Weddingbee Blog

Other Bees (like Hawk, recently) have gone into detail on bathroom baskets and there are plenty of tutorials on out of town bags, so I decided to combine these “last minute details” into a single post.

Despite collecting materials for weeks beforehand, both these details were truly pulled together in the final days before the wedding. I kept reminding myself that they were “nice to haves” not “need to haves”, which kept it pretty light.

First up…bathroom baskets.

Male version on the left, female version on the right

I have been a frequent user of bathroom baskets and often check out the “stash” when I arrive at weddings. From band-aids to bobby pins, tic tacs to (ahem) tampons, these goodies have definitely saved me in a pinch. I felt like I needed to pay it forward…

The baskets came from a shower gift and Turkey Mom, threaded with ribbon from Williams-Sonoma gifts (it coordinated so nicely!) and another shower gift (thanks for using our wedding colors, Aunt P). Since there weren’t likely to be men in the women’s room (or vice versa), matching was not critical.

Up close view of men’s basket

In the men’s room basket: band-aids, comb, cough drops, gum, hair gel, ibuprofen, lint remover, Listerine strips, lotion, mints, mouthwash, Pepto, Purell and tissues.

Women’s basket

In the ladies’ room basket: band-aids, bobby pins, combs, cough drops, gum, hairspray, hand sanitizer, ibuprofen, lint remover, Listerine strips, lotion, mints, mouthwash, Pepto and tissues. I then put one final product in the basket (after I took the picture).

I think our stiletto wearing guests will appreciate the addition

And now…(out of town) guest bags!

Out of our final guest count of 184, we had 124 guests staying in hotels (67%!). So, just like our desire to ensure they had plenty to occupy their time during Saturday day, we wanted to make sure our guests had enough snacks!

I will preface this by saying we probably went overboard with the out of town bags. However, after 32 weddings, we’ve seen a range of goodie bags. And, more times than I care to admit, Mr. Turkey and I were forced to fight over a granola bar. Therefore, we took a radical approach in the opposite direction.

We bought snacks…

some water (6 feet worth)…

and a WHOLE LOT of TastyKakes (imagine the looks I got when checking out)

We were going for Philly (area) snack themed bags so we stuffed them full of Utz chips, Snyder pretzels, and TastyKakes. Yummy!

Going with our wedding colors, we purchased navy bags from Dollar Tree, white & green curling ribbon and white & green tissue paper. Two Paperdolls then created a sticker that re-used the “logo” from our Save the Dates.

Close up of the sticker

Using a “loose” assembly line system, we filled the bags with all the goodies, which pretty much took over the floor of our living room.

On the plus side, the scores of bags did give me an excuse not to vacuum

So, what did we put inside?

Mid day / late night snacks for EVERYONE!!!

We tried to mix in salty AND sweet, plus a possible breakfast option with the granola bars. For rooms with more than 2 people, we included a second bag (wanted to ensure everyone had water, at least).

You can also see our welcome booklet in the mix. I’ll save that for its own post, but we worked very hard on this with Two Paperdolls and it included material we put on our website…plus some extras!

We were very happy with how the bags all came together and hope that our guests enjoyed their snacks and the information about Philadelphia!

Finished bag…you can see it nearly bursting at the seams (oops)

Now for a little Turkey advice…

I purchased some of the materials (like bags, tissue paper) well in advance and although that meant I could bargain shop, it also meant I had to estimate quantities. As you can see from the photo below, there were some bags that did NOT end up with green tissue paper (luckily I had some other colors on hand).

Lesson Learned: there IS such a thing as too early.

For some reason, the blues are looking very purple

One thing I did not consider (much) was the packaging and delivery of these (bulging) gift bags. We weren’t very well going to bring them in one-by-one.

Lesson learned: Save all your boxes! They will come in handy when making a drop off.

And, finally, since we had guests staying at 5(!) hotels, I had to package the gift bags in different ways for delivery. Some had tags with names, others did not. Also, some hotels had a fee for bags (whether at the front desk or dropped off in room).

Lesson learned: Reach out to your hotels early for their guest bag specifications

So, there you have it—last minute details to help improve our guests’ experience and a few tips for you!

Are you doing bathroom baskets or welcome bags? Anyone else purchase 30 boxes of TastyKake’s in a moment of insanity?