Need Cute Inexpensive Favor Ideas

My husband and I got married last year, and we gave out violets as favors. We placed each in little pete pots (they were 25 cents for 10 I think) and then we put them in pretty dixie cupts. His aunt owns a greenhouse, so she gave them to us as a gift, but even if we would have paid for them they would have been less than $10 a flat. We gave one out to every couple- we had 150 guests- and I think we maybe had 4 flats. Plus, they doubled as decorations and really added something to the tables. With greenhouses ending their season soon, you could probably get a great deal!!

Hi S.!
You have gotten some really great ideas! I was a bridesmaid in a wedding in which we did fortune cookies. What we did was buy a bulk bag of them and colored chocolate from a party store. Dip 1/2 of one cookie in one of the wedding colors and 1/2 of another cookie in the other color (assuming that there are 2 colors) and put them in bags and tie them w/tags (made on computer) and ribbon. They were really cute and very inexpensive. It probably cost under $1.50 per favor. Good luck!

I know some people may freak out about this, but have you considered not doing favors? My friend just got married 2 weeks ago and she didnt have any and no one even noticed. I didnt even notice until she pointed it out to me after the wedding! Plus, how many weddings have you gone to where there are a ton of favors still laying all over the tables at the end of the night?

I just went to a wedding this weekend, and instead of favors, the bride and groom made a donation to a charity. It was wonderful!!! An aunt of the groom had breast cancer and they made the donation to Susan G Komen.

We did heart cookies in a little bag with a ribbon and a sticker on the back saying "thanks for celebrating with us." I hate knick-knacks and rarely keep favors from weddings, so I figured something edible was best.

Wow! Congratulations on another little one, and applause to you! LOL. I have 2 boys of my own, 2.5 & almost 1. How do you do it? Haha.

Anyway, favors are always fun, but ideas can be hard to come by. How fancy is her wedding? You could get little tea bag dishes-they're ceramic (they come in all sorts of shapes-I have a teapot) and attach, with a ribbon the colors in her wedding, a teabag in a plain white cover so you can add the wedding info. I had a girlfriend do that for her bridal shower and it was cute. Also, another thought is a packet of flower seeds with a saying about the day - "With the growths of these flowers grows our love" or something like that. Then you could always do the tooling with candy and have a ribbon tied with their wedding info. If it's a more casual wedding, you could always do recipe jars (all the dry ingredients of a recipe and the recipe with a little saying), but that one can get expensive depending on the number of people. Little mini picture frames (you can get them cheap at a craft store) with their engagement photo and info. Since it's summer, you could get little chapsticks and put them in tooling, with some sort of saying (not sure what - that one was just a bizarre thought - lol)

Hope this helps! Good luck!

I.
-I'm a mother of 2 adorable little boys, 2.5 & 1 year, and I love helping moms stay at home with their family while making alittle extra!

we did a colored spoons that matched our wedding with some hersheys hugs and kisses wrapped in tule with the words . We used navy spoons with silver tule and it was so cute

Hugs and Kisses from the Mr and Mrs on it. We did the tags on the computer and then added the date and our names. It was cheap and fun. LOL

I am an almost stay at home mom, who also happens to be a pastry chef. I can make double heart sugar cookies and write the couples names and wedding date. You could then wrap them in some type of cellophane, or something and set out by guest book, or table settings.
The m&m website also has an option to pick 2 colors, and then have something written on each color. (maybe the date on one and their names on the other) You have to purchase at least 11 bags, i think, but then you could split each bag up for individual servings.
good luck!

We made laminated bookmarks with our names/date and tied ribbons on the end that matched the wedding colors. You could also add a small piece of candy with the bookmark, I suppose.

www.favorlady.com they are magnets and you submit a picture and she combines it with any style magnet you choose that she has on the website. It's cute and different. I did it for my son's baptism and everyone loved them. I also did godiva coffee and it came with a silver scooper.
other websites that are cheap are www.favorwarehouse.com
if you just google they're is a whole plethera of websites that you can go to. I went to about every single one them when i was getting married but I forgot most of the sites. Anyway, hope this helps.
Good luck

I was just recently at a shower and they had Silver Heart shaped Bottle openers as favors. They were from Kate Aspen.com. There is a section on the side that says Inexpensive favors on it. They are really cute. Good Luck.

For my wedding, we did baby food jars filled with gourmet jelly beans. My husband has quite a sweet tooth so he insisted on something with candy. We had a lot of kids at our wedding so we wanted something that would be a treat for them as well. And we needed something low-cost. Some people have told us that they still use the jars to hold trinkets, change, etc. Each favor cost approx 50 cents and didn't take much time to put together.

My SIL gave us the jars. We etched a design on the front of them (my husband used sand and I think his air compressor, but you can find etching chemicals and templates at craft stores). We added inexpensive fabric and ribbon to the lid. Then we filled them with gourmet jelly beans that were 1/2 price at a local candy shop.

I've seen other couples give refigerator magnets they made (lacy material shaped into a fan and glued to a magnet), wrap candied almonds in tulle, photo frames they bought at a discount store, porcelain-looking trinket boxes from a dollar store, and homemade chocolate pops in a wedding design or one that has special meaning to the newlyweds.

Good luck and have fun!

I always feel guilty for not displaying favors from my friends weddings, so I opted for something completely disposable for my own wedding. We found small inexpensive boxes at a party supply store and filled them with a dozen Hershey's "hugs" and "kisses". We (meaning bridesmaids and family!) had an assembly line one evening and wrapped them in simple wrapping paper from the dollar store and attached a "thank you for attending note" with ribbon (we were even lucky enough to find discount ribbon that matched my girls dresses). Hope this helps!

Wow, I give you so much credit. 4 and 1 on the way. Whew! You deserve a medal!

Anyway, my hubby and I did edible favors. I got the idea from the internet. My mom and aunt sewed wire edged organza ribbon up two sides to make bags. Then we put a hershey kiss, a hershey hug, a dove promise mini bar, and a nestle treasure. We tied the bags shut and put a note on it saying "A hug, a kiss, a promise to treasure, thank you for sharing in our first day of forever" then we added our names and the date. Total for about 200 favors was 78 bucks. I couldn't find anything cheaper than that. And they went over great. I love the pot and seeds idea. Very cute! So many great ideas on here.

We did personalized Hersey bars for my parents 35th wedding anniversary. They were a big hit. I think favors that are edible are the best. Anyway, here is the web address. You can upload your own photos and they have a ton of different layouts to choose from.

http://www.wrappedhersheys.com/

Oriental Trading Company has pretty glass ornaments for very cheap. I did little opalescent glass ornaments with a "Thanks for sharing our day" type message on it. You can get about a dozen small glass ornaments for less than $6-7.

you could do chocolate roses on a stick, like a lollipop. we got the molds at pat-katans or you could go to a candy shop. they were pretty easy. I painted the leaves green and then waited for it to dry then poured white into the rose area. they sell plastic papers to put the sucker in and then I just used some curling ribbion to tie it off.

For my wedding, I did little frames with a message printed inside "Thank you for attending....." I printed it myself on pretty paper I bought at a stationary store. We also made our own centerpieces and raffled them off at the end of the night. My sister bought little spoons and wraped tulle around them with a ribbon. It looks like a little angel if you do it right. She also printed little tags that had their names and the date of the wedding.

Good luck.
Y.

Wow, people have given you some great ideas!

I love doing wedding and shower favors, these are some of the ones I have done or seen in the past, all are inexpensive.

Chocolate dipped pretzel rods (very quick and easy to make, can roll is nuts or chunky sugar sprinkles, or drizzle with different colored chocolate or caramel)

Small jars of honey or maple syrup

Candy or caramel apples (again quick and easy to make)

Sparklers with a match box with couples name, etc. tied with a pretty tulle ribbon (my wedding favor)

Demitasse tea spoon tied to a note card with a tea bag. Tea bag tag says "Love is brewing"

Small terracotta flower pot with a small pouch of wildflower or other seeds and appropriate love is growing type poem

Thats all I can think of right now, Good luck!

H.

Hi S.! You've gotten some great ideas here! Is there a theme to the wedding? Perhaps a special color theme or theme party idea? I do lots of favors for different kinds of things and often use cello bags and ribbon or tulle for an inexpensive wrap that looks great.
I belong to a group of women who are always coming up with ideas of things to wrap for parties. Our last idea was red, white , blue jelly belly jelly beans in a cone bag and tied with ribbon for 4th of July. So easy and looks really pretty. You could wrap the bride and grooms favorite candies, or use Hershey kisses for a colorful favor. I buy my bags here: http://www.wrapiteasy.com Have fun!

Edit: Centerpieces-flower pots with real potted flowers-in Sept you can use colorful mums and fall flowers-so pretty. I'd keep the flower theme going. Have fun!

What we did for favors at my wedding was actually my husband's idea. He ordered labels off of a business on ebay and we got 600 of them for $30 and they had a little groom holding a bride and it has our name, date, and "together forever" on it and you wrap them around Hershey's miniatures. I did it all myself so it took me like 10 hours straight to wrap them up, but I just did it during a day when I needed a break from everything (I was going to college and about to graduate, I had a wedding to plan for, and we were looking for a place to move to). I sat down and put my soap in and wrapped them while watching my missed episodes, it worked out great. It was a nice stress reliever and overall, not too expensive. My colors were purple, white, and silver so I bought purple and white netting, these little bundles of flowers in purple and silver, white and purple ribbon, and I also had those little silver rings and I would wrap up 3 pieces of candy (only the silver ones, the dark chocolate wrappers are gold so I wanted to stick with my colors and my husband loved getting the dark chocolate off of my hands!) and put it in the netting with the opposite color ribbon, tie 2 flowers and a ring around it and it looked really cute. When they were all laid out on the tables, it looked so pretty because they varied the colors. Overall we probably spent $100-$150 and we had a lot of candy leftover that we put in a really pretty bowl for the kids. Everyone loved it and they were edible so people didn't have to worry about throwing them away if they didn't want to keep them. I always end up tossing mine out, so I didn't want people to feel like they need to keep them forever. Good luck, it's hard to find something cheap and just right. I hope this idea helps!

if you're willing to go the non-traditional favor route, here's what we did:

we bought a bunch of bulk candy at Sam's Club, then got some different sized glass bowls/vases at michael's or joanne's. we ordered paper cake bags online (i think papersource.com maybe?) for something like $15 for 200 bags, printed out our names and date on the bags, and had a candy buffet for our favors. our guest loved it!

another thing you could do is get jingle bells (two small ones and one big one) and string them on a piece of ribbon in the wedding color, and attach a little tag that says something like "ring these for kisses from the new mr.&mrs." it eliminates people tinking their glasses (annoying) and doubles as a favor.

hope those thoughts helped!

I did something I thought was very useful. I donated all the money I had in my budget for favors to a local charity. Then printed up a little card at each table telling people where the money went. To be honest at every wedding I've ever gone too I've only kept one favor the rest have been thrown away. So I decided to do a little good with the little we did have for favors. We got married at the beach, and donated to a charity that helps clean the ocean and beaches. They even have a little plaque in the main office with all these donors, and one of them says "Jim and A.'s wedding May 18th". Think about putting your money towards a good cause, maybe there is something that affects you or your family that you'd like to donate to, like American cancer society, or diabetes research. I hope this is something you will consider.
Congratulations on your marriage.

My husband and I made a CD with our favorite songs and some of our wedding music. We just bought a box of CD envelopes and printed out labels to put on the envelope. It was pretty cheap.

I also agree with the idea about just making a donation in the name of all of your guests to a charity of your choice. Most people don't do anything with the favor and it ends up in a drawer or in the trash.

Good luck and remember what ever doesn't get done, wasn't meant to happen in the first place!