Weddingbee Blog

Mr. Taffy and I decided early on that we wanted to make a charitable donation instead of making or purchasing favors. Because there are many charities that are important to us and our families, we decided to choose three charities and have our guests vote during the reception.

We had a hard time deciding on an object to give people for voting purposes (of course, with my luck, I didn’t read Mrs. Lovebug’s post about her favors until we had already found one). We found inspiration in these wooden tokens from the Michigan Beer Fest, which I had been using as a circle guide while making our table numbers.

Mr. Taffy found some plain wooden coins on eBay, and we ordered around 200 of them. I will have to post in the comments on which eBay seller we went through, as Mr. Taffy isn’t here to ask at the moment. It was challenging to find affordable tokens in such a small quantity, so it is worth posting!

I wanted to embellish the tokens in some way, and stumbled upon Mrs. Lovebug’s awesome idea to cover her chipboard tokens with patterned paper. At this moment, I was kicking myself for only ordering 200 tokens- I loved that she gave each guest four- but it was too late to order more. I loved her paper idea, but the wood finish on these tokens was deliciously smooth and we didn’t want to cover it up. I thought about using rubber stamps, and found some cute, dot-themed stamps at the craft store. I played around with some of the extra tokens, and decided that the stamps were too distracting, visually.

Taffette of honor Lexie had a great idea—she could just place the whole token on the stamp pad, creating a finish that would cover the whole thing. It was perfect! Here you can see her work in progress:

The light blue ink looked lovely next to the light color of the wood, and best of all, once the ink dried, the wood retained its soft, smooth feel!

Next, we picked up three of these glass jars during a trip to IKEA. They were around $3 a piece, and came with lids.

Next, I made signs for each charity, which I placed on the jars with double stick tape. I then wrapped black ribbon around the jars and attached a bow, exactly like I did for our centerpiece vases.

The blue tokens looked so pretty all stacked up inside the jars!

We chose The American Cancer Society, The American Heart Association, and Lighthouse of Oakland County as our three charities. Cancer and heart disease have affected both of our families and some of our guests, including my dad and brother. After more than a decade of fighting cancer, my brother is currently (and happily) in remission. We asked him to choose the specific cancer charity, and he felt that the American Cancer Society was the best choice. Lighthouse of Oakland County is a charity that Mr. Taffy’s grandmother co-founded. His family is very involved with the charity, and we found out after the wedding that some of my family has also volunteered at their women’s shelter.

We were sure that most guests would be familiar with the cancer and heart disease related charities, but wanted to provide information on all three at the voting station. I was planning on putting out brochures on the table, but my friends had an idea to place them in a folder or book of some sort that would coordinate with the table set up. We found a perfect solution—this robin’s egg blue cloth covered mini photo book from the Martha Stewart collection at Michaels. I apologize that I cannot give you a link—I can’t find it on their website. Here is a picture of it during a sloppy mock up of the favor table. Don’t mind the super wrinkled linens—they’re not what we actually used!

We glued the information on the inside of the album and placed it open on the table during the reception.

We found these 2″ x 2″ glassine envelopes to hold the tokens on the favor cards that we wanted to make for each place setting.

I started working on a document for the cards, using a gray square and a light blue circle as a placeholder for the tokens:

Here’s the actual card. We used clear double sided tape to adhere the envelopes. Taffette Miss K folded the opening down so it would be easy to take the token out. Looking back, I would have liked to put a black border around the card. Mounting would have taken forever!

We have already counted the tokens since the wedding, and every single guest, including vendors, voted!

Are you thinking of doing a charitable donation at your wedding? How did you choose your charities?