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Savor your wedding day with table favors! |
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* Whether elegant or inexpensive, take-home trinkets add special touch to the
reception
The china gleams and the table linens are crisply ironed for the wedding
reception. Just one thing seems missing. The bride and groom would like to send
a remembrance of their special day home with guests.
Table favors can lend a special touch to a wedding reception. From
individually
wrapped chocolates to
small tapered candles, wedding favors range from the
instantly edible to trinkets that can be savored for years to come.
The wedding itself should be sacred, when it comes to the reception, you can
have a lot of fun with it.
Wedding guests enjoy active participation in a reception, be it
blowing bubbles
at the bride and groom or snapping photos with
disposable cameras placed
conveniently on the reception tables.
While guest favors typically cost from $2.50 up to $10 per person, there are
many less expensive options.
A favorable way to save
The best way to save money, of course, is to make your own favors. Have a
pre-wedding party and let family and friends help tie
Ribbons
or stuff tiny
boxes. The assemblers need not even be craft experts.
"You usually can't go wrong with foods," she says. "A good example is Mexican
wedding cookies in a gift box."
Stores carry a nice selection of
fanciful, small gift boxes just waiting to be filled with everything from
chocolates to seashells. The boxes are placed at individual table settings and
are intended for guests to take home. The store also carries a variety of rubber
stamps and inks to personalize the boxes or other paper goods.
There is a definite trend toward edibles, many brides are
avoiding knickknacks that get put away in a drawer. They look cute on the table
but are useless later."
Personalized chocolates are popular favors. The couple's names and wedding date can be imprinted on the
chocolates or the foil wrappers. Expensive, melt-in-your-mouth Godiva chocolates
make an elegant gift when encased in tiny gold boxes.
The traditional packets of rice or birdseed intended to be tossed at the bride
and groom as they make an entrance or exit from the reception have become nearly
obsolete, according to the wedding planners.
Very few facilities will allow you to throw rice or birdseed anymore.
Rice earned a bad reputation years ago when wild birds died after ingesting the
grains that subsequently swelled in their stomachs. Birdseed proved slippery to
guests, and frankly, is a mess to clean up.
Plus it really does a number on the girls' dresses.
Many couples choose to make their exit, instead, under a canopy of bubbles being
blown by guests. Others prefer the joyful ringing of small bells strung on
ribbon and placed at each table setting.
An environmentally sensitive favor is a small packet of tree seeds intended for
planting. The seeds represent new beginnings, symbolic of a
couple's start of wedded life.
Tap into a theme
Wedding favors also can represent a theme, perhaps reflecting the wedding in
general or the hobbies of the bride and groom.
Denise Walker and Steven Schramm married four years ago in a Victorian mansion
in Seattle and incorporated a Victorian garden theme throughout their wedding
and reception.
"I started six to nine months early and grew ivy in heart-shaped topiaries for
each table," says Walker.
Individual favors were miniature flower pots spray-painted in pink, gold, and
ivory and filled with potpourri sachets.
California surfers incorporate
Seashells and
sand
dollars into wedding favors. Carnival lovers use miniature carousel
horses. A particularly artistic bride hand painted the champagne goblets at each
table setting. A gardener may choose a flower or plant.
"It's memorable and certainly reflects that couple's personality, " she says.
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SHOP FOREVERWED
1-425.353.2191
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