repeatedly. I used a 1.25 inch punch (since I’d found the 1.25 inch chipboard circles first):

Though two stacks are missing in this pic, I actually made equal amounts of each color group (silvers/black and pinks) so that each token has one pinkish side and one silver or black side.

Step 3: Run circles through Xyron (or any; I don’t, like, have stock in the company or anything) sticker maker…

…giving you perfectly sticker-iffic circles like these.

Step 4: Apply to 1.25 inch chipboard circles, such as these puppies:

And voila! Perfect pogs! Or “Sweet Charity” Tokens, as we’ll probably call them (yes, that’s right - another chance to work in our “sweetest type” theme).

I think it turned out as a nice way to pull out our palette, too. The chips show as a punch of color through the glassine envelopes…

…so I don’t know if we’ll put labels on them or just have them sitting on a short note.

And we’ll probably downgrade to smaller bowls. Though, we have only made a third of what we need. So the bowls will look much fuller than this when we’re done:

The cool thing about this is that it’s all really customizable: the tokens, the charities, the presentation, the value/dollar amount assigned…

So, did Lovebug gone done good?