The Ideal Time to Order Your Wedding Favors Depend on These Factors
The preparation phase of your wedding is exciting, but also hectic and tiring in equal measure.
After estimating the quantity and cost of procuring the favors, you now need to consider when to place the order.
Although when to order wedding favors is reliant on a few considerations, the general minimum time to have the favors reached you would be 1 to 2 weeks before your wedding day. If you leave it too late and don’t receive the favors on time, you could be left with having to go for a substitute solution or scrap the favor idea altogether. Either way, it won’t be pleasant!
The General Minimum Time Regardless of Favor
As the heading suggests, a general minimum time is simply to give us a quick idea. It does not take into consideration the many things that could affect the ideal timing to buy wedding favors.
Although some considerations may have a negligible impact on your decision, there will inevitably be some which could potentially and substantially affect how long it takes for you to receive your wedding favors.
When we dive deeper, all the factors such as what item you’re buying as favors, the where and the how, etc., you will start to get a clearer picture of how much ahead of time you should order them. Or rather, how close to the wedding day you can cut it.
The Considerations Affecting When to Buy Wedding Favors
As small and simple a wedding favor may appear, there are certainly a few considerations to take into account so you don’t catch yourself off-guard with receiving the favors late.
The Location of Your Wedding
The place you plan to hold your wedding does have a bearing on when you should get the procurement of your wedding favors sorted. But not in the way you’d have expected it to be.
The location factor may affect what you could or want to get as favors. How is that?
If your wedding location is close to or is where you are based presently, then the situation is clear cut. In other words, it doesn’t matter much.
It is when you’re planning a destination wedding, especially one that’s unique and far from home, you would want to buy something from that area. Something local that’s unique to the location of your wedding.
Getting local produce as favors may mean you could only buy them when you’re a day or two away from your wedding day. Or if possible, call and place an order in advance and only pick up the goods when you arrived at the location.
If indeed you’re holding a destination wedding, learn more about the differences between wedding favors and wedding welcome bags. You’d probably also get some good ideas for things to put in a wedding welcome bag.
Do keep in mind though, there are still other things you need to consider which are explained below.
The Nature of Item You’re Getting As Favors
Getting non-food wedding favors would mean that you can procure them much more in advance. But not too far in advance though, especially if you had arrived at your initial favor idea early on in your wedding planning phase!
Ideas can and could change. It can happen when we have time to still contemplate the decision we’ve made in the first place.
Conversely, having edible wedding favors or drink favors would mean you have to pay attention to the expiry date as you would for any perishable item.
Favors like chocolates and rock candy have a much longer shelf life, relative to other food items. For instance, you would have cake favors one day before the wedding, at max! Of course, if it’s a cake you wish to bake yourself, there’s a whole amount of additional effort required of you. But it’s something for you to think about.
We shouldn’t just think of the expiry date per se though.
It’s important to think in the other direction in terms of how long you could keep the favors once they reach you. Take for example, tea wedding favors.
Teas generally have relatively longer shelf life compared to other food items. It’s not inconceivable to keep them up to 2 years if you keep them in airtight containers and in a cool place away from sources of light.
Furthermore, tea wedding favors provide an excellent level of customization and personalization to match your wedding theme. It’s a great way to dazzle your guests and certain to give them something to rave about!
(If you’re interested in getting drinks as wedding favors, these great drink favors are sure to make your wedding memorable for the guests.)
Again, there are more considerations and probably more important ones below. So, read on!
Where You’re Buying The Favors From
The ‘who’ here doesn’t matter, it’s the ‘where’ that matters especially if you’re ordering the favors from overseas.
Regardless of who you’re buying the favors from, it’s prudent to always ask the vendor in your initial inquiry:
- The amount of time it takes to process your order, and
- The shipping time
Generally speaking, shorter shipping time especially when you place a rush order would incur a higher shipping cost. Therefore planning ahead of time can afford you the luxury of waiting time and not spend more unnecessarily.
The Level of Personalization of Wedding Favors
Customization and personalization can bring your favors to a whole different level presentation-wise that complements your wedding theme.
What more if you get to incorporate elements of design that the guests can easily identify with which makes it more likely that your guests would keep the favors.
As enticing as that sounds, you would need to allocate more time to the whole favor preparation effort.
Depending on the level of personalization, the lead times would vary.
Say you’re engaging a designer or have the vendor provide you a custom design for personalized tags, the lead time would generally be longer. From the initial contact with your favor vendor to the time you’d expect to receive the favors in their final presentation form, expect to allow up to 2 months in some cases.
Personalized wedding favor tags, as with other personalized wedding printed items, may involve putting or designing the bride’s and groom’s names onto the printed material. Should you still be in two minds as to whose name goes first on wedding favors, the article could help you decide.
Should you opt to purchase ready-made favor tags with generic designs, you can expect a much shorter lead time. In which case, if the vendor has the tags you want in-stock you’ll generally only have to concern yourself with the shipping time.
DIY or Someone Else Helping You
This consideration impacts on how involved you’d be in the entire favor procurement process.
As you can expect yourself to already be heavily involved in other parts of wedding preparation, you may decide that you’d entrust a family member or a close friend of yours to handle the favor procurement for you. And you simply need to look in occasionally, especially the design portion it has to be mentioned!
Though you may not be as involved, the considerations above are still valid. So it’s important that whoever handles that process allows sufficient time and gave the various aspects of favor preparation due consideration.
Why Allowing Time Buffer Is A Good Policy
It’s always good to allow a time buffer to cushion any delay in receiving the favors.
In many cases, it’ll be about allowing sufficient time, as much as the type of favor you’re getting allows.
Unless it’s an edible wedding favor that can only be readied on the day or the day before, planning for the favors to reach you 1 to 2 weeks before the wedding lower the chances of you getting caught out without sufficient time to react should something not go to plan.
The few days leading up to the wedding will be the busiest time for you. So planning to avoid unnecessary last-minute stress is prudent.
