Are you in favor of favours?

I decided to go with an edible favor. This way guests can consume them while at the wedding or pack it away for later. I find things like bubbles, honey jars, etc get left behind because people don't know why they would need it after the wedding, is my thought.

Before we decided on a destination wedding, my big plans for wedding favours were either flower seeds or small sapling plants (trees, shrubs, flowers, depending on what suited each individual guest). But now we're doing a destination wedding and I can't very well fly living plants to a different country haha. I'm thinking that we'll replace the "wedding favours" with a welcome bag. A pair of sunglasses, sunscreen, and maybe a towel or flip flops. A bit more expensive, but I think they'd get used more and hopefully we'll have less people there to make them up for. I also want to include some pamphlets for things to do around the destination and maybe a little bit of fun facts/history.


I've been to a number of weddings that did favours though. One new years eve wedding did Christmas Crackers and everyone opened them before supper. Another one did chocolates but the bride and groom passed them out to each person. One person did succulents in teacups which I'm sure costed them a fortune. They looked great but not a lot of them went home with guests. One that got a lot of use out of it: my fiance's sister did beer coozies. I think it's important to represent both the couple while being mindful of the interests of the guests.

We are doing a donation to the Humane Society in lieu of individual favours- our dog brought us together and that is where she came from. There will be cards on the table informing the guest of the donation and why we're doing it....a cousin did something similar and I loved the idea. There will also be boxes for the wedding cake/cupcakes should people WANT to take something home with them!

I agree but realised that if you don’t include anything people get offended. So I am doing something edible that they can eat upon arrival.

This is why our favours are edible (homemade jam) lol otherwise yeah I agree with you they don’t get used and it’s a waste. But I feel like not including them is kind of rude so we are still doing them

We are doing favours to tie into a travel theme for the wedding. We are doing mini suitcases with 3 chocolates in it. They will help decorate the table and are part of the treats as we are not doing a plated dessert.

I keep going back and forth, my mother is very pro favours and my FH and I are indifferent. If I were going to do favours it would be something like pepper jellies or jams with "Spread the Love" on it. I've been to weddings that have done food favours and I definitely prefer those over getting a bottle opener or cake cutter.

If we choose to do favours, I'm considering ordering less favours than people so I don't have so many left behind.

I’m conflicted about this. If we end up having a barn wedding then I’d like to have an airstream photo booth, and I really love Willow & Stem’s flower bar, and we’ll likely have a lot of plants to offer from centrepieces.


I didn’t realize so many favours got left behind. I was thinking of doing little jars of honey or jam. I appreciate those things but maybe not everyone does.

We'll do a candy bar favour. Plus we'll have the photobooth for guests. I love photobooths and candy lol

I think if they are done well then it's fun. I am a huge fan of edible favors! I really like jam or honey jars, even tea/coffee things like that. We are doing pumpkin pie tarts (that I am making with lots of help from my Nanna) because we are getting married on Thanksgiving Sunday, and our venue was not flexible on dessert options and I gots to have my pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving LOL. Plus it's kind of my thing to make the Pumpkin Pie for all the family gatherings on Thanksgiving so I think it has a sweet touch (no pun intended) In this case the cost is pretty minimal. I wouldn't do any other favors if it were not for this.

I was the same way. Used to think they were so important. We used potted plants as our centrepieces and then gave those out as the favours. Not everyone took one, but more than half were gone. Plus, it solved the problem of “what to do with the centrepieces after the wedding”. The only favours I’ve actually seen people take are the edible ones-the chocolates or candies.

Favors are a tricky one, but like I've read and know Europeans expect something? myself and my fiance are both European. We decided not to do the traditional favors that our culture usually has, as so many people have had the little trinkets at their weddings and they just get pushed into a cupboard or drawer and forgotten about because they get so many of the same thing.

We decided to order 2.5" Succulents from Plant Collective. They have bulk succulents in their own pot. We paid roughly 3.10 ea. ? We ordered 265 succulents and with shipping and tax paid roughly $935.00. If they don't go, I can at least plant them in a bigger pot together and have a nice succulent planter in my house (I love them, and so does my soon to be mother-in-law).

I like receiving stuff, but I also wouldn't be hurt if I didn't get one? I guess it all depends on your guests!

My friends gave jars of grandma's famous homemade relish (RELISH....tell me the last time you used that condiment!). Nearly 200 jars of it. yeah so guess how many jars of relish they have kicking around their house 2 years later.

We didn't do favours. They weren't missed. We didn't think that it was worth the cost or fuss.

But that's us. I know lots of people are fans.

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I totally agree with this. Especially if you have a bigger wedding. It Is time consuming to create a tiny gift for every guest. I don't plan on having any wedding favors for my wedding and I am happy about it

I spent alittle extra money to make sure they have something nice. Especially my family coming from NY. So I purchased little maple leaf bottles and filled them with the syrup produced on our reserve in Kitigan Zibi, Quebec.

Most of the weddings I've attended haven't done favours. As a wedding guest, I always appreciate a donation to something that's important to the couple.

We're having a photobooth with free picture printouts instead of favours.

Not doing them. We are taking the $ we would have spent on them and making a donation to an organization that's important to us.
My good friend was married in January and did favours and more than half were left behind. She regrets doing them.

Honestly, we weren't stuck on doing them, but we did. We had chocolates in little boxes, and many were taken, or eaten while people are dancing.

I think it really depends on what you are thinking of doing for favours if they will be left behind or not.

If I were to do it again, I would not do favours just to save the money that I spent on them. I wouldn't spend more than $1 or $2 on each favours if you are worried about everyone not taking them.

I always take my favour when we are at weddings, but they either get pushed into a cupboard, or thrown in the garbage shortly after the wedding.

I would say it depends on what the favours are - for my wedding our favours were blankets from Ikea so everybody took one home! Nobody was going to forget a free blanket!!

As for something like a car air freshener (yes, I've been to a wedding where this was the favour..) - those were all left behind.

I don't think that favours are needed, but I didn't like the idea of people going home without something from my wedding.

We aren’t doing favours. About half of our guests are travelling and we figured they probably wouldn’t take them. They also just seemed like an unnecessary expense

I'm not in favor of favours. I have seen them left more times then they were taken which, I agree, is a waste of money. However, it really depends on the guests too. We decided to do a candy bar instead, which is kinda like favours except it won't cost a ton to do and if there is leftovers, they can still be eaten. The other thing that we thought is that if people don't want/like the candy there are others that do and won't feel guilty if they have more. Whereas, with favours its typically one favour per guest.

I’m in favour of favours if they’re food. We did chocolate bars with personalized wrappers and there weren’t really any left behind so people either ate them there or actually took them home. My SIL did jam and those got taken home. I think it’s nice to give guests a little something, but I’m very traditional.


As an alternative to favours I like when couples donate the money they would have spent on favours to a charity that’s important to them.

As part of our favours we are doing professional portrait photos of each couple/ family and a small
Box of
Chocolates. Both likely to be taken then not

We aren't doing favors. Like you said most of them get left behind and the ones that go home still might go to waste. (I keep picturing all the trendy plant favors that people like me take home and kill.) Weddings are already so expensive that we decided we don't need this added cost for something unnecessary. Instead we will use the money to have more appetizers!

View quoted message Similar situation here with European background kinda forcing us into favours. Usually my family expects like serving plates or glasses etc. My FHs family does favours too but more of the diy route ( honey jars and monogrammed pencils). I’ve actually only been to one wedding that did a donation in lieu of favors. It didn’t bother me as a guest at all not go have a “thank you gift”. For myself I was looking into bottle openers and also wine corks ( all in the $1-2 per item range) and honestly it just didn’t feel like “us” but I knew we couldn’t skip it entirely. I had a bigger budget for favours worked into my first draft of wedding planning because I thought ... damn gonna need to get serving plates for 100 people. So we ended up working with a local olive oil boutique and they made us custom mini 60ml bottles pairings of olive oil and balsamic vinegar. It was more expensive than your dollar favours but we LOVED working with them and support local. Culturally it fits my European background too PLUS it’s edible so honestly such a WIN for us! We’re including a salad dress receipe on the thank you tag ( they are in cello bags)

My FH comes from a European background and was very against not having favours. I wouldn’t be doing favours if he wasn’t feeling so strongly about them. I agree with you, people have such different tastes it’s hard to choose something everyone likes.


We ended up getting something we really like and if most are leftover, we will gladly use the leftover favours.
If I had my way I’d do something edible (coffee/tea favours or little bottles of alcohol) so people can actually use them. I think edible favours are a good compromise!

View quoted message Yeah I'd probably do one or the other if a candy bar is something you want to do. Just have cute little take away bags made up, and that can count as favours and guests can then choose which candies they like for themselves. This is definitely a really popular trend and I know guests love more interactive things so a candy bar is great and makes for some pretty displays too!

View quoted message This is true! However, would you skip on the candy bar if you make favours you can eat?

This is why I chose to go the edible route, I've never left an edible favour behind 😅 especially when they're small chocolates or truffles of some kind since I've seen a lot of people eat them as soon as they sit down at their place setting. The other good thing (or bad thing, depending how you look at it) is that if they're left behind then you and your spouse can save them and eat them yourselves over time.

We aren't bothering with with them. I think most of the time they get left behind like you said and it seems like a waste of time/effort/money that could go towards something else.