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Original poster

Home made wedding favour lip balm

166 replies

Beepbopadee · 01/10/2019 13:59

So for the ladies wedding favours I want to make a homemade lip balm. I'm thinking of trying to make a gin flavour one. Has anyone had any experience making their own lip balm & can offer advice on ingredients. There are so many different recipes online with varying ingredients, just wondered if anyone could offer any tips. I can't seem to find many gin flavoured ones. Do I use real gin or gin flavour? Confused Also how do I make the lip balm a nice colour?

OP posts:
30to50FeralHogs · 01/10/2019 23:56

I've decided to do different for men & women & thought gin flavour lip balm would be a nice touch

You thought wrong.

Sounds gross. I don't even like gin but I'd still rather a (non-homemade) miniature bottle of the stuff than a homemade pot of gloopy wax that I'm supposed to smear on my lips for the next however many years, despite not knowing wtf is even in it.

Save yourself time and money, just buy some lip balms if you really must give them. Or better yet listen to 99% of people who responded saying they'd prefer the gin.

Willow2017 · 02/10/2019 00:01

Are all the female guests 6yrs old?

What adult woman wants lip balm as a gift when the men are getting 'adult gifts?
That's more than a bit patronising tbh.

BackforGood · 02/10/2019 00:09

Potentially another reason there are no recipes for home made gin flavoured lip balm, is it is because it is such a bad idea, nobody has invented it yet ??

Agree with the pp who said, regardless of the fact it wasn't even the question you asked, you've had 6 pages of replies saying what a bad idea it is, probably ought to make you think again.

Hopes this isn't the bride of the wedding I'm going to this week, or if it is, she has taken it on board

cutebutscary · 02/10/2019 00:14

I know I'm the only one , but I would prefer lip balm. I'm not a drinker .
You can use a base oil like grape seed , and buy some beeswax, and cocoa butter , melt in a pan, then take a few drops out and let it set on a ceramic dish . Test the 'hardness' if it's too hard add more oil, if it's too soft add more beeswax. Purple flame aromatherapy sell lovely cobalt blue or lavender glass jars as well as the base oil cocoa butter and beeswax . I would prefer bubblegum flavour though GrinWink have a nice wedding day Thanks

LemonPrism · 02/10/2019 00:21

Don't do gin flavoured, it's cliche and doesn't even smell nice. Do something lovely like mint julep or not gendering the favours.

Why not gin for men and slow gin for women if you want to gender it?

LemonPrism · 02/10/2019 00:22

And yes I'd think it unhygienic and would probs leave behind tbh

wibbletooth · 02/10/2019 00:26

Op if you’re determined to make lip balm as a gift, why not give the gin miniatures to the women and give the lip balm to the men. Sorted.

Pretty much every woman on here has said they would prefer gin. There aren’t any men who have said they would prefer gin Grin - ergo let them have the lip balm. You’ll even be saved the need to colour it.

Seriously - If you are sitting here and thinking something along the lines of lip balm isn’t good enough for the men, then why is it good enough for the women? And both men and women use lip balm as everyone gets sore lips. If anything the men will be more pleased with it as most women that get chapped lips tend to have loads of lip balms - one each in their hand bag, desk, kitchen drawer, by the front door, in the car and so on. Whereas men might have one in their bathroom cabinet and occasionally borrow their partner’s if their lips are really bad. They will certainly remember it.

The other thing is that I know very few men that are really into gin, much more likely to be the women. The men all would go for beer or wine, occasionally whiskey, long before they choose s gin to drink.

LemonPrism · 02/10/2019 00:30

Sloe*

YobaOljazUwaque · 02/10/2019 06:55

@Beepbopadee clearly left the thread around the 65 post mark and will never see all these wise words. I expect a bit of googling would find she went over to NetHuns or a dedicated wedding planning site and got the affirmation she needed and some tried and tested recipes there.

To be fair she did say it was only a 26 guest wedding. I can believe that a small family gathering like that might happen to only include women who are not self-respecting gin-enthusiast lipbalm-rejecters like almost everyone on mumsnet appears to be. There are plenty of women in the world that think us lot are simply awful and I wouldn't be surprised if a penchant for home made gin flavoured lip balm was more prevalent among the kinds of women who wouldn't dream of hanging out on MN.

Bourbonbiccy · 02/10/2019 07:05

OP I'm sure you know your guests tastes better than the people on here. So if you think they will like it, go for it. I would appreciate it as a little token gift.

In response to your actual OP, sorry I don't have a tried and tested recipe for one, Pinterest is usually my go to place for things like that, maybe give that a whirl and if you have enough time try a couple until gig find one that just what you're looking for.

Have a great time on your big day💐

TwiddleMuff · 02/10/2019 07:17

I love home made lip balms and potions ( when done well) but id be sooooo cross if DH got a gin and I got a fucking lip balm! Just... no.

stucknoue · 02/10/2019 07:33

Don't, I would be annoyed at getting a different favour. In fact don't do favours, just buy people a drink

Loopytiles · 02/10/2019 07:34

Almost no one likes lip balm.

stucknoue · 02/10/2019 07:35

I would not trust homemade lip balm sorry, how can you get it sterile?

gingersausage · 02/10/2019 09:25

Haven’t brides got enough to do in the run up to a wedding without twatting around boiling up cauldrons of gunk that are going to go straight in the bin?

I’ve “been to” somewhere around 250 weddings over the course of my career, and hands down wedding favours were the single biggest waste of money, time and resources ever. I must have thrown away thousands of pounds worth of crap over the years. We used to gather them all up at the end of the night (a maximum of 10% ever left the premises with guests, however many people told you that your favours were wonderful and unique) and attempt to give them back to the bride and groom when they came for their stuff. Invariably, they just wanted us to chuck it all. Anything edible went in the staff room, bubbles or things like that we took home for our own kids, tacky shit like mix CDs or fridge magnets? Bin.

GaudyNight · 02/10/2019 10:18

Almost no one likes lip balm.

In fairness, almost no one likes wedding favours at all!

Like @gingersausage, I've had cause to be at the closing stages of an awful lot of weddings, and I've observed absolutely the same thing -- favours that aren't immediately edible just get left.

I could probably have had a sizeable museum of personalised packets of flower seeds, jigsaws, jam, fridge magnets, scented candles, 'fun' socks, crackers, colouring books, rubik cubes, 'grow your own chili/herb' kits, temporary tattoo kits, wine stoppers, coasters, mini board games etc etc etc.

Yet I've also noticed that every time people say this on a wedding forum, there is massive resistance to it being an unnecessary waste of time and cash. The bride insists that theirs will be different, that she's always loved and kept all the favours from every wedding that she's ever attended, that all the friends she's mentioned it to say they will cherish their personalised coffee stencil which means they can for the rest of their lives put powdered chocolate on their cappuccino froth in the shape of 'Fiona and Steve, October 20th 2019!'

HillRunner · 02/10/2019 11:18

In fairness, almost no one likes wedding favours at all!

So true!

Wedding favours are great if they are in the form of (e.g.) a couple of chocolate truffles that people can eat while they can and enjoy a coffee/wine.

Random quirky gifts get lost / broken / left behind. Even if they make it home, they'll end up in a random drawer of crap (the one where all the dead batteries and rubber bands and non-working pens are), and eventually binned when someone moves house. Pointless, and a huge waste of both money and physical resources.

(Btw, I have loads of half used lip balms in various handbags etc. They are not a treat, just functional, and I very rarely ever use one up. I wouldn't appreciate a lip balm as a gift, even if it was an incredibly posh one.)

HillRunner · 02/10/2019 11:18

^ eat while they chat that should say!

ShirleyPhallus · 02/10/2019 11:41

that all the friends she's mentioned it to say they will cherish their personalised coffee stencil which means they can for the rest of their lives put powdered chocolate on their cappuccino froth in the shape of 'Fiona and Steve, October 20th 2019!'

Ha ha Grin

HillRunner · 02/10/2019 11:44

The thing is, almost no one is going to say to an excited bride to be that their plans are crap. The bluntest they are likely to get is asking if she's sure and suggesting possible alternative.

Part of the reason feedback on forums like this can be useful is the fact that it will be honest when your friends are too polite to be. And this thread has been nearly unanimous.

ilovetofu · 02/10/2019 15:38

Step away from the lip balm op.

OctopusNow · 02/10/2019 16:21

Ah, poor OP. It probably seemed like a good idea for all of five minutes. Grin

YobaOljazUwaque · 02/10/2019 19:17

@OctopusNow don't worry, OP still thinks its a great idea, its just that we are all viscous and mean and can't appreciate her vision.

PancakeAndKeith · 02/10/2019 19:18

I don’t get wedding favours.
The last wedding I went to the favours were little bottles of drink. The problem was that no one knew what they were and if they were alcohol or not.

merryhouse · 02/10/2019 20:52

I've just realised that someone mentioned the possibility of making home-made Actual Gin...

Don't do this. It's illegal.