Planning your Wedding Favors
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Giving out wedding favors at your wedding should never be overlooked. It is tempting, particularly if your wedding planning has left your budget short, to forgo the favors and hope the guests will not mind. These days it can seem unforgivable not to give favors and there will be a large portion of your guests who may be disappointed you haven’t gone to the trouble!
But for most brides, knowing where to start with wedding favors is a major hurdle! Not only must they bring them in on budget but they must find favors which coordinate with their wedding style, theme and color scheme and which also reflect their own personality and taste! That can seem an impossible task to achieve when you look at it! But favors don’t need to be difficult and if you focus on what you want you will have beautiful favors with the minimum of fuss.
Firstly you need to go back through your wedding planning and look at your wedding budget. In your budget you should have set aside an amount for your favors. You now need to realize if this figure is realistic or not and more importantly if you can still afford it. Divide your favor budget total up by the number of guests to give you a price per head; this is the amount you can spend per favor. Remember the cost of favors will need to include the favor, the packaging, the decorations and the cost of shipping and applicable taxes.
Once you have sorted out the financials it is time to narrow your choices. The wedding favor market is full to bursting with great favors but all that choice can make your decision even harder! Firstly discount any favors that are out of your price range. Next discount any that are themed (if you are not having a theme or those which don’t match your theme) and which do not coordinate to your wedding. Discount any that are not available in the right colors and any which you just don’t like! Remember they are supposed to be a reflection of your tastes, so you have to like them as well!
By now you should have a list of potential favors which is a manageable size. If your list is still miles long then you will need to be ruthless and discount more. Don’t forget your packaging, at this point is can be a good idea to price up your packaging options. Go through the same process as you did for the favors so you end up with a shortlist of favors and packaging options.
Consider the style of your wedding, is it formal, traditional, casual? Which favors stand out to you as being the best suited? Once you have the favor sorted out you will need to match it with some packaging. Add in some decorations such as ribbons, thank you tags and any other embellishments. Finally work out you final price per favor including shipping and taxes to check it all comes in on budget.
If it doesn’t then you have two options: 1. repeat the whole process until the price fits or 2. up your budget to include the extra you need.
There is a third option which entails you shopping around for best prices, discounts and offers. This can be time consuming so if you don’t have much time left till your wedding day you are probably safer going with options one or two.
All that remains then is to order your favors and put them togeth