Sarah Burton, owner of ido Signature Events, Lake Cumberland area’s only wedding & event planning firm! Sarah is also the co-founder of Cumberland Weddings Magazine and an expert on all things etiquette. So many elements of design and event planning overlap so I often use Sarah as inspiration. Here is what she had to say about personalized favors:
"As a 26 year old, I often find myself asking the famous question of a toddler, “why?” When Liz presented me with the topic of personalized favors, I had tons of ideas running through my mind, but with that was why in the world do we give favors? At almost every wedding, shower or event we go to, there are always favors, so before I share a couple of awesome ideas with you, I want to take a step back into history about why we have favors.
Centuries ago, European aristocrats would send their wedding guests home with some type of a miniature gift, called a bonbonniere. Just like now, they were given at other events besides weddings back. A bonbonniere was a box made of porcelain, crystal, stones or metal, hence why there are little crafty favor boxes today. Inside of the box you would find delicacies made of sugar.
There are tons of options when it comes to personalized favors for weddings or events; however the most popular are still edible ones.
These are two fairly new favors that are showing up for different events. Above are Rice Krispy Personalized Cupcake Flavors. These would be super cute for a wedding shower, baby shower or bachelorette party or even an event at a salon and spa. On the right are brownie pops, these are perfect for every event. They could have the initials of the bride and groom, the initial of the guest at each seat, company name, etc. Brownie pops could also be dipped in pink chocolate or blue chocolate for baby showers too.
Wine bottles are always great favors for events, for 2 reasons: 1) your guest can drink the wine and 2) they’ll keep the bottle. We have many great wineries now in KY and I always love to keep stuff local. There are different ways that you can personalize the bottles labels, pictures or even just small stickers.
There are also tons of smaller items that you can use for favors. I actually recommend hitting the grocery store the day of Halloween, Christmas, Valentine’s Day and Easter – great time to get good treats half price. If you want to stick with tradition and do a smaller favor and cute packaging there are tons of options for it as well. One of my favorite places is Nashville Wraps; they have cute boxes in all shapes and sizes. The picture below is actually some that I purchased there for an event I did. I wrapped the silver boxes in black ribbon and then included my company sticker on top to hold the ribbon together!
The sky is the limit when it comes to personalization, but I do think that personalization is the key to a good, fun and memorable favor, as many people keep those favors for years to come!"
