On Gifting our Wedding Guests (Our Wedding, Part Two)

I believe that the devil is in the details.  And I definitely applied this philosophy to planning our wedding. Here's a few more small touches that helped to make our big day all our own.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, I wanted our wedding day to feel like "us," and part of "us" is my love for the DC area.  This is the place that we've chosen to call home and to build our family, so I felt the need to pay homage.  Since many of our guests were traveling to DC from other states, I wanted to make sure everyone felt welcome, so I, once again, put my budgeting skills to use and put together some welcome bags.

Pardon all of my grainy photos. 

Personalized thank you cards

A cute little label that I made on my home computer

Hang tags for hotel doors because we hung out all night! 

A personalized CD with some of our favorite songs 

(These were a wedding gift made by our friends.)

A scented candle for the hotel room and some local crab-flavored Utz chips

We also added assorted snacks, water, and thanks to the DC Chamber of Commerce, lots of tourist information and coupons for local attractions.  Thanks to the Dollar Tree, Costco, and a couple of discount websites, I was able to put together a cute, affordable gift of thanks to our friends and family who traveled from near and far to share our big day with us.

One other special touch I'll talk about in this post is our wedding favors. We went back and forth for a while about what to do. As a tribute to our respective home towns, we decided to gift our guests with our favorite hometown treats – NYC deli-style black & white cookies and sweet potato tarts as a nod to the South and my hometown, Houston TX. 

A local bakery in Eastern Market made the B&W cookies. The sweet potato tarts were made by a lady who sells sweets at my mom's beauty shop.  Now if that's not down home, I don't know what is! I made the card in PowerPoint during a bout of insomnia. A few weeks later, I took the image to Kinko's and had the cards made. My friends and family helped me stuff the packages the night before the wedding rehearsal. 

Until next time . . . hang on! I'll be back with details about my dress in my next post!