Weddingbee Blog

Wedding favors. Just invoking the words makes the hair on my beastie arms stand up on end. I have emerged from many a Chinese wedding with doodads that I didn’t know what to do with but felt bad for chucking: a small gold paperweight with the bride and groom’s names, wallet-sized pics of the happy couple, an acrylic medallion etched with the couple’s likeness… Chinese weddings are a veritable crap-bag — I mean, grab-bag — of useless tchotchkes.

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An example of a typical Chinese wedding favor.

Haven’t you always wanted an acrylic swan mini sculpture?

I was thus determined not to have favors. Maybe a candy or cookie buffet, but no tchotchkes. But when I revealed this awesome cost-savings plan to my mom, she balked.

Given my mom’s reaction, one would think that sending guests home tchotchke-free was like asking them to pay for their own meal.

So, I did what any bride in the last two months of her wedding planning would do: I folded, like a cheap umbrella. Behold our wedding tchotchkes: pairs of key chains. I have to admit that while I’m still a little horrified by the idea of having favors, I actually find the key chains kind of cute. The bride has tres adorable pigtails, the groom is wearing the traditional Chinese character for “double happiness”, and when you put the two together, they “kiss” (by means of a magnet that attaches one to the other).

Of course, the best thing about these key chains is their price. We were able to order these from a company in Hong Kong for less than $1.25 per pair, which is a pretty sweet deal.

Are you going to give out wedding favors? What’s the most useless/awkward favor you’ve ever received?