A personal favour...
Making your own wedding favours can be fun and often works out cheaper than buying ready-made. It's also a great way of personalising your wedding!

You can easily find ribbons and miniature flowers in a wide variety of colours so you can match the theme of your wedding and ensure that the tables at your reception look beautifully co-ordinated.

Use the internet!
Use the internet to find cheaper supplies for your wedding favours. High street shops tend to supply favour kits in small quantities of 6, 8 or 10 favours. If you're making 100 favours, you'll need to buy a lot of kits. Buying your supplies in bulk from internet suppliers or even from Ebay will save you lots of money!

Try Cameo Favours or Just Willows on Ebay or DIY Favour Boxes (no relation to this site!)

Making traditional favours
Traditional favours consist of circles of tulle or net filled with sugared almonds. You gather the tulle around the almonds and secure in place with a ribbon or ribbons. You can add small artificial flowers or even wired beads as you tie the favour in place. The more circles of tulle that you use, the fuller the effect. You could ring the changes by using luxurious truffles, jelly beans or even bath pearls.

Other ideas
Mini bottles of alcohol make great favours and are not too expensive. You can personalise them by printing address labels off on your home computer and then simply sticking them on!

If you're getting married at Christmas, beautiful baubles can double as both placecards and favours. They'll also add a touch of sparkle to your tables.

Boxes and Buckets
I made these wedding favours using boxes and miniature buckets bought from Hobbycraft.
The brown box came ready made. I simply glued a rectangle of cream card on the top, followed by a slightly smaller rectangle of corrugated brown card to create a textured, frame effect. Then I topped it off with a pale cream leaf skeleton. The whole thing was tied by an almost see-through cream ribbon. The box could be filled with whatever you chose.
The cream coloured box was self-assembly but very easy to do. I cut purple ribbon and glued it across the lid of the box, tucking and gluing the ends underneath. Then I used small sticky pads to fix two flowers to the top.
The final favour is a miniature silver bucket. I filled this with pink tissue paper and some pink sugared almonds. Then I wrapped it in a circle of polythene wrapping and tied it with a bow of ribbon. I tucked a couple of wired minature roses in the ribbon for decoration.

For more great favour ideas visit Surrey Weddings.

Email: jennifer@diybrides.co.uk
Copyright Jennifer Page 2008