Wedding Favors Everyone Can Enjoy

It's standard practice at weddings for the Bride and Groom to send each guest home with a little something to remember the day by.

These wedding favors can range from the expensive mini-bottle of champagne to less expensive items like water bottles (great for an outdoor wedding). There are a number of great choices to pick from, however, I've found that what a lot of couples are searching for is something unique.

Instead of just weddings themed gifts (think covered in doves, linked rings, or pictures of bells), couples are taking the personalization one step further. Their gifts are reflecting the wedding's theme colors, the couple's personalities or even the location of the wedding itself (ex. flip flops for a beach wedding).

If you're into going green, then there are a variety of options. I suggest you start here. My favorite eco-friendly favor idea is the plantable seed flower card. These come in a variety of colors, shapes and can be personalized with the couple's name and wedding date/location.

Of course there's always the growing in popularity idea of making your wedding favor a donation to your favorite charity. Nothing shows off a caring personality more than helping your guests to give a gift to others.

After pondering a variety of excellent idea, my fiance and I came up with something that would mean a lot to his family. There's nothing wrong with that.

We opted to spend a day or two hard at work in his grandmother's kitchen baking up her famous "galaxy" cookies. These cookies have come to be a much anticipated staple at every big family gathering on his side.

For both of us the best part of this gift idea, isn't just being able to please his family and provide something tasty to each guest, it's also the opportunity to spend some quality time with his grandmother doing something she truly enjoys... baking.

If I'm lucky, maybe we can even include a few of those homemade chocolates that I so adore of hers ;).

Charitable Donations on Your Wedding Day

The deeper I get into wedding planning the more research I do. I'm constantly on the search for unique ideas that will give my fiance and I's big day some personality and style.

Among the many details, little to big, I've come to realize that the registry is one big deal. Where to register? What to put on the list? How close to the wedding should we begin?

However, my fiance and I have a two and a half year wait till the big day. By then we'll have been living together for a while and just may have almost everything we need to set up house. I doubt we're the only one's that may find themselves in this situation come the big day.

My suggestion? Break from tradition!

Sure you could instead ask politely ask guests to put their gift money towards parts of your honeymoon. There's nothing wrong with that, and it's a perfectly practical idea.

However, why not consider donating your wedding "gifts" to someone else instead? Web sites like I Do Foundation can make this easy to do. Not only can you set up a registry where the money will be donated to a charity of you and your beloveds choosing, but you can also make your guests and part of the giving by leaving them a kind note that a donation has been made in their names as a wedding favor. Sure, a champagne glass or bag of candy is nice, but I can almost guarantee that your guests will feel just as happy, if not more satisfied, to have made a difference for a charity of your choice.

I'm always open to sharing other ways to give forward. So if you have any wedding-themed ideas in mind, definitely let us know!