Monday 15 August 2011

Stuff Nobody Tells You About Weddings Part Three: Favours

You'll spend ages choosing/crafting/lovingly tying ribbon around them.

You'll be certain everybody will want to take one home.

But still, somehow there will be A LOT left behind. IT DOESN'T MEAN YOUR FAVOURS ARE CRAP.


It just means people are forgetfully drunk and/or don't fully understand the concept of favours. One of the first times I went to a wedding as an adult, all the guests got given a beautiful selection of chocolate truffles, delicately presented and boxed by hand. I could not get OVER the fact that this awesome couple had paid for an amazing party and an insanely good three course meal and were now GIVING ME CHOCOLATES. Shouldn't I be giving them chocolates? To say thank-you for such a lovely time? Obviously I ate the chocolates. They were very good. But it didn't make the concept any less topsy-turvey in my head.

Even more recently than that, I went to a wedding where the couple had scattered hundreds of miniature pots of jam everywhere for people to take home.  I took two. They  were so cute and I really didn't know if I should be taking two. Maybe I should take one. I am only one person, after all. Though, I do like jam. BUT IT FELT LIKE I WAS STEALING THEM. I had guilt every time I opened the fridge.

It was really good jam.

Maybe this says more about my latent anxiety than it does about favours, or you, or your wedding.

Still, I am positive there will be some wedding guests who have a similar "surely not for me?" bamboozlement when faced with being given a gift for coming to a party. Let's face it, the last time some of us will have experienced this will have been at the age of six, when we trotted home from Claire Riley's birthday party with a plastic bag containing mini-Lovehearts, a party blower and a Thundercats pencil.

Of course, most people will just get drunk and forget to take their favour home. We made our own wedding fanzine for people to take as a memento, and even though we made 3/5ths of what we actually needed, we still came home with the box half full. But -gratifyingly -since the wedding,  people have sobbed that they forgot to take theirs and begged to be posted one (no great surprise - there was a wordsearch in it and everything. They probably went home, realised they'd forgotten their copy and LITERALLY kicked themselves. Hard. Good, because I'm getting the postage back off them next time I see them.).

So here are some things you can do to help your silly but lovely guesticles take the favours home you spent hours making, and still have blisters from:

 Image by Greg Blomberg

-Edible favours (see above) are clearly for immediate consumption

-Place favours on or next to people's place settings at the meal to make it completely clear that THIS IS FOR THEM

-If your item is remotely decorative it is likely to fly under the "gift" radar, even if it has your guest's name on it. It may be then worthwhile recruiting a useful minion to instruct everybody that they can take their favour home with them (if you're likely to be upset when they don't)

-If the favours are in a communal area for people to take, make some pretty signs to make it obvious that you want them to be taken. People like being instructed. It gives them a clear sense that they are not stealing things.

-If worst comes to worst, just make sure your favours are something you're happy to have a house full of after the wedding...

Chocolate brownie pops for tea again tonight, my love? Don't mind if I do...

9 comments:

  1. I forgot to take my fanzine, and was very pleased that Wes remembered to take one. Still gutted though, as obviously it means only one of us gets to make the Nissan Bluebird.

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  2. There are still about 20 in our dining room....you could have races....

    Px

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  3. Is it wrong that I want a fanzine and I wasn't even there?? I love word puzzles. I also love those brownie pops. Nothing I make ever turns out half that cute! For our favors we gave out - I'm embarrassed to admit this now - betta fish. They were so cute in teeny little bowls! But I didn't realize they needed special water or something and all were belly up by the end of the reception. Which, sadly, was not the worst thing that happened that day. I need a wedding do-over.

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  4. Oh my god you had FISH? Actual fish? That's insanely brilliant! An unfortunate demise maybe... but still a great story, rest their souls. If you ever feel like venting I have a whole blog for you to guest post over... :-Z

    And I will inevitably end up posting pages from the zine on here when I run out of things to say... the wordsearch was NOT great though. Really. Don't get your hopes up.

    Px

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  5. Please can I have a Thundercats pencil? And a fanzine. I would use the pencil to do the puzzle. And I would rejoice.

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  6. This is why we need another AOP.... I'll bring all three of you a fanzine. And then I will MARK your puzzles, and skill in constructing the cut-out 3D Nissan Bluebird. Oh yes.

    Px

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  7. Wow, this post was very inspirational. Favors are indeed very important part of any wedding. I loved reading this helpful post. I will tie wedding knot soon at some beachside destination wedding venues in Bali and was missing out Favor part but now would definitely create DIY favors for my guests.

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