Favors of the world
Reader Jessica (who is absolutely fabulous, by the way, and has a gorgeous engagement ring) recently posed a question, which I will summarize here. She asked, “What’s up with favors?” What is up, indeed. I have attended weddings where packets of nasty, chalky Jordan almonds were haphazardly strewn on the reception tables. I have come home with commemorative matchbooks emblazoned with the names of the newly married, tacky porcelain baskets filled with faux rose petals, and handfuls of those luscious cherry Hershey’s Kisses.
Though I’ve never attended a wedding expecting to receive a favor (and neither should anyone else, for that matter), wedding favors can be a lovely treat. To clarify, favors are great when they actually are great. To some future brides and grooms, favors are an important part of the wedding. To others, favors are nothing but an afterthought. I’d rather see the latter nix the favors altogether and spend that money on what they do feel is important, like food, music, decor, or location. That is the secret to hosting spectacular weddings, by the way – spending money on the elements important to you and axing the rest.
So, favors. No one knows how the tradition of giving guests a little something to take home started, but the theory is that the practice as we know it today began with ancient European aristocrats who would give bombonieres (i.e. boxes of stuff) made out of gold, silver, precious gems, crystal, or something equally pricey to their party guests. Sugar or sugary snacks were the ‘stuff’ of choice. As weddings were seen as particularly lucky occasions, brides and grooms gave their guests bombonieres as a symbolic means of passing some of their luck on to others.
With the evolution of the tradition, favors came to represent not only luck, but also health, wealth, fertility, happiness, and a long life. While many of us think picture frames, candy, matchbooks, and figurines when we think favors, cultures around the world have put their own spin on the practice of giving guests something to take home. In Korea, guests are often presented with pretty painted ducks representing the bride and groom.
Jennifer Baumann, editor of the Wedding Gazette, has compiled a short list of cultural favor traditions.
- In Malaysian culture, the traditional wedding favor is painted, decorated eggs – a symbol of fertility for the couple.
- Orange blossoms are very popular for Spanish weddings. A perfect favor would be stems of orange blossoms in a bud vase for each guest.
- Turn a Greek wedding tradition around on your guests: the couple used to receive glass charms in the shape of an eye on their wedding day – this was to protect them from bad luck.
- Dutch favor tradition includes “Bridal Sugar” – five pieces of Dutch sweet candy wrapped in tulle. Each piece represents the five wedding wishes: love, happiness, loyalty, prosperity, and virility. Very similar to other cultures’ wedding wishes.
If you’re not enthralled by wedding favors, don’t fret. It’s perfectly acceptable to use the cash you would have spent on favors to treat your guests to a great meal or an evening’s worth of well-played dance favorites. After all, good memories make the best mementoes.
We just got married (today is one month) and our favors were jellybeans. We had an island themed wedding with hawaiian prints on all the tables and palm trees for decor so our jellybeans were tropical. The flavers were I think, pina coloda, tangerine, lime, coconut, strawberry daquiri and others. We had a fairly small wedding and didn’t want to go overboard with stuff so we also told everyone that the plants were another gift for them to take home to remind them of their day in the islands with us.
And kind of off the subject instead of a traditional wedding book we had people write us notes on fabric squares which are going to be the backing of the quilt being made from all the table fabric. It was a big hit and people got pretty creative with their squares. This way we have a memory of our wedding that will actually go to bed with us every night.
One couple whose wedding we recently attended love games of all kinds, as do most of their friends. Their wedding favors were two six-sided dice embossed with their names. Charming and functional! Well, if you habitually use six-sided dice.
TAG’s non-traditional “wedding book” reminded me of a few others I’d seen: one couple had people sign a pair of serving platters with a special pen. I guess the pen markes somehow get permanently transferred to the plates, so they now have serving platters with all their wedding well-wishes on them.
This could easily work for a smaller wedding: a family I know has a tablecloth that their dinner guests autograph in pencil when they visit. The mother of the family stiches over the signatures with various colors of thread. The pencil marks come out in the wash, and they’re left with a lovely, colorful record of the people who visited their house. The family’s eldest daughter married last year, and her mother gave her a plain white tablecloth at her bridal shower.
On the subject of guestbooks: my fiance and I are pretty sure we’re going to spring for a pewter signature mat. It comes with an engraving pen, and your guests sign with that. Then you have a great mat to frame your favorite wedding photo in…. We love the idea.
As for favors… by all accounts, edible and specifically chocolate are considered pretty popular. Of course, candy buffets seem popular as well. We might just skip them ourselves. There’s other things we’d like to spend money on, so if we have them at all it’s because we had money left over.
What gorgeously original guestbook ideas!
Koreans use ducks to symbolize marriage because ducks are said to mate for life. In most traditional wedding pictures, you’ll see a pair of ducks prominently portrayed near the bride and groom.
Friends of mine set up a polaroid camera, and a bunch of markers and stickers by an album, so that wedding guests could take pictures of themselves and decorate a page in the album. I thought that was a great idea, but it might only work for smaller weddings, due to the time factor.
As for favors, I’ve seen little bottles of local maple syrup, and little bottles of hot fudge sauce. And just last night I ordered the shot glasses for my wedding . . .
While planning my wedding I knew the favors would mostly just be thrown out. Since I was getting married on New Years Eve I ended up ordering party horns and having them personalized with our name. The people who like to keep those little trinkets had a souvineir and everyone else got a fun noisemaker to play with during the reception and when the clock struck midnight.
I thought it worked well.
For my sisters wedding we did the chocolate bar in a wrapper. Those were a pain, but because there was a promotion code on them I ended up with $63.75 in e-money- so that was nice
we’re doing those little chinese silk fortune-cookie purses, with a temporary tattoo (hearts and arrows) inside.
A lot of Greek weddings I’ve been to are rather extravagent, and the favors match that extravagence. The coolest favor I’ve heard of (I didn’t go to the wedding, but was given a favor) was a box with two little bottles, one of Ouzo (from the bride’s region in Greece and the other of tsipouri (from the groom’s side). Also included in the clear box were 4 column-like shot glasses. Like I said, extravagent. Another cool thing was a small champagne bottle and a bottle stopper shaped like a heart. These are strictly Greek-American traditions; in Greece they go the simpler route, a tulle bag or contraption of some sort that holds the jordan almonds (which aren’t that bad). Also, there must be an uneven amount of jordan almonds in the package because it has to be a number that is not divisible by two (representing the indivisibility of the couple!).