Finally - Favors!
February 28th, 2008 @ 3:15 pm by Mrs. Toucan
I’ve had my favors bought since our trip to Hong Kong in December/January, and I’m finally ready to share them with you! I started with this idea:
Martha Stewart Weddings Spring ‘o7
I was first introduced to blooming teas through Weddingbee Contests, which linked back to one of Mrs. Violet’s posts. Since our reception is a Chinese Banquet, I wanted our favors to match the theme. Drinking tea is strongly embedded in Chinese culture, as it can be used as a sign of respect or gratitude. So this idea worked perfectly!
While on our side trip to Shenzhen, China to buy my qipao and Mr. Toucan’s tuxedo, I kept my eyes peeled for tea shops (and there are LOTS of them), until we found this one:
Daddy Toucan had already bought some tea from them, and seriously became BEST FRIENDS with these tea shop ladies (I really wish I had a picture of Daddy Toucan and his best buds). Anyways, we worked out a pretty good deal for the blooming tea buds, along with these for containers:
Hurray!!! So, why did I take so long in actually showing you my favors? Well, it’s because I didn’t know how I wanted to hand out the favors, and the packaging for the tea cups tragically looks like this:
Our initial idea was just to take out all the tea cups from the boxes and simply place them on the tables with the tea balls. However, Mommy Toucan thought that we’d have more guests leave them on the table because there really isn’t a good way to carry a glass cup home. Sooo… back to square one. Others were trying to convince me that the box wasn’t that bad. After all, it did have this gem of a warning label that was awesomely translated into English:
Awesome warning label.
My absolute favorite warning:
“Crack is the reason for glass broken”
Finally, my solution - wrap the boxes!
I bought 2 rolls of gift wrap paper in my wedding colors from Paper Mart - the first is in Shimmer Frost Ruby, and the second is in Shimmer Frost Peacock. I wrapped the boxes, so that you can open the boxes without ripping the paper. This way, I won’t have to worry about lots of paper all over the floor of our reception room!
Inside wrapping (not as pretty as the outside, but it works)
Finally, I added a wrapped a piece of ribbon around it, and attached our monogram on top. Voila! A favor is made!
Ta-da!
1 down, 249 to go! (oy vey!) I’ve managed to make pretty good headway though:
I figure if I wrap 2-3 of the boxes a day, I should be in pretty good shape…
I think it worth it though:
The finished product looks a lot better than the original, doesn’t it?
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23 Responses to “Finally - Favors!”
Those are awesome favors and the wrapped packages look great!! Better yet, your guests will get a nice chuckle when they finally get to read the warnings on the back. 
The finished product looks fantastic! I’m so impressed that you found a way to work with the original box. Those warnings are hilarious but the favor looks much classier with the box hidden. I’m a big tea drinker myself so I love this favor idea too! Nice work Miss Toucan!
Those look so cute! That warning you pointed out almost made me spit my coffee all over my keyboard. Thanks for the giggle.
Clever solution! And you should be able to get a professional gift-wrapper after this. 
The label reminds me of the Italian-to-English translation I once saw on a bottle of wine. The sentence was TRYING to suggest that the wine would pair well with Asian food, but alas unintentionally suggested going cannibal on ones Eastern relatives by saying “Tastes good with Oriental cousins.”
That looks great I like it!
And those translations are killing me! Too funny :p
What’s with the use of a comma in “don,t” instead of an apostrophe? And what on earth is a timlts?
I loved the idea of these blooming teas too, but couldn’t think of a good way to package them as favors. It’s awesome to get the glass mug to go with the tea. Good luck w/ wrapping the rest of the boxes.
HAHAHAHAHA!!!!! Toucan, I am dying here. “Crack is the reason for glass broken?” I love that!
Thanks, ladies! Glad you all liked the warning label too (for more gems, you can click on that first picture of the label and you’ll get a bigger picture that you can read!)
hehehehe - I laughed out loud SO LOUD at work over
“crack in glass…..” heheheheh
omg those warnings… thanks for the laugh!
wow, you are SO ambitious with that wrapping project, but it is SO worth it!! 2 rolls of giftwrap… is that enough??
awesome! but how did you manage to ship all 250 from china?
Miss T could you e-mail me, I have some questions. I am thinking of the same favors and am actually in Asia hunting for them. Thanks!
Wow, you are amazing!
Best. Warnings. Ever.
Now tell me, where where where did you get your monogram? It is fabulous. I am in love with it.
thanks, again ladies!
Emerald, I bought 100 ft rolls, so hopefully 200 ft of wrapping paper is enough!
Pinky, 250 of those suckers made the plane ride with us. We figured that the airplane ride was safer for the glass than having it shipped (never mind the cost!)
Elle, the monogram was made by my cousin who is finishing up her senior year in fine arts and computer science.
[...] familiar? This is the monogram I chose to put on our favors! I asked my cousin to try to incorporate Mr. Toucan’s and my nicknames for each other (he calls [...]
Crack is the reason for so many things.
[...] And all in the name of pretty looking favors… [...]
[...] haven’t written about our wedding favors in awhile, since I had all of my boxes of tea cups wrapped up months ago. I almost totally forgot [...]
Mrs. Toucan, Boston
Age and Occupation: 25, Full-time Research Assistant, Part-time Graduate Student
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 25, Actuary
Engagement Date: February 18, 2007
Wedding Date: June 7, 2008
Blogging Since: November 07, 2007
Venue: St. Catherine of Genoa, Jin Asian Cuisine Restaurant
About Me: I’m a Gemini to the extreme. On one side, I’m a girly girl. I read countless bridal and fashion magazines, and have an obsession with keeping up with the latest Hollywood gossip. On the other side, I’m a sports fanatic. Despite being a full-time bride-to be, full-time research assistant, and part-time student, I’m also a full-time Red Sox fan from spring training to October, and a full-time Patriots fan from mini-camp to February. I devote almost as much time researching my for fantasy football team as researching for our wedding!
Beautiful! Aren’t you glad you aren’t embossing 250 favor tags?