DIY Detail: Favors

Our favors were actually one of the first decisions I made in the planning process. I blogged all about what we planned to do in September, but didn't actually start worrying about the logistics of it until the week before the wedding. I knew I wanted to use tokens, but I just couldn't find any that were reasonably priced. It felt silly spending the money that would be going to charity on $45 tokens. Finally I came up with cardstock tokens. I already had a 2" circle punch and all kinds of cardstock and patterned scrapbook paper in our colors, so I punched 600 circles and glued two back to back to form our tokens. 

The process was a bit tedious, but David helped a lot. And we ended up with tokens that not only matched our color scheme exactly, but that also cost next to nothing. After the tokens were finished I slipped each of them into a small jewelry storage bag.

Next I printed off dozens of pages of the cards they'd be attached to. I was able to fit them 4 to a page, thankfully, but it still required quite a bit of cutting and corner rounding. 

I just used double stick tape to attach the token to the card, and ended up with 300 of these:

We put one at each place at the table. I figured everyone would see them this way, and since we had a buffet dinner, they made the tables look less empty without place settings. I wish I had a better picture of the little pop of color they added!

I made a scrapbook page that described both of the charities and had pictures of David and I with our loved ones that we chose to do this in memory of. It made it easier to see why these foundations in particular are so close to our hearts. We had a vase for each of them with signs in front.

Looking back, I wish we would've had the DJ announce what exactly our guests were supposed to do with them like I had planned to. It totally slipped my mind to ask him to say something, so I think fewer people 'voted' than we would've liked. I'm still so happy we did it, though, and that some of our favorite people were able to be at our reception in spirit.

Photo by BM S

What did you do for your favors? Was it something meaningful to you as a couple?

A New Take on Favors

One of the first things I knew I wanted to do at our wedding was make a charitable donation rather than give out favors. I originally thought that for a couple reasons: 1. David and I have both been closely affected by a couple specific diseases, and 2. No one keeps favors from weddings anyway and favors would end up being a waste of money. I have to say the 2nd reason isn't entirely true since I've seen plenty of cute favors, including CDs of the couple's favorite songs, matches with cute sayings, and adorable bags/containers for a candy bar. But after I saw Mrs. Taffy's post on Weddingbee about her favors, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. David and I could each choose a charity and then we'd give our guests the option of which charity they'd like their donation to be made to.

I've talked previously about my grandma and the fact that she lost her battle with breast cancer in December of 2005. Since I didn't end up finding a dress at Brides Against Breast Cancer, I knew I wanted to support the Making Memories Breast Cancer Foundation that the money from the dress sales goes to.



David has lost one grandpa and an aunt to different types of cancer, so his choice was the American Cancer Society. I think we're going to use either small tokens or possibly just circles of fairly heavy cardstock with our monogram (cut out with my circle punch that I haven't used yet!). I'm debating about attaching either some homemade truffles or a cookie or something, because who doesn't love more sweets?! If we do attach one of those things, the paper with the explanation will have the token attached to it somehow and will look something like this:



If we decide not to attach any sweets, I'll probably remove the 'Sweet Love' line from the top of it. I didn't want this to turn into an expensive project, so I looked for some vases/jars at Dollar Tree to use and found some that I think will work perfectly! I made a couple signs to go in front of each jar as well:



I'm also going to make scrapbook pages to put next to each jar. The scrapbook page next to the Brides Against Breast Cancer/Making Memories Breast Cancer Foundation jar will have pictures of my grandma and I as well as an explanation of the foundation. The other page will have pictures of David with his relatives. I haven't made them yet, but will be sure to update when I do! I love this idea, because it still gives our guests a choice as to which charity they choose to support, but regardless of which one they choose, both are meaningful to us!

One thing I didn't realize is how many people don't agree with making charitable donations in your guests' honor. I had no idea that it was even controversial, but my mom and I picked up The Knot magazine when she was in town (because my brother and sister-in-law's photographer had an ad in it that had 3 pictures of their wedding!) and it was one of the opinion topics. Oh well, to each his own, right?

What are you doing for your favors? Are you "in favor" of charitable donations on your guests' behalf?