Wedding Favour Dilemmas

Hi Samdines

My grandfather recently passed away and suffered with alzheimer's and heart problems. So we have decided that we would donate the cost of of the favour to these 2 charities.

But to make it a bit more interesting and to make our guest aware what we are doing we are going to create our own little seed packets (seeds will be my grandfathers favourite flower) with a pic of my grandfather and a little note to tell our guests what we have done!

Hope this makes some sort of sense!!!

I once alluded to my objection to this but didn't have an opportunity to explain myself so will try to do so now.

1. Under no circumstances do I think giving to charity is unimportant and it 's (almost) a moral obligation for those who are fortunate enough to be able to do so.

2. I think giving to charity is very personal. I dislike the philosophies or aims of some charities and there are some whose cause I simply don't support. I would feel uncomfortable if someone had chosen to donate "on my behalf" to something I ideologically object to. Anyone should feel absolutely free to donate on their "own behalf" to any charity they wish...which leads to...

3. I think if I were to choose to donate some of my wedding fund to charity, I would go without something for myself, not something intended as a gesture/thank-you/keepsake for guests. If I then wanted to raise awareness for the charity, I would include their logo on the stationery or alongside any photos of people we want to remember.

I am making guitar pick keyrings for the boys and handbag charms for the girls. When I say "making", I mean "looking at a pile of charms/picks/keyring findings/chains and hoping they will magically assemble themselves".

Like the charity idea.

We are giving everyone a button hole/corsage for their outfit. This is often done anyway, but is our idea of a wedding favour.

A straw poll of my friends had never heard of this. I can't remember any wedding favours at any weddings I've ever been to, apart from eating sugared almonds when I was 8 yrs old.

I've just spotted these on twitter and am a little bit in love with them..

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=16758750&id=133146315051

Obviously depends on what charity you want to donate to but i hear of someone getting these as wedding favours and thought it was a great idea

http://giveincelebration.cancerresearchuk.org/wedding-favours?gclid=CNnlgfyCtaYCFc0f4Qod4z7kGg

I went to a wedding recently where the bride and groom had scratch cards as their favours. They went down well, were a talking point at the table and on average about one guest per table won something and on my table it was me! So bonus!!

As an old married...my experience of weddings is that most people just leave their wedding favours on the table...

scratchcards are a fun idea though!

Yep I went to a wedding where charity scratchcards were given. That might be a fun way of donating. The charity was a local hospice (I do not like some of the larger charities, they spend 40-60% of funds on admin staff!) which was also lovely.

Equally a £1 lucky dip for the lottery draw on your wedding day (if a Saturday). I've even seen some places that do holders for lottery ticket favours.

I had a lovely idea of engraving old spoons with people's names and using them as favours/place settings. Need to explore it further, plus, if I'm to hand stamp 80 spoons, I might never get there, even if I started now with a target date of June 2012!

I know what you mean though, you want something people will keep and cherish, if I have any more ideas I'll get back to you.

I know this isn't at all wacky, so probably not much use to you, but might be for other b2b who want cheap favours that guests will actually want. Several weddings I've been to recently had mints in little homemade organza bags (square of organza tied up with a piece of ribbon in wedding colours) and most of the guests had their mints after the wedding breakfast alongside their coffee. Just a thought that at weddings there is a lot of kissing and meeting of new people and guests seem to like having minty fresh breath for that. I was originally thinking of doing that for my wedding but OH has some elaborate idea for favours involving symbolism or something (he's getting quite into this wedding planning stuff now), so i'm leaving it up to him.

We're not having wedding favours. I don't want to spend the money on something people will leave/not appreciate.

The best wedding favour I have seen is a charity donation to Cancer Research (there were pin badges for everyone with a message from the bride and groom on a bit of paper). It was donated to the grooms mum who had died of breast cancer so was very meaningful.

I have mentioned it before but we are not having buttonholes we are buying poppies for all our guests and so making a donation to The British Legion.

Undecided on favours yet, we had thought about lottery tickets or charity pin badges.

xx

We've considered donating to charity and in my opinion if the guests don't like it then they are pretty selfish - who objects to a charity donation?????????

Anyway, after saying that we decided against it, lol. We're going for these:

Frank is a local biscuit maker and the biscuits are absolutely stunning. They come packaged like this already and they are actually really cheap. I didn't want to spend alot on the favours and we both liked these so that's what we went for.

We are not having our favours on the tables as per usual, instead there will be a favours table where there will a selection of favours available for people to help themselves to. I am hoping that this will mean that those who want to can take more than one if they want. So far I am having bundles of pencils with our names and the date engraved tied with ribbon, home made chocolate truffles, home made soaps (2 varieties), magnets (they were on special offer on vista print and couldnt turn them down) am trying to think of some other things to make/ get to go on there as well. Perfectfavours.co.uk has some pretty good ones.

I wasnt going to bother with favours, as you say, most people just leave them behind.

However my MIL2B is deperate to make little bags of almonds in gold netting and curly gold ribbon, so I plan on letting her.

Then a friend of the family has offered to make decorated champagne flutes for each of the guests which they can take home. Thought that was a lovely idea, but when I saw her designs I wasnt sure. Going to give her some of my own design ideas and hopefully will be a fab, useful and original favour!

I don't see how objecting to a charity donation necessarily makes someone selfish (although it's clear that you - and maybe others - equate the two). I don't look at charity favours and think "B*stards, I wanted my choccies", honest ?

If I were to make a donation on your behalf to a charity you were idealogically opposed to, how would you feel? How would a medical researcher feel about a charity donation being made to PETA? Pro-life/pro-choice charities? Religious charities? Charities that promote third world development in a way you feel is inappropriate/unacceptable/doomed to failure? The National Rifle Association?

Some of those examples are clearly very controversial and simply to illustrate the point that not everyone will be happy that you've donated on their behalf to your chosen charity. It might be difficult to argue against a donation to Cancer Research UK, yeah? But they support animal experiments, which won't make you feel happy if you are an animal rights supporter...I feel the couple can perfectly freely choose for themselves who they donate to, but not choose for their guests.

To be clear, absolutely no problem with charity donations (obviously), it's the "on your behalf" bit that gets me.

Ah yeah, I wrote my post and then read yours below and I do agree with what you are saying too. What I meant was that if the bride and groom choose to make a donation to their chosen charity instead of putting chocolates on the table then that is their choice and I do think that someone objecting purely because they don't have a favour is selfish. BUT I do agree that they should not donate 'on your behalf'. As you said, charity is a person thing and you can't do that on behalf of your guests.

I do completely agree, no offence meant. Maybe I just didn't word it or explain myself well enough. ?

I think the charity thing is fine

We are buying pin badges for our guests and writing a little message on the place card that they are attatched to.

They are from the local hospice that my cosuin sadly died at in November. But i know its close to other guests too. So means alot to lots of the guests.

x

Absolutely none taken ?

A note to those pursuing the charity favour thing: you would presumably benefit your charity even more if you were to elect not to take the pins/brooches (which cost them money to make)?

Hi, Ive bought the women a crystal rose which i will place on the table as a decoraton (somehow) and the men have scratchcards which are going in a purple envelopes just to make them look a bit nicer.

We're doing the charity donation bit but i'm also printing off the meanings of peoples names to double up as a place card and also start a conversation with people who don;t know each other- i haven't quite figured out if they will go on the card or be a seperate but plenty of time to worry about that!

We are buying lottery tickets from our local hospice, that way the guests have a chance of winning some cash and we are making a donation to the charity at the same time.

The charities that we will be donating to are local to where my grandparents live.

I can not see how anyone can object to an alzheimer's or heart charity as at some point in everyones life we will all come across someone who we know who will be effected by these problems.

At the end of the day these charities mean a lot me and my OH and if anyone at our wedding objects to us donating to these very worthwhile charities then it is their problem and they do not need to take the favours.

Guest are invited to share in our day not dictate how we spend our day or money!

It's probably a little bit different for us, but I've bought these for the women (both of them! lol)

It's as much about practicality as we're getting married at the hottest part of the day, and there's not a lot of shade

I've also bought this for me, too

hopefully, this will keep us all a little cooler and will also provide a little bit of interest for some of the photos too.

Just not sure what to do for the men, though.

I also thought of lottery tickets/bets on horses/scratchcards etc. But then I have some guests who, according to their religion, are not allowed to gamble (even if someone else has placed the bet for them). So I dumped that idea, before pondering that if they wish to closely adhere to their religion, should they be attending a wedding at a place that sells alcohol.... ? So maybe it would have been OK, I don't know.

Me, Mum and the sister are all very creative and seem to have decided on a button theme so, the women will get an item of jewellery made from buttons, and the gents will get bookmarks

I'm having a nautical theme at my wedding so plan on giving everyone a miniature bottle of rum. To keep costs down, we've sourced 40ml bottles at 47p each and then plan to fill them ourselves (possibly while drinking!). Oh has made a cute little label.

Now that i've read all these awesome ideas, I might change my mind and do something morally satisfying. I kind of agree with the argument about making a donation on someone elses behalf, but if my guests aren't happy with the three course meal and free alcohol, I guess a £1 favour won't make much difference!

One more thing about donations to charities as favours: make sure you find out what percentage of your donation actually goes to the cause (eg. research into cures for cancer or supplies for developing countries) and what percentage goes into advertising, wages, etc. You want to know that your contribution is going directly to the people who need it, rather than to make hundreds of promotional pens and keyrings.

I find charitable donations as favours extremely annoying in cases where I know the bride and groom never make any donations to charity usually (10p in a collection pot occasionally doesn't count). I feel like they're either trying to show off about how selfless and generous they are or trying to make a political statement. Either way i find it annoying and disrespectful towards people who regularly, quietly, make charitable donations. No offence meant to people that are doing wedding favour donations on top of their regular donations.

But how do you know that the Bride & Groom don't make a regular donation? They might be doing it quietly too.

I'm not taking offence at any opinions in this thread, I'm not planning on having donations as favours, but I think presuming that the couple are trying to make a political statement is as patronising as making a donation on somebody else's behalf.

Hi

I'm not a fan of traditional favours either. What about something like love spoons or, at my first wedding, I had a little bag of welsh cakes. Everyone loved them. Obviously, doesn't have to be welsh cakes, but cookies or something similar. Failing that, can you get something that is important to you. For example, at another wedding I went to, someone was going on honeymoon to Thailand, as part of that, they were doing elephant trekking - so they gave everyone tiny little silver elephants.

The favours that have gone down the best at all the weddings I have been to have been, small set of candles, whisky for the men, home made bath bombs. But my personal favourite was a small goodie bag full of free samples of various things - each one different. So everyone was trading and the samples were fun - little perfumes, samples of skin care. Can't have cost the bride anything at all as they were free, but everyone seemed to think they were fun.

I don't think that making a donation instead of giving favours is "patronising". The donation doesn't even need to be on the guests' behalf, I think that it is the bride and groom saying, "we think that the favours are a waste of money, we would rather make a donation to charity, so we have."

Not all charities squander money, it is a good opportunity to make a donation to a small local charity who needs and will use the funds (such as a hospice).

As I said previouslym if you want to give guests something, you can get charity scratch cards or something, so that they have something on their table.

I feel that favours are gifts to your guests, just smaller versions of the gifts you give bridesmaids, mothers etc. If one feels strongly about a charity donation, wouldn't it be more noble for the bride to give up the cost of her bouquet (for example) and donate that? That way, it is the couple making the personal sacrifice, not sacrificing something that would be a gift to others. The message of charity favours could be viewed as "I feel it important to give to this charity but it's not important enough for me personally to actually go without". I completely agree that favours are usually eaten for immediate short term gain or left on tables etc which makes it seem like I am debating over something quite unimportant. But I don't believe the gesture behind giving favours is unimportant and the physical cost or form of them is irrelevant to that.