Even though we are having our wedding in Florida, I didn’t want a beach wedding or shell decor of any kind. I have shied away from any typical “Florida” reference with one exception: our out of town bags.
Our bags are sunshine themed! Ninety-nine percent of our guests are traveling hundreds of miles to come to our wedding, and as much as Mr. S and I were the main motivation to come, so was the thought of an awesome Florida vaca. The out of town bags will be the first glimpse of our wedding and we wanted it to set a really fun and exciting tone!
The bags themselves are pretty generic. I bought them in doses at Michaels. With coupons, I could get a pack of 13 for about $3.50. I found a cute stamp and drew in a quick sun. On the other side, it lists our last names and welcomes them to the wedding.
Inside is where things started to get fun. My sister, MOH K, helped design and print these clever “Do Not Disturb” signs. Since many of the guest will be at the hotel early, we wanted one side to be more of a “Hey, I’m here for the Squirrel wedding, come on in!”
Pbear and I wanted to do a little something for our guests in terms of favors. Because we’re not doing welcome bags, this is our one opportunity to really thank them for coming out and sharing our special day with us.
Photo by: Katy Gray on The Brides Cafe via Lover.ly
When we first started talking favors, we had one condition: we wanted it to be food based. We’re really foodies at heart, and we wanted something that people could eat and then throw away, so it doesn’t have to live forever in the junk drawer. Furthermore, it seems like food tends to have the best responses from people. The question, of course, was “what?”
We tossed around a couple of ideas:
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I’ve mentioned before that Mr. Plane works at a private country club in Ann Arbor. Due to this fact, he has seen a lot of weddings and has a lot of opinions on our wedding. When I wrote the post about our tasting, a couple awesome readers commented about wanting to get some more advice from someone “on the inside.”
Ask and you shall receive!
I sat Mr. Plane down and asked him what advice he has for brides planning their weddings. From food to guests to timelines and everything in between, Mr. Plane offered up his top tips on what he is most likely to notice and what your guests will likely take note of as well.
So without further ado, I give you…Mr. Airplane’s “Tips from a Vendor”!
When we got engaged and started planning our wedding, one of the first things I thought about was favors. What would we offer our guests? There were so many ideas out there, and admittedly I pinned a lot of them. Here’s a sampling of the ideas I thought were cute.
Image via Lover.ly / Photo by Gem Photo
Take-home cookies! I love these. (OK, I just love cookies.) There are plenty of options on the food theme—I also saw popcorn, candy, and honey options that I loved (among others).
As you recall from my last post, I will be making a large percentage of the wedding using my own two beautiful, craft-tastic hands. This has resulted in making personalized Mason jars, signage, etc.
My lovely future husband asked what the favors would be. I responded with “Um, the Mason jars with chalkboard stickers on them.” His reply was, so poignantly put: “Who’s gonna want to take that home?”
My answer would have been “DUH. EVERYONE.” But he did have a point. Most people give out little individual bags of personalized M&Ms, or wine glasses with the couple’s name and date. Those are all well and good, but just don’t fit the vibe our wedding is sending off (in my mind).
We thought and thought, and Googled and Bing’d, and finally it hit me. Our wedding site has an option for renting a cast iron fire pit. End of summer? Party by the river? Fire pit?
It was so obvious—s’mores!
Hi bees! Are you still searching for those elusive wedding favors? Favors that will match your decor perfectly? Favors that your guests won’t leave behind at the end of the night? Ones that won’t wind up as a DIY FAIL?
The Weddingbee Favors shop has got you covered. Check out what’s new, including The Hugs & Kiss from Mr. and Mrs! Collection. The color palate is an elegant black & white with aqua accents, to match almost any color scheme!
We especially love these sweet bookmarks for a book- or school-themed wedding!
“Hugs & Kisses” Silver-Finish Bookmark with Elegant White-Silk Tassel (Starting at $2.15 each)
You remember Mad Libs, right?? Of course you do. They were ridiculously awesome.
So when I saw that wedding mad libs are a new thing, I thought, “I have to have it.” I told Mr. Whale about it, and he was like, “What? I don’t get it.” And he still doesn’t really get it. But I decided we would have them anyway. There’s not a whole lot else to tell other than…I made some mad libs! Want to see?
The “front” (the first side a guest would see anyway):
The back:
Alternate title: “How I Will Inevitably End up Gluing My Hand to Something”
True confessions: I am the farrrrthest thing from a do-it-yourself’er. My arts and crafts capabilities mimic those of a five year old.
You know what? Scratch that. The two little girls I babysit (who are also our flower girls and two of the cutest girls in the entire universe) are super adept at arts and crafts, and they’re both under 10. In fact, as I told a friend this morning, they often ask me to do arts and crafts and I end up having to dissuade them. (“Don’t you want to play Simon Says?”)
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Image from Amazon / This is about as arts-and-craft-y as I get, folks.
As I’ve been perusing websites, I’ve been finding more and more awesome DIY ideas.
I don’t believe there are enough ways to thank everyone for attending our wedding, but I figured making OOTG goodie bags was the least we could do for all of our friends and family who are staying in hotel rooms during our wedding weekend. So before we go any further, I need to ask all Sword guest to leave this blog post. I mean, they can probably guess some of the items that will be included, but still, I want them to have a slight element of surprise!
Remember how I said we were going to use wishing stones for our guestbook? Weeellll, things have changed since that was posted. And that idea has been replaced with an even better idea!
Before I reveal anymore, Sword guests, you know the drill!
(icon by Weddingbee, edited by Miss Sword)
I had never heard of out-of-town bags before the ’bee. Since I’ve never traveled to a wedding as an adult, it didn’t occur to me that some brides provide their out-of-town guests with grown-up treat bags upon their arrival. But we do have lots of loved ones flying in from far-flung places! And I do love goodie bags of any kind. So inspired by Mrs. Turkey, Mrs. Hawk, Mrs. Elk, and many others, I set about gathering the supplies for our (hopefully!) amazeballs out-of-town bags.
The first decision was what to pack the goodies in. Mr. Wallaby and I, like good tree-huggers, tote reusable grocery bags to the store every time we stock up on groceries, and we normally decline plastic bags when we’re shopping for clothes and other things, so I thought it would be really nice to provide out-of-town guests with reusable bags. I found that a lot of reusable bags are expensive—at least when you multiply the cost times 30 couples/families. A lot of bees have scored on canvas bags from cheaptotes.com, so I drank the Kool-Aid and ordered 30 natural canvas tote bags, plus five extras just in case.
Although I’m a recent transplant from the Pacific Northwest, I am falling hard for Texas and all its quirkiness. And since Mr. Wallaby was born and raised in Houston, I’ve had my eye on this poster for a long time:
I Love Houston Wood Block Art Print by Etsy seller LuciusArt.
…and so I looked again at the canvas bags I had ordered, and realized that this was a DIY project just waiting to happen. I couldn’t find any decent, cheap stencils of the state of Texas, so I made my own. I created a cardboard stencil from the back of a cereal box (no joke!).
First off, we’re coming to the time in this wedding planning process where I might reveal things I don’t want my guests to know until the wedding. I’m lucky to have some awesome girlfriends (and some guy friends—I’m looking at you, B) who read this blog faithfully. But that said, I want you guys to scram. You don’t get to read this post. I’m serious. So serious I even spent a ridiculous amount of time making the image below.
(icon by Weddingbee, edited by Miss Sword)
I know the jury is still out on whether favors are a wedding necessity, but Mr. Wallaby and I decided to provide favors for our guests as an extra little thank you for coming. When we were considering different favor options, there were a few guiding principles:
1. No monogrammed/personalized favors with a picture of us, or our name on them. We routinely purge our houses of clutter, and we already get all kinds of free things from work. (We work for large companies, and in our industry there are always giveaways at conferences and recruiting efforts—I have a laundry bag, many water bottles, several flash drives, a cutting board, a coffee cup, zillions of pens, a back-pack, a duffle bag, and countless other things emblazoned with my company’s logo.)
2. The packaging must be minimal and must be reusable or recyclable. If you haven’t figured it out by now, Mr. W and I are big-time into minimizing our impact on the environment.
3. We preferred to choose an edible or consumable favor. We love food, especially sweets, and it would be only fitting to offer our guests edible treats.
I did some research and found several options. (Now, I’m sure there are a million other favors that we would’ve loved—macarons, anyone?—but these are the things I found that were most personal and reflected something special about the two of us.)
First—wildflower seeds. These aren’t edible, but they are consumable—they won’t take up shelf space or collect dust. Mr. W and I love gardening and we’re both very interested in botany and how plants grow—and how plants benefit the natural environment. I took a lot of plant biology classes in college, too—I’m even hoping to earn a PhD in plant biology eventually. Moreover, the Texas wildflowers are well-known in this area, so we could offer our guests packets of Texas bluebonnets or another variety of Texas wildflower seeds.
Beautiful muslin bag of wildflower seeds. Photo by Tinywater Photography / Image via Green Wedding Shoes.
Now that I’ve told you the details of the super-awesome joint bachelorette party we planned, I can tell you about one of my favorite elements of it: the favors for our bridesmaids! Originally, I would never have guessed I’d be planning my own bachelorette (well, I really never thought I’d have one at all). In my mind, it’s something the MOH or bridesmaids would plan in your honor. But since S is my MOH and I’m hers, we’re planning it for ourselves (which knowing me is great, since I hate relinquishing control), and planning it has been the best part!
About a month before the bachelorette, S emailed me with a suggestion for what we should give our ‘maids as a favor at the bachelorette. The suggestion she had was FANTASTIC! I wish I had come up with it myself (and perhaps, had the idea of gifts for our ‘maids at the bachelorette crossed my mind, I would have!). You see, as I was planning my thank you gifts for my bridal party, her suggestion kept popping up in my many emails from The Knot, and I loved it! It just wouldn’t work for our wedding for a number of reasons, the most important being we’re getting married on a MOUNTAIN. Now if we were having a tropical destination wedding like BM K had, or a local beach wedding like MOH S is having, this might work, but we’re not, so I left the idea behind and moved on to something else. So when S suggested it as a favor for our pool-day bachelorette party, I immediately said YES!! If you haven’t already guessed, I’m talking about Wet Bikini Bags!!
Image via The Knot
Seeing as I’m going to be pulling an (almost) all-nighter for a cupcake order, I have sweets on my mind. I also realized that I haven’t shared with you my semi-DIY project of bags for our guests to take home treats from the cookie bar!
In my opinion, similar to take-home bags for a candy bar, the purpose of any dessert bar, whether it be cookies or cupcakes, is not just to enjoy treats at the reception, but also later on. Since our cookie bar is also doubling as part of the favor, take-home bags are definitely a must.
I found natural colored, 5×7 treat bags online and ordered enough for each of our guests, and extras, just in case. I also ordered some really cute burlap background “thank you” stickers. Now, my original intention was to simply put the stickers on the front of the bag. However, after using my super-awesome Mason jar rubber stamp for another project, I realized that it would be much cuter to decorate them that way.
My supplies before beginning my project: treat bags, ink pad, Mason jar stamp, and thank you stamp
