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What favor did you give to your guests? Did they love it or throw it away at the end of the night?
I'm planning on just doing the very simple, very overdone DIY candy buffet/bar.
reasons: Simple. Cost effective. Popular. Didn't want to give my guests something that they'd have to cart home, or throw in a drawer never to be seen again, or - horrors! - leave behind at the venue. No difference between that & mints in a tulle package, really. And biggest one of all : I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO PATIENCE TO FIDDLE WITH TINY LITTLE PACKAGES EIGHTY FIVE TIMES. GAH! Shoot me!
Why, what are you doing?
We are doing something edible - it was truffles, but then N decided to attempt to make caramal squares (like the little ones in the plastic packages), and since those are his FAVOURITE candy ever, we decided to make those instead.
We're having a fall themed wedding so each of our guests are getting orchard mini apple pies. We're from Upstate, NY so we have some of the best orchards in the country. The one we are going with is actually pretty well known. From what I hear, they ship their pies all over the world! We got a few to "test" back in October and OH. MY. GOD! If our guests want to leave them behind, thats A-OK with me! I'll be more than happy to dispose of them in whichever way my stomach see's fit!! However, I highly doubt anyone will leave theirs. We're apple pie people in these parts!
We're pretty excited about these. They are each about 6 inches in diameter and will come packaged in their own individual pie box. We'll add some ribbon and a matching label to dress them up a bit. Each guest will get one to take home. I'm still entertaining the idea of putting stickers on the inside cover instructing our guests how to reheat them, since the orchard does offer these instructions with all of the pies they sell. We'll see, I may not want to deal with having to print a whole other set of stickers come wedding time.
@UpstateCait: I love that idea!! Apple pie is my FAVOURITE dessert. If there's any left over at the end of the night, feel EXTREMELY free to ship some over here!! :)
We did a trail mix buffet as an alternative to the candy buffet. We had some candy, nuts, dried fruits and cereal. It went over well, we had lots of guests say something about it. We did have some leftovers, but we estimate about 75% of our guests took it.
I'm making DIY round fans.. these are popular here in the summer and will be very useful at that time
@ bebefly
How much did your candy buffet cost (including candy, dishes, favor bags, etc)?
Thanks
We're doing FI's mom's homemade pizzelles (traditional Italian cookies..kind of look and taste like waffle cones only circular!) wrapped up and tagged..they also double as the escort "cards" :)
I'm thinking of doing little cellophane baggies of candy corn and/or some Hershey's kisses sprinkled on the guest tables, if I do favors at all.
we had cookie mix in mason jars, and the tag had the recipe/instructions. it took a long time to assemble, but it was fun and people said they liked them
We did a donation. At each place setting there was a menu and a little note saying thank you for joining us and noting the donation.
We are donating to our local SPCA... where we got our furbaby!
@caszos: @vanilla frosting: i am a big fan of donation favors too - both of yours are so great. we're giving our guests a "paradise" soundtrack/cd as their wedding favor but also want to incorporate a donation as well. we're still brainstorming!
We plan to give farmers market artisan jam :9 I'm really looking forward to it - our friends go apesh*t for this kinda stuff!
@2shy2Bbf: unfortunately I'm still pricing it all out, but I can tell you what I've determined so far:
Jars: I will probably have ten glass jars of varying sizes - think the type of jars used to hold sugar, flour, etc, - available at Wal-Mart. The canister jars are a set of 4 for 20$, so I would say a conservative cost estimate would be around 70$.
Candy: I am NOT colour-coordinating it to match our wedding colours (which are orange and dark silver/gray). Can you say nightmare?! By not CCng it, I can just go to Bulk Barn and buy whatever candy I wish and can afford. I *might* (cost depending) do a small jar of Jellybelly's (because, duh, they rock & I love them), but all the rest will be your basic gummi bears/sour patch kids/fuzzy peaches offering. I'd be okay with spending up to 90$ for candy.
Scoops & Tongs: This is still a big unknown. I did find this site: http://www.scoops-scoops.com/candy_bags.html if that helps, but I'm going to see if I can find something local so I can avoid shipping, or perhaps rentals? I have no idea yet.
Bags & Tags: I will be DIYing these. I'm pretty sure I can find simple paper bags fairly cheaply (with 85 guests, I would think 150 bags is plenty) and then I can print Bebefly & Mr. Bebefly & our date on them for that personal touch. Add a simple monogrammed (repeating the one used on all our stationary) sticker to close the bag (probably from vista prints for super cheap) and voila! Favours complete!
So total cost is budgeted to be around 200$, but I'm going to try my hardest to be signficiantly under that. Another option is to check the weddingbee classifieds for jars & scoops. There are quite a few brides selling the ones they used in their weddings for decent prices. (I'm personally trying to avoid doing that because shipping between US and Canada is outrageously expensive, unfortunately.)
Anyway. I'm incredibly long winded but I think I'm done! I hope that (kind of?) helped you a bit! <3
PS: Another favour idea I was floating around was a donation to the Heart & Stroke Foundation in honour of Fi's mom (who died of brain damage resulting from a massive heart attack), but I'm pretty sure FI has nixed the idea. Boo. :(
We are having a chocolate truffle bar/buffet, and will also give guests each a little porcelain birdie (which we are completely aware that not everyone will want/take).
Reserved_for_lntun_-_Flock_of_120_Lit.jpeg (2.4 KB, 34 downloads) 1 year old Reserved_for_lntun_-_Flock_of_120_Lit.jpeg (35 KB, 28 downloads) 1 year old 
We are also doing a donation. FI actually had to have a liver transplant when he was 3 years old so we are going to make our donation to the hospital where he had it done. After all if it wasn't for them we wouldn't be having this wedding.
Since we got married on a cruise ship, we used cruise ship shaped cookie cutters
cookiecutter.jpg (3.1 KB, 34 downloads) 1 year old 
We are doing spice jars filled with FI's chile powder. he's a chef here in NM, and his red chile powder is awsome (we'll be able to use a lot of NM ingredients, which will be nice)
We are doing....NOTHING! 
No favors here at all. We met on match.com and we wanted to do boxes of matches that said "the perfect match", but then our venue caught on fire and burned down and we decided that handing out boxes of matches in the newly rebuilt venue would just be too much...
We're doing little bags of M&Ms because both of our last names start with M, and we're both chocoholics! I'm also planning on attaching little notes saying a donation was made to a charity (probably offsetting our wedding carbon footprint; thanks to Mrs. Peep Toe's Earth Day post for inspiration!
I don't like giivng people things they wont use, so probably I will give something edible.
We made these customized coasters. Every person got a set (if there was a couple, we tried to give them one set of each paper design). They were used as escort cards and the ribbon was the meal indicator for the servers. Everyone loved them and nobody left them at the end of the night!
We are doing a photobooth! I think that everyone will keep them for themselves, you know?! Who doesnt want to keep a pic of them having fun?!? :)
donation, we also are having a photobooth so guests can take their pics home!
one of our friends owns a winery and another owns a steak sauce business so I am thinking mini wine bottles and mini steak sauce bottles.
We also did a photo booth which as always, was a huge hit. Oh, and we made little white and milk chocolate dipped pretzels for up by the bar so people could snack on them throughout the night.
Another Candy Buffet girl, here! I'm so excited because it is going to be awesome! Some may think it's over done but honestly, I've never been to a wedding with one before. So far I have all the candy jars and am trying to figure out what I want to use for guests to take the candy home in.
I like edible favors. I have gotten coasters twice this year, and they are all sitting in a drawer. They don't match our house at all, so they aren't of much use.
I would love to give out Wild Rice, because I am Ojibwe and it's an important part of our culture. But I also really love the idea of mini-pies. I just want it to be something Minnesota-related.
@martysgal: Can you please tell me about your custom made coaster..Did you do them on a website online?? We plan on doing coasters but I think that custom made ones would be even better :) Thanks.
P.S. We are also doing little black boxes with herseys kisses inside with a red ribbon and a little note stolen from another bee stating "Hugs and Kisses from the Mr & Mrs."
I haven't completely decided on my favours yet, but they will be either useful (matchboxes or crayons) or edible (candy apples or mint tins). No monograms, no keepsakes - nobody needs more knickknacks.
I'm also doing a candy bar, but I never intended it to serve as favours. People can take some home, of course, but it's meant to be part of the party food. :)
we did truffles, but fun truffles shaped like kitties (since we have cats) with personalized stickers.
Ours were mini champagne bottles, I think people liked them! I hope they didnt throw them out, I mean who tosses alcohol :)
@Lovespearls: the alcohol is a good one. I wouldn't toss alcohol!
This is the tutorial we used for our coasters for the most part: http://www.stylemepretty.com/2009/03/30/diy-coasters/
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