My cousin decided she wanted a candy buffet and we set out on a hunt for the perfect apothecary jars. When her (now) husband caught wind of our project he protested with strange phobias of dirty hands in the candy jars.
They were able to come to a compromise when she hit upon some mini candy jars at Michaels. And to boot, their single serving size made them perfect to use as escort cards.
My cousin and I then mulled over a million different candy options to fill the jars. She had one requirement: that they be different shades of pink. One weekend while waiting on line at a random Duane Reade, I spotted a display of pink peanut M&Ms on sale . Hot dang! I ran over like a bride at a $99 gown sale. Some lady who was holding one bag quickly threw it back as she caught sight of me bum rushing the M&Ms. I counted out ten bags before telling her she could have it back. I figured she deserved it for being a smart lady. Once back on line, I phoned my cousin to obtain authorization by screaming “THEY’RE BUY ONE GET ONE FREEEEE!!!!”. When Mr. Spider pulled up in our car moments later to pick me up, he took one look at the giant ass bag at my feet and was like “WTF?!”.
Since I safely bought more than we needed, my cousin and I poured out a few bags at a time to quality control out some of the “bad” ones. Because I felt bad about them not making the cut, I gave the “bad” ones a happy home in my belly.
The jars looked clean but I thought we should give them a bath anyway. Thank god we did because they were actually pretty filthy inside.
After we let the jars dry overnight, we filled rows and rows of them.
Then came the painstaking task of creating the escort cards. I’m not going to lie. I cried a few times during this process. Using Adobe Illustrator, I created a round design with all the guest names and table numbers. Since there are so many combinations of guests (the families, the married, the single and the stag), I had to format the font of each one individually. Of course things also changed all the time - tables were switched, people broke up, new guests were added on etc., so this step didn’t finalize until the last few days before the wedding. Once finalized, the names were printed onto Avery label sheets and then punched out with a circle punch. As a final flourish, we also tied pink raffia around each jar.
And lastly, here is a shot of them on the big day. Adorable and satisfying!
However, if you wanna save yourself the trouble and just custom order some as favors, check out these beauties I just found here.
You are one sick woman! I’d cry tears of … joy too. THey look wonderful!