Early in my planning process, I decided that we weren’t going to have favors. As much as I love how personalized favors can be, I wanted ours to be “more” than just little gifts for our guests to bring home. I wanted it to mean something.

My Nonna has advanced Alzheimer’s disease. It’s in its final stages: she now doesn’t recognize anyone, isn’t able to follow or contribute to a conversation, needs help to bathe, go to the washroom, and eat. She needs round the clock care, and has been placed in a nursing home for the past three years because of this. It breaks my heart, but we can’t have my Nonna attend the wedding. She is afraid to leave the nursing home, and this wedding – all the people, the different place, the duration of it – would be too much for her.

My Nonna and I, Dec 08

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I’m well on my way to having this wedding planned by Christmas!  Yippee for me! Now the question has arose as to whether to give wedding favors to our guests.  I have been to weddings where favors were given and others where favors were not.  Frankly, I do not care either way.  I have never been offended when they were not given, even at weddings to which I traveled a long distance.

I am almost ashamed to admit that every wedding favor I have ever received, I have trashed, except for one.  So in that respect, if giving wedding favors, please give me something practical that I have a chance of using or that can be consumed (i.e. I can eat it).  If consumable, I request chocolate!

Thus, when the topic of wedding favors came up, I was firmly in the camp of saving that money and putting it to use in a better way, like catering.  I believe guests remember good food, or in the opposite, bad food.  I do not believe people remember wedding favors.  Since I wanted to do a sparkler send-off, I suggested to Cymbie Dude that instead of favors, we do something like this:

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One afternoon, my mother called with a fabulous idea that Towie Bear and I decided to use for our summer wedding. My parents offered to purchase all of the materials from Puerto Rico.

Our wedding favor was an Ivory box with a small bouquet of calla lilies and white flowers on top. And of course the tiffany blue ribbon wrapped around the box with a bow on top. MOH and my best friend Cara, were to thankful that the bows were pre-made in Puerto Rico. We realized that this would save us a lot of time!

Inside these lovely boxes was a small picture frame that actually matched our large picture frame (given to our bridal party), cake topper, cake cutting set and toasting flutes.

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Imagine surprise when I woke up from a long nap this afternoon ( I am still exhausted from the wedding weekend) and found the most beautiful Facebook posting via our photographer, Amy Sandoval, about our little details.  Most of our wedding was DIY and on a budget.  I love that everything at our wedding was my vision and design. Our colors were pink and lime green…and here they are -

Amy Sandoval Photography - http://amysandovalphotography.com/blog/

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I am so glad I decided to go with the candy bar.  It is progressing along nicely.  This weekend I organized all of the candy and containers I have bought so far so I could get a better feel for what I have and what I still need.

At Target on Friday I found these raspberry Hershey’s Hugs on clearance for $1.44 a bag and picked up 10! They are a perfect shade of pink for our pink and green candy buffet.

Here they are... 100 ounces of Hugs

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I am still searching for boxes that I can use to deliver our wedding favors. I’m the type of bride that believes that the presentation counts. I’ve been searching high and low for The Box. I actually need two different size boxes. One will need to be at least 2 X 3 and the second one 8 X 10.

At the moment, I’ve seen the following boxes on the Internet and at local stores. The boxes shown on this post are very cute, but are not what I am looking for.

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I’ve heard a lot of conflicting opinions on favors for wedding gifts. While some think they are cute and necessary, more and more I’m hearing people say they are a waste of money.  That being said, I am still leaning towards having favors.  A friend of mine is doing personalized mugs and an Irish Cream bar – an idea I really like given her wedding is in the dead of winter. I also really like the whole candy buffet idea – but can this double as favors?

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Even before getting engaged… I knew that my favors would be home made by my dad. He makes wine as his “retirement hobby” and surprisingly, it is quite good considering that it comes out of a basement in Pennsylvania.

I love the homemade feel of it and it is something meaningful to both Mr. Poinsettia and I. Before the ring was on the finger, I had asked my dad to begin making the vino. We are having two varietals a Gewürztraminer and a blackberry Merlot. (I salivate as I write this!) The Gewurz is completed and ready for bottling…the Merlot is following behind closely.

Gewurz is actually one of the few wines that pairs well with Asian food, this would be perfect if we were doing a Filipino reception…but Poinsettia Dude didn’t care to make it cultural. Now, don’t get me wrong… I will request some Palabok…. YUM!

So now we need to pick bottles and labels. Our struggle is this: One 375 ml bottle per couple or one per single? Or..

www.homebrewery.com

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I’m so happy to share some details from our reception! You will recognize things we have been talking about for the last year on this blog. The flowers were all done by a local flower shop, Colonial Flowers. All of the paper goods were done by yours truly of course. (I never want use a paper cutter again, EVER)

We used black table linens and black chair covers to create a dramatic setting to show off the beautiful white and green flowers.

My MOH’s bouquet:

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My Wedding Favors is giving away a $25 gift certificate! Their site has tons of cute wedding favors for any theme or budget.

From myweddingfavors.com

Enter on the Contest page before Friday, May 22!