Weddingbee Blog

Approximately 85% of our final guest list was traveling to Atlanta from elsewhere. Some folks even came from overseas. The least we could do is make them feel welcome in Atlanta with some OOT bags. Y’all sent over tons of fabulous ideas, but I ran out of time chose to create a grocery-themed bag. I figured a bag of groceries would make me feel at home, so why not?

We began our OOT bag assembly with a few dozen Trader Joe’s reusable bags.

The bags were Atlanta-themed in design, so we decided to fill them with Atlanta-themed groceries! I was able to buy local pecans and peanuts from the Dekalb Farmer’s Market for a pretty reasonable price. We bought in bulk, so we divided the ridiculous amount of snacks among lots of small gift bags. Each OOT bag got a small bag of peanuts and a small bag of pecans. Lion Corgi was very confused as to why there were mixed nuts spread all over her living room.

Please ignore the disaster that is in the background of that last picture. Mr. Lion was working on our chuppah, and we don’t have a garage. Don’t worry, that post is on its way!

Remember the cards we ordered via iPhoto to personalize our OOT bags? They turned out great!

{image by Evan Hampton / via Weddings by Evan Hampton}

Since Apple’s iPhoto lets you print on both sides, we decided to fill the reverse side with fun places to go. The only problem was that we had a very limited amount of space. So, we stuck to the bare necessities: Chick-Fil-A, Starbucks, and places to watch the NCAA Men’s Basketball Semi-finals.

We punched a hole in the corner of the card. Then, we tied it to the grocery bag with some baker’s twine.

We really wanted to include some peaches among our groceries, but they were nowhere to be found. Peaches apparently do not grow in Georgia in late March. At first, I was disappointed that the fruit behind our state’s nickname was totally unavailable. How could we have an OOT bag based on The Peach State without any peaches?! After about the fourth grocery store, I got over it.

We may not have had the most important Georgia food item, but we were able to get our hands on the most important Atlanta food item…Coca Cola! We bought a couple of cases of Mexican Coke (also known as Kosher Coke) at Sam’s Club. These sodas are made with cane sugar, rather than corn syrup, and they taste magical. I recently learned that this is similar to a Dublin Dr. Pepper…something I’ll definitely need to try some day! Anyway, the bottle was glass and vintage-looking, and the label was in Spanish. They were a big hit.

Spoiler alert: the Coke may have made an appearance later in our wedding…

{image by Evan Hampton / via Weddings by Evan Hampton}

What did you end up putting in your OOT bags? Was it similar to what you had initially planned to include?