Gifting wedding favours dates back centuries. Couples would initially gift guests love knots made of lace and ribbon as a wedding favour. However, this has evolved as a tradition where the newlywed couple would present their guests with various treats (edible and non edible) as a thank you for joining them on their special day. However, as the types of weddings and wedding culture has evolved over the years, so to has wedding favour gifting.
Traditional Wedding Favour Ideas
We begin by taking a look at some of the more traditional wedding favours, some of which are still used today.
- Sugared Almonds – who didn’t love these as a child? You can give these either as
all-white or in a variety of colours. These are usually wrapped in a tiny satin material for easy travel. - Disposable Camera – each table would be gifted a disposable camera allowing each family to capture their favourite moments at the wedding.
- Cake in a Box – also another time honoured tradition and probably one of the most popular wedding favours still gifted. The couple usually takes a sample of their wedding cake places it into a tiny decorative box and leaves it at each seat at the reception table for the guests to take home afterwards.
Creative Wedding Favour Ideas
Due to evolutions in ideas and style, more unique and creative ideas for wedding favours have dominated weddings of late. Here are a few of these gift ideas.
- Personalized flash drive – this innovative gift idea will allow your guests to leave with the memories from the day in electronic form. You can load pictures on them or even add a wedding video.
- Goody bag – you can have a type of “open bar” with various treats for your guests to fill their goody bags. It should be self served so that persons can choose what they want.
- Customized fortune cookies – replace the fortunes in these cookies with personalized messages for your guests.
- Decorative Coasters – the best thing about this gift is that you can use it as a table decoration at your reception table and then allow your guests to take them home as a wedding favour.
- Scented Candles – this can also be a DIY project for you to bond with your bridesmaids and groomsmen as you can all get together and create scented candles for your guests to take home and enjoy.
- Matchbooks – very unique but also very affordable and useful. You can have your names engraved or printed on the box so your guests will be reminded of your special day.
- Sunglasses – this is a very innovative gift. Add a cute catch phrase on them such as “protect your eyes our love is blinding”.
Real Ideas from Real Brides
“We had a beach wedding in Thailand, so we gave each of our guests traditional wooden fans and wooden umbrellas to help them with the heat and sun.” – Sheridan C. From Brides.com
“We gave each guest a blank coin to choose one of three charities for us to donate to instead of giving out favors. It involved them and allowed us to do something amazing! They ended up choosing a summer camp scholarship fund!” – Shulamit R. From Brides.com
“A family friend is a real cartoon artist. He drew my husband and I and made 
custom wine labels, which we put on a bottle of wine for each guest staying at the hotel. All guests received a wine stopper. My hubby and I are known as the Princess and Hippie, so the wine label depicts him as a deadhead and me as royalty.” – Katie M. From Brides.com
Essentially, the choice of what type of wedding favour to gift to your guests is entirely up to the couple and should be tailored to your personality.
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