05 - Favor bottles and instructions
I admit it, picking the perfect favors for our weirdo beach wedding was one of my favorite things about planning. I love giving gifts AND I loved using it as a way to enhance the shark theme of our wedding. So I thought I'd help ya'll out by writing a series of posts on finding the perfect wedding favors. Now, of course, with anything on Offbeat Bride, it's all optional! Favors are not by any means necessary, but they can be fun if you find the right stuff.

By far my favorite wedding favors have been the edible ones. Mostly because they don't add to the cluttered mess of my apartment, the last thing I need is more stuff. But the very best part about edible wedding favors is that yummy treats can appeal to almost everyone. Here are a few of my favorites…

Wedding Favours

Jellies and jams and honey. This is a great option if you are a.) any good at preserving; b.) having a wedding on a farm; or c.) are cursed with a bee infestation. Plus little jars of sweet stuff are adorable and easy to decorate. If you find that you aren't blessed with the talent of preserving, Amazon offers pre-canned jams and jellies and all the supplies.

[related-post align=”right”]Having a beach wedding? You can make your own bottles of sea salt. I once threw a wedding shower for a girl friend who was getting married on the beach so I thought that “sea salt” favors would be appropriate — I followed this Martha Stewart tutorial for making rosemary sea salt — it was a hit.

Chocolates! The great thing about chocolate (you know, besides the yumminess factor) is that you can easily shape your chocolate favors to match your theme — for example these Lego chocolate favors.

Old Fashioned Candy Table

Host a candy bar. This is easy, a total crowd pleaser and also visually stunning. Purchase bags of m&ms, jelly beans, rock candy, salt water taffy, Hershey kisses, lollipops, etc., set 'em up in pretty candy jars and then provide bags for your guests to fill with their favorite candies.

Cupcakes. This is easy if you're serving cupcakes instead of a wedding cake… get ahold of small, individual boxes or cellophane bags and send guests home with their own cupcake.

While we're still talking about sweet things, what about caramelized or chocolate covered apples.

Fortune cookies with custom fortunes. I love the fact that this favor is not only yummy, but can also be interactive!

Pettersson's Celebration Ale

Home-brewed wedding beer. If there are any home-brewers out there this would be perfect. Take inspiration from OBT member Angie's home-brewed beer favors.

Bags or boxes of loose tea, perfect for “tea party” wedding favors. I've also recently become obsessed with Jasmine lotus balls since I saw something about them in Sky Mall (no joke) and I loved that Tribe member Essie gave them out at her tea party wedding.

Mints. Easy-peasy and you can always use the ever popular “mint to be.” Plus you can find or decorate tins to match any wedding aesthetic, for example these Nintendo mints, pirate mints, and mints in modern colors.51Utk2TRK7L. SL500 AA300 PIbundle 3TopRight00 AA300 SH20 alternative wedding ideas from Offbeat Wed (formerly Offbeat Bride)

Location specific treats would be great for destination weddings or as a way to stimulate the local economy. Having a wedding in Canada or New England? What about maple syrup. A wedding in Seattle or Hawaii? Give your guests great local coffee! San Francisco wedding? What about Ghirardelli chocolates?

If you're having a fall wedding and you're decorating with pumpkins, think about seasoning and baking the pumpkin seeds to give as your favors. Home-made with love and tasty!

Any of you treat-savvy Offbeat Brides out there have any more suggestions? Leave 'em in the comments!

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Comments on Yummy wedding favors to please ’em all

  1. We’re gonna do rock candy in yellow (Lemon) and blue (blue raspberry). Its not quite turquoise, but its pretty close!

    Who doesn’t like sugar on a stick?!

  2. Our theme is everything super-local, and the factory that makes that famous brand of sriracha sauce with the rooster on it is 10 miles from our house (and not actually in Vietnam, sorry to disabuse that notion). The boy LOVES all things chili related, so we are doing bottles of the sriracha with customized labels. Super cheap, too!

  3. I have to admit I like the idea I saw in a wedding magazine – sticks of rock with your names down the middle, in any flavour and colours you want! (Mainly I just like sticks of rock.)

    But I love baking so depending on practicality I might make something. Possibly brownies if I can get his mum to believe home made ones don’t have to have ‘special ingredients’!

    I love some of the ideas here though. Especially home made beer or maple syrup.

      • Seriously, she kept going on and on about how we shouldn’t eat too many at once. I thought she was just worried about the sugar but it turned out she thought the only reason for making your own was to add ‘things’ you can’t get in the shops.

        • Hmm, my in-laws offered to make brownies for my “rehearsal lunch,” and I know my father-in-law…has certain preferences. I guess I guess that’s one way to get the family members to relax around each other!

  4. We went local with ours. I had a Detroit theme (landmark table numbers, etc). So for favors I got Saunders chocolates and chocolate covered Better Made Potato Chips. Everyone loved them and the best part? Buying too much and getting to eat the rest!

  5. I’m getting married on Saturday (!!!), and I just got my wedding favors figured out. I decided to combine the favors and the table centerpieces, I’m making miniature baskets with helium balloons draped in fabric tied with string to them (an idea I saw on another OBB post!), and filling the baskets with Lindt and Ferrero Rocher truffles! I got them at Costco, 100 truffles for $20, which was an enormous relief as I have no more wedding budget to speak of. We were going to do Cadbury eggs to go with the Easter weekend thing, but there were none at Costco, and those little suckers are EXPENNNSIVE otherwise.

    • omigosh, cadbury eggs? YUMMMM both kinds too 😉 but truffles sound just as spendid!
      Oh and yea, just realized this post was from 3 YEARS ago! sorry

  6. I’ve made little bags of ‘lentil curry kits’ to my mum’s recipe. I’m half Sri Lankan so this really honours that part of me and makes me proud that people will be making it at home. I basically have put everything in a cellophane candy bag and all the guests have to do is tip it into a pan, add water and cook for 30 mins. You could do this with any family recipe that’s important to you.

  7. My parents did up about 80 jars of pickles last summer for our favors. I can’t decide if our guests are going to think that is awesome or weird, but we really love pickles!

  8. I’m not a big fan of favors but my fiance wanted them very, very badly so we compromised on gummy bears in mini-takeout boxes. Gummy bears have been his favorite since he was a child and everyone who knows him well knows it, so it’s a very personal gift for him.

    On my more practical end, people will eat them, they’re cheap, he can assemble them without my input, and if we have leftovers we have LEFTOVER GUMMY BEARS instead of tiny ceramic knickknacks.

  9. We’re doing little envelopes of seeds, probably basil or a mix of herbs. Small, portable, usable, edible!

    • I was thinking of doing this as well! At first I tried to find native wildflower seeds but (a) many wildflower seed mixes contain invasive species, and (b) we have guests coming from a few different regions, so the native wildflower seeds may not grow for everyone!
      i like the idea of the herbs, though. Are you filling up your own little envelopes? vellum envelopes might work well.

  10. Since we’re having an adult only wedding we’re thinking about giving out little bottles of infused vodka. I made a bunch as christmas gifts last year and it was a total hit! they’re super easy to make, you just have to start a few months in advance.

    • We are doing the same kind of idea. We are in the process of making our own Lemoncello for favors. Both of us are Italian and living in LA there are so many meyer lemons! Its perfect! 🙂

  11. We’re handing out $1 scratch off tickets with some candy as well!

    I guess we’ll see if any guests are lucky and make some $

    🙂

  12. we are giving out packets of flower seeds in pretty envelope things, i figure that even if the guests throw them away the packetsare biodegradable and there will be flowers SOMEWHERE from the wedding!

  13. We are true southerners! We are making candied pecans for favors! Which means i don’t care if anyone takes them home or not, they are my favorite!

  14. a freind of mine is an amazing sugar artist and is making decorated butterfly cookies for me
    but here are some funky ideas
    *wine glass markers with peoples names on
    *hand made chocolate truffles with little bits of edible gold leaf on them
    *hand made jars of nut butter, lemon curd,
    * hand painted wine glasses
    *hand made macadamia brittle
    *material or craft made book marks with your initials

  15. We’re getting married on Easter Saturday (omg – since its 00.29 Friday morning, that means wedding day is technically tomorrow, eek!), so we decided on little bags of mini Easter eggs, 5 per bag like the traditional sugared almonds 🙂

  16. We’re doing 1/2 bottles of wine with custom labels (just so happens that the wine is coming from vines which will be right behind the guests during the ceremony, but i think they’d be fun otherwise too!!).

  17. I bought green and white striped paper bags from ebay and filled them with pick n mix. We’ve secured the bags with success stickers. You know the ones you get in school? They say “Well done”, “You tried hard” etc. My fiancee and I are both teachers!

  18. We’ve got a sunflower theme going on, so we are probably going to do one of these: 1) chocolate/candy covered sunflower seeds from a local company in bright colors, 2) roasted (savory) sunflower seeds, or 3) seed packets of non-edible, plantable sunflowers for the guests gardens. Either way, if I have leftovers, no big deal…

  19. I found some chocolate molds of fleur di lis, so I’m gonna be making chocolate.
    I also have cookie cutters in the shape of his my future initial, a wedding dress, and a wedding cake.
    and the main article mentioned honey jars, I found a jar at work from someone’s wedding and the label on top said “I married my honey”

  20. just FYI the jasmine balls on the site above (called “xiangpian” in Chinese) can be found for far less than that site charges. Almost any large Asian grocery should sell them, or if you live near a major city, somewhere in Chinatown or anywhere with a large East Asian community.

  21. We’re getting married at a working ranch in northern California, and they grow almonds, olives, and some lavender. They also have bee hives. We decided to go with small bottles of olive oil pressed with the olives from their ranch. They’re super cute, and the olive oil is actually really good! Otherwise we would have gone with jars of honey…but the olive oil seemed a bit more unusual 🙂

  22. We are having a New York Yankees themed wedding!!! We are getting the baseball hat bowls that they serve ice cream in at Yankee Stadium and are filling them with chocolates. I’m so excited! Our wedding is still a year away, but we’ve been engaged since last May and have been planning ever since!

  23. I’m inspired. I live in Tennessee, and since that’s the birthplace of Moonpies, and the only place you can get Sundrop Soda….Maybe those will be our favors!!! I have a feeling my husband to be will flip over that idea! Don’t get me wrong, I’m not redneck or country at all, I just think it would be funny, and since we’re on a small budget, it would be cheap and everyone would like it!

  24. For our fall wedding we did glass bottles of colored sugar and we paired them with varied tea bags and our favorite sugar cookie recipe and cookie cutters. We called them Cookies and Tea with OurName and Me 🙂 They were awesome!

  25. We’re having pancakes instead of a traditional wedding cake, so we really want to give mini maple syrups as favors. The only problem I’m coming across is that they’re pretty pricey. Any suggestions for finding wee maple syrups that are fairly inexpensive but still tasty?

    • If you click on the photo of the maple syrup at the bottom of the post it’ll take you to a place that sells them online for around $12 for a pack of 3, which breaks down to something like $4 a bottle.

    • You could also buy your own maple syrup in bulk and just fill regular small bottles – they don’t have to be maple-leaf shaped! You would need a teeny tiny funnel, but I bet it would be a whole heckuva lot cheaper than $4 a bottle.

      Here – these amber 1 oz. bottles (http://www.sunburstbottle.com/glass-bottles/amber-glass-boston-round/AB1) are $0.40 each. You can get 16 oz. of maple syrup at the grocery store for less than $20 in NY. So each bottle would be about $1.50 each! The two ounce bottles at that same site are only $0.45 each. So two ounce bottles would be about $2.75 each.

  26. instead of a candy bar, we’re doing a cookie bar. Making tons of cookie dough early on and then the night before having the bridesmaids and mom and a few cousins come over for some wine and cookie baking! We also have chinese take out boxes personalized with a custom rubber stamp. Can’t wait to taste our 6 difference cookie recipes!

    • Cookie tables are a big Pittsburgh/Western PA tradition – only all of the ladies of the family spend weeks getting cookies ready! FH’s cousins did this and it was so hilarious watching all these glammed up Italian aunties buzzing around the table, making sure THEIR cookies were on top so people would take them. They had little boxes for us, too. It was great fun.

      Consider making your cookies 2 or 3 days before if you’re going to be busy night before wedding – they’ll keep and you don’t need more stress!

      Here’s a video about the tradition (not the same bride!) http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/16/dining/16cookies.html?em

  27. We do not have a theme, but we are going to have a photo booth. Guests will be taking home awesome photo booth style pics for favors =)

  28. We made 4 oz jars of homemade apple butter. Only 144 of them. I’m having a friend make the tags so there is still work to do before Sept. 4!

  29. I think we’re going to have homemade rocky road – yum! Probably two kinds, a more traditional kind with milk chocolate, marshmallows, pistachio nuts and red jellies (i don’t like glaze cherries) and then another kind with white chocolate, marshmallows and m&ms. And then will just find something pretty that fits the theme to put them in….

  30. My FH and I are going to be giving rosemary in terra cotta pots as favors! 🙂

  31. We didn’t start out having a theme, but we ended up having a de facto literary theme for our wedding three weeks ago. We even had members of the Independent Shakespeare Company come and give a specially created love-themed performance just for our guests. It was great! We are both arty people, and we wanted our guests to take away with them some of the inspiration of the day and the creativity of the artists, so as favors, we gave out teeny-tiny “writer’s block” notebooks. Super inexpensive, too – I found them at our local art-supply store, and the whole thing cost less than $40.

  32. Fresh pecans are abundant in my home state of Oklahoma. Since my Grandfather is too ill to travel to my wedding in Las Vegas, but wants to contribute, he is shelling pecans for me. I am then going to spice the pecans, place them in gorgeous little boxes and use them as my favors for my guests at my open house reception a couple of weeks after my wedding in Utah. This really covers a lot of things for me. 1.) Favors 2.) Including my Grandpa & 3.) giving my guests something that represents me. (They are also getting chocolates in the shape of my hubby’s truck. So, he’s represented, too.)

  33. I bought a bunch of mini rubber ducks in different themes from Oriental Trading (they had robot ducks, monster ducks, geek ducks, etc.) because I always take baths instead of showers.

    We also bought some CD-Rs that look like vinyl 45s to burn songs to and we’re gonna put them in plain kraft sleeves with a cute stamp on the front (probably some custom stamp from etsy of a picture of us).

    A little bit pricey, but not too bad because we only have about 70 to make.

  34. Our wedding is August 20. We weren’t going to do favors (only 20 guests) but now I think we will pick some herbs from our community garden plot and give them. We have an abundance of thyme and sage, and should have rosemary to spare by then, too.

    But should I go ahead and pick NOW to dry them, or give fresh? Was thinking little muslin bags, stamped…less than 6 weeks, aaaah!

  35. Oh, hey, there’s my M&M favors from my wedding! Woot!

    Quick note to budget-minded brides: I did NOT buy custom-colored M&Ms from their website. Those cost a fortune! I bought regular bags of M&Ms from Costco, discounted post-Easter M&Ms (for the pastel colors) on sale at Target, and I scored the “premium” M&Ms at Big Lots. I had about 25 pounds in all, all bought for cheap! Then I popped in a movie and spent 2 hours separating them by hand.

  36. We are doing little cellophane bags that I put a quarter cup (1 serving) of M&Ms in each bag and tied them with ribbon. Then I’m dropping them into a beautiful blue basket I found at Joann’s (the craft store) for people to pick up. I didn’t buy the single colors of M&Ms, I went to Sam’s and bought the big 56 ounce bag for 10 bucks…which makes 29 little bags of M and Ms. I wound up spending 6 bucks on the little bags, $50 on M and M’s, 5 on Ribbon, and 10 on the basket.

    Favors for 150 people? $71 and a few hours. Not bad at all.

  37. For my brothers wedding last year, he and his now wifey created their own cocktail base.
    It was called a Raindrop, they packaged it in pretty blue bottles, had a cork stopped, sealed them and had their own custom printed labels.
    Best thing, they were absolutely delicious!

  38. I like the idea of a photo booth, any recommendations? I’m from michigan. 🙂

  39. I made homemade lollipops in the shape of daisies that I stuck in our centerpieces to replace real flowers. I found an easy recipe online and everyone loved them! I had flavors that would take to white food coloring well, such as apple, peppermint, butterscotch, strawberry, lemonade, etc. I found all the ingredients at Hobby Lobby and went to work one afternoon. And the best part is they don’t spoil for a really long time and they served two purposes with one project!

  40. We were married in July in Southern California…I wanted chocolates for favors, but they would’ve melted. So we filled tulle bags with Jelly Bellies instead. We used assorted flavors, but you can buy whatever flavors/colors you want in bulk.

  41. Since our wedding is pirate themed we are giving out single serve bottles of Captain Morgan’s rum. Putting tags on them to double as the escort card. Plus my Mom makes soap from scratch so she is going to make soap using molds of a skull and crossbones to give out.

  42. Little burlap bags of coffee grounds … since the morning after, they’ll need it!

  43. We did candy buffet centrepieces and had empty jars at each seat with the place cards tied around them. The idea was that we weren’t having any real flowers (we made paper flower bouquets and boutonnières instead) and this would be a way to get people up and talking to find their favourite treats! By the end of the night everyone was up and mingling and they all loved the fun of trading, bargaining and even setting up alliances and covert ops to get the good stuff. It was a great success – even if I was so distracted I forgot to fill my jar!

  44. For our science museum wedding we had racks of test tubes full of jelly beans in pretty colours from HappyLab. Very yummy (and I got to eat the leftovers on our honeymoon!).

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