Understanding Wedding Favors & Who Gets Them

Getting married is certainly one of those once-in-a-lifetime events that when it comes to your turn, you want it to be perfect!

If you’re at this point in your wedding preparation journey – the starting point – honestly you still have a fair bit of planning to do. And one of them is to first know what are wedding favors and who are wedding favors for.

Wedding favors are nicely packaged gifts given to guests during the wedding reception or wedding party. Though their necessity can be argued from both sides of the divide, they are a nice way for the bride and groom to express their appreciation to the guests in attendance. Wedding favors can be thoughtful, useful, edible or otherwise.

What Are Wedding Favors?

Or, as some may call them wedding door gifts or wedding souvenirs – which are actually referring to the same thing.

Giving out wedding favors is a tradition that has been practiced for a long time. Over the past years though, this tradition has evolved tremendously.

Starting out as little niceties treated by the bride and groom as a side preparation, they had evolved to become more and more extravagant. It was a result of the competition that heated up as couples tried to outdo the weddings that preceded theirs.

Of course, that competitive state of play was not (and is not till this day) confined to just the wedding favors. Needless to say, that’s not good especially when it makes us spend more than we can comfortably afford.

Useful Wedding Favors – Some More Than Others

Fast forward to this day. The evolution has come to a point where being sensible is the order of the day.

Wedding couples are now thinking along the lines of usefulness – as well as edible wedding favors or even drink favors. In this regard, the possibilities can be limitless. Well, limited only to the bounds of creativity and how much or how little effort you wish to put into it.

We all want what we give to the guests to be something useful and memorable. If it’s something useless, you can bet the favor is just going to get left at the table or ends up in the trash bin!

Either way, it hurts – both the couples’ feelings and the wallet!

The Budget Consideration

No matter what the considerations are, the budget is certainly one of them. Sometimes at the very top!

Setting a budget upfront is important to keep you on track for obvious reasons. You don’t want to blow your overall wedding budget because you’re too caught up chasing the “very best” of everything in and of your wedding.

The cost of wedding favors is a subject that warrants an entirely separate discussion.

Personalized Wedding Favors Are The Buzz

Now, what constitutes useful or otherwise would require a little thinking on your part.

For example, getting a favor that can be used but only really makes sense if it comes as a larger set with other things. That favor is getting chucked away!

Case in point and this is especially true of some personalized wedding favors. Having the couple’s names etched on the actual favors – while they look good for the couple – can render the favors undesirable in the eyes of the guests.

Shot glasses etched with the couple’s names, and maybe even the wedding date, can seem like a wonderful idea at the time of conception. Even more so when placed on the tables where the guests would be seated.

Chances are the guests would not use them let alone keep them. Think about it – would you use an everyday item with someone else’s name on it? That’ll be a little odd.

Unless the people receiving those favors are your parents. They and some close family members are probably the ones who won’t mind the sight of those gifts with the names of the bride and groom on them.

Not only do they make beautiful display items in the living room, but they can also be very memorable too. Perfect in keeping the sweet memories close to heart.

After all, that is the intention of the bride and groom isn’t it.

But not to worry if you intend to have the bride’s and groom’s names printed on them. In fact, the printing of the names of the bride and groom is commonly done on personalized favor tags to make them simple and unique wedding favors.

In this case, you can look into this article on whose name should go first on wedding favors to explore the creative ways you could design the names onto the favor tags.

Personalization of favors, when done right, can up the thoughtfulness level a fair bit. Yet it does not have to increase the likelihood of them getting discarded after the wedding.

Personalization can make the wedding day more memorable and the favors would still be of value to the guests. Even just for that little bit of time.

Therefore, personalization of wedding favors should warrant some considerations if you want to go down this path. The results would be worth the effort.

This is also where a little creativity in wedding favor personalization goes a long way!

Who Are Wedding Favors For?

The answer may seem obvious at first – the guests!

Well, yes. But there’s a little more to it. More in terms of who gets what.

In essence, everybody including your family members and parents is guests in attendance. That’s far as the number of guests filling the seats you have allocated is concerned.

As such, a little personalization or distinction can be made for who among the guests get something a little different.

However, this is something that belongs to the “nice-to-have” category, so it’s not a necessity. Considering you already have enough on the plate to deal with!

But here goes…

Wedding Favors for the General Guests

There isn’t much more to consider here. What you have considered for the favors up to this point is for the guests. They are made up of your friends and friends of close family members. Obviously this group of guests makes up the majority.

Wedding Favors for the Parents and Parents-In-Law

Parents are parents! (no pun intended)

Parents are very special people in our lives. Very different from other guests in attendance, in how much impact they have in our lives. Hence the opening line about parents!

So if you’re thinking of getting a different favor from what you already have for the general guests, then this is where it’s worth making a difference.

Wedding Favors for the Immediate Family Members

Alright, we’re nitpicking here.

Favors for your immediate family members can be the same as what you have prepared for your guests. Or if you have made something different for your parents, then family members can get the same favor.

But you get the idea. If you want to have something meaningful and different for various segments of people in your life, you can. It’s just more work.

Wedding Favors for the Bridesmaids and Groomsmen

Without making any further distinction between these two, you may want to gift something different for them. After all, they are your closest friends, friends who you count on to be seen with and support you on probably one of the most memorable days of your life.

In a way, they “prop” you up, figuratively speaking. So you and your partner can be as glittering a star as your carefully selected wedding outfits make you feel, for the day at least.

Without them, the wedding just won’t feel complete. Happiness like this is to be shared with your best of friends.

Furthermore, you would want this as a little way of yours to show how much you appreciate them, not just during the wedding but also in this journey called life. That’s what friends are for!

Why Do You Have Wedding Favors?

The wedding day is a day for sharing joy and happiness with the people closest to you. From the very first day of preparation to the completion of the wedding day, we all want it to be memorable, for the right reasons.

There are more ways than one to make your wedding day memorable.

Through photography, we get to frame the memories which we can look back on for years to come.

Through the hiring of a wedding band that played the classics, we hope to give the evening a relaxing ambiance for all to experience.

Similarly, the gifting of unique wedding souvenirs is one way for guests to remember the event by. As such you would want the souvenirs to be meaningful to the right people.

The wedding souvenirs can be personalized with just the right message on them. This is so that they know how much it means to you that they attended your wedding.

Beyond being meaningful, you’d want the gift items you put together to be useful favors so the guests would be happy to take home with them. Better still, something edible or drinkable! Otherwise, it’ll be a waste of money which you can make better use of elsewhere.