Weddingbee Blog

When I first told you about my Out-Of-Town bag ideas, I talked about the Maryland-themed treats we were going to include, and I’m happy to report that everything was a big success! Here’s a quick peek inside a nearly-finished bag:

(Everything except one missing component, which you’ll see below! We generally gave one bag to each couple)

Do those bags look familiar?

I maaaay have used the same bags that Mrs. Lemon used! They were just so perfect I couldn’t pass them up - the bright Royal blue straps complemented our color scheme, and the sturdy canvas construction made me confident people would be able to use them again often.

(the bag, which we ordered from jiffyshirts)

Unfortunately, I completely ran out of time/creative juice to come up with a way to stamp or decorate the bags to tie in with our theme, but I think the blue and white of the bag was cohesive enough! (And I’ve already seen one friend use her bag again, which made me over the moon happy.)

Here’s a photo tour of what went into the bags:

(Tasty treats for fabulous friends! Well, plus Advil, which isn’t so much tasty, but definitely necessary)

As you can see, we included two bags of Utz potato chips - a local brand that makes everything from these plain chips to Crab flavored chips! We went with plain to be most appealing across the board, but I was definitely tempted to put in some of the Crab chips. Also in the bag were two of our customized water bottles, a container of Tic Tacs, a tin of Old Bay seasoning, two Berger cookies, and two packets of Advil. The Old Bay and the Berger cookies are also nods to Maryland culture, and we included a sheet of information welcoming everyone to the wedding with some facts about the history of each Maryland item in the bag! The water, Tic Tacs, potato chips and Berger cookies (which we repackaged into the small cellophane bags) were all bought at Costco, which really helped keep costs down.

There was one other thing in our OOT bags that I think really drove home the “We love you and want you to be comfortable” message: Homemade banana bread!

(about half of the banana bread we baked that day)

I knew I wanted to include something homemade in the bags since I am a huge fan of baking, and I felt like it would really add a special welcome for our guests - banana bread seemed like the perfect complement to our sweet (cookies), salty (potato chips), and fresh (mints!) options. I bought a mini-loaf pan that would make 4 smaller loaves of bread from one batch of the recipe we were using - each loaf was about 6 inches by 3 1/4 inches, which was big enough to be a decent snack without being so big as to be too much baking for us! We pre-assembled the dry ingredients for the recipe into Ziploc baggies on the Wednesday before the wedding, and then Thursday, my amazing Aunt B spent the day baking nearly 15 batches of the banana bread!

(the assembly line Aunt B had going like perfect clockwork)

The bread was delicious, and I can’t thank Aunt B enough for managing to produce 60 loaves of perfect banana bread! Since we made a little over 50 OOT bags, they sort of took over our house while we assembled them all:

(bags, bags, everywhere!)

We wrote each person/couple’s name on a little yellow tag and tied it to the bag with yellow or blue ribbon, Mr. Guinea Pig and I signed each and every one of the welcome notes, then we stuffed the bags into two cars with copious other wedding items and hauled them out to Kent Island when we all shuttled over on Friday to kick off the wedding weekend. We had people staying at 5 different hotels, and Aunt B and friend DB once again were wedding angels, delivering all the bags while we were at the rehearsal!

The Out of Town bags were something I knew I really wanted to include and make special, after having been a very grateful recipient of one at a friend’s wedding. Everyone who got the bags thanked us for thinking of them and I think it really helped set the welcoming vibe for the wedding!

Have you ever been the starving recipient of an OOT bag in your hotel room that made you jump for joy? What other things do people include in their OOT bags besides edible stuff?