to like these wedding favours?

[Sweetpea01]

Okay, you caught me, not really an AIBU but I enjoy the varied responses on this board

Best friend's getting married, no idea what her favours will be but the boyfriend and I were talking about what we'd like (as you do when you're bored )

Anyway, I really like the idea of simple venetian style masks for each guest as a keepsake. Especially if it fit into the overall look of the day.

What are your favourite (or most hated!!) favours received at a wedding?

Ours was at Christmas so we did baubles with the guests name on as place names / favours.

We had tea and welshcakes. We wrapped them up in a cellophane bag and added a flower and name tag so they could also be used as place settings. They looked really pretty on the table

We went to thorntons for our wedding favours...125 of their gift tags iced for free with guests names which doubled as place cards. Tasty and useful. We did the same for the table numbers with the larger chocolate plaques... Also iced for free!

I like the idea of candles if not monogrammed. Especially if decorative.
And the seed sticks that's nice.
Also Halloween/Xmas/ seasonal themed ones.

The charity ones are lovely too.

We had little bags of tablet and whisky miniatures at our wedding. Seemed to go down OK.

We went to a wedding a couple of weeks ago and it was GREAT!! No favours, but we were given a midnight feast cardboard box that we got to fill up with bags of Frazzles, Scampi Fries, Chipsticks, even Space Invaders!! And different bars of chocolate, packets of sweeties, left over wedding cake etc. the best thing to take away from a wedding EVER!

Just remembered at another wedding I went to a couple of years ago, along with a cow biscuit (large animal vets) a personalised thank you note and what it meant to the couple to have you there, with a special memory that you share. Very touching and made me cry. Have kept that one.

I didn't have favours on the table but had bags of pic'n'mix for the journey home. I painted pebbles with people's names on as place settings, not as a favour particularly. About 90% were taken home. The remainder went into my water feature in the garden.

When did favours become such a huge thing? When I married I had sugared almonds (5 of) in a bag. I can't remember exactly what, but they are supposed to represent something.

When we we start to give out elaborate stuff instead?

The thing is that even though nobody seems to like the sugared almonds, that is what wedding favours traditionally are. I think the tradition is from Italy. There should be 5 almonds and each almond represents something different (health, fertility etc.) Amazing how a tradition went from being a meaningful gesture to one that seems to scream 'look how much money we have to waste'

I agree with angel

Don't do tacky or gimmicky or personalised stuff that's no use whatsoever. Most people (apart from your mum and your granny) really don't give a stuff about having a 'keepsake' from your wedding and it will go straight in the bin like the worst party bag tat.

Give them something small and relevant that they can use, or don't give them anything at all and save the money for something more important like the bar.

I think simple things like tiny net bags of pastel coloured sugared almonds or artisanal made nougat are the best things. But I like elegant simplicity and understatement.

We gave 5 choc hearts. Didnt care if eaten or not but none left on table. Eats best i think.

I don't recall favours at all from weddings I went to as a child or young adult. We didn't have them at our wedding and as we had a buffet there wouldn't really have been anywhere to put them. Both weddings I went to recently had them, and they were both edible (welsh cakes/sugared almonds and toffee popcorn). To me they seem unnecessary and a huge faff really, another thing to make weddings even more complex and expensive.

Our favours were mini stoppered bottles of cocktails, each table had a different one.

Everyone loved them - only snag was everyone was completely wasted by the time they'd had welcome and toast drink, wine on table and the favour cocktail!

We did a mix of brandy, honey flavoured whisky and Baileys on each table with spares so people could swap if they wanted. There weren't any leftover so I think it went down well!

We had little welsh lovespoons at ours (along with the obligatory sugared almonds). I still spot the spoons every now and then in people's houses so some people liked them enough to keep them. I tend not to bother keeping the favours for very long, although DS would probably like the mask so that might hang around longer than the coasters, golf balls, candles etc...