Wednesday, March 20, 2013

The Favors Debate

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).


Image via Lover.ly / Photo by Carlie Statsky


Image via Lover.ly / Photo by Craig Paulson Photography



Miss Camera also posted some awesome inspiration pictures for her s'more favors—can't wait to see how those work out! A lot of other ladies on here have done some neat things with favors, both edible and inedible. (I loved Mrs. Wallaby's test tube tea favors!)

For us, it came down to two factors: price and practicality. Even just two or three dollars a favor adds up when you have over a hundred guests—and we really didn't have much (any?) of a budget for favors!

We also didn't want this to be a waste for our guests, something they wouldn't use or wouldn't appreciate having. I went to a wedding over the summer where the bride carefully prepared over 150 little boxes of jelly beans that said "Thank you for be-an here with us!" and set them out for the guests. Unfortunately, hardly anyone took them! When we were helping to clean up afterward, there were over 100 left. I've seen similar things at other weddings—my cousin had enough bags of pretzels and chocolate-covered coffee beans to eat for months after his wedding!

I read this blog post and several others over at A Practical Wedding about favors. Here's my take on it: choosing to do favors is just that—a choice! You are not a bad bride if you decide not to give out favors. You are also not a bad bride if you do something simple like a handwritten note or something elaborate like homemade butter in a cute jar.

For us, our choice is not to do favors. Price-wise and practically, it's just not fitting into our wedding. I believe brides should not feel obligated to provide favors, nor should they feel guilty about their choice. What about you? Did you do favors? If you did, what did you do? (I love hearing about unique ideas!)

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