The best wedding favors are useful and unique, and choosing your favors can be a fun step in the process of wedding planning. However, as you choose, it’s important to be sure you’re picking favors that make sense for the kind of wedding you’re throwing.

Thinking About Travel

Most wedding favors are small and easy to transport, but even the smallest objects can still be fragile. Items like wine glasses aren’t a great choice for a destination wedding, for example. If most of your guests are arriving at your ceremony and reception venue from their homes nearby, giving a glass favor can be a great idea. But if all or most of your guests have to travel to get to and from the event, think twice before giving something fragile.

Fragile favors aren’t great for travel for the obvious reason that the might break in transit. But there’s more to it than that. Guests want to bring their favors home so they can remember the special day they shared with people they love, and it can be stressful to worry about a fragile favor breaking. If it does break, your guest may feel disappointed and sad that they weren’t able to bring their gift home safely. If a only a few of your guests are traveling from out of town and you want to give a fragile favor, consider pre-packing the gift in a safe container to reduce chances of breakage in transit.

Thinking About Theme

Beyond practical considerations, the theme for your wedding can also provide some inspiration for your favors. For example, if you’re hosting a tropical-themed beach wedding, a bottle opener shaped like a flip flop and personalized with your names and the date of the wedding could be a cute keepsake to remind guests of the event.

You don’t have to be so direct with your reference to the theme. Using the tropical beach theme example, you could instead give out embroidered towels that include your tropical wedding colors. Using your wedding colors in the favor is a great way to keep the event cohesive and give guests a memory of what your decorations looked like.

Working With the Event Format 

It can also be a good idea to think about how you’ll present the wedding favors before you pick them out. Will you have a sign-in table and gift table setup at the wedding, and is there room for you to have the favors set up there? Can you have them included at each place at your dining tables? The amount of space you have to store and present the favors to your guests can have an influence on the kind of favors you choose. This is more of a practical consideration, but when it comes to wedding planning, a little bit of practicality never hurts. Sometimes it’s a good idea to simplify your choice and give something small and easy to avoid the need for complex presentation. One less thing to worry about will make the big day that much more enjoyable!